It would be nice to think that as I've got older times have changed, relationships have become more sophisticated, females less cruel, skins thicker, reactions sharper, instincts more developed. But there still seems to be an element of that evening ...
As the Protestants celebrate a goal, they're egged on by the team captain, a long-haired Italian called Lorenzo Amoruso, who has the look of a 1980s male model. Flailing his arms, he urges them to sing their anti-Catholic songs louder. The irony is o...
He read the letter again, but could not take in any more meaning than he had done the first time and was reduced to staring at the handwriting itself. She had made her g's the same way he did : he searched through the letter for every one of them, an...
If only, I thought, I could talk to Eugene just one more time. This was before I came to understand that you cannot make someone fall in love with you But here's what you can do. By arguing and pleading and screaming and crying and throwing plates an...
Most people can motivate themselves to do things simply by knowing that those things need to be done. But not me. For me, motivation is this horrible, scary game where I try to make myself do something while I actively avoid doing it. If I win, I hav...
A beautiful, majestic, and awe-inspiring sea awaits you. And you are welcome to enter however you see fit - to wade, to walk lightly, to swim for your life, or to sail. The decision is yours. No one will stop you from returning to the sandy towel on ...
I tilted my chin up a fraction. "You can't f-force me to stay here." I'd only agreed to come this far because I didn't want to stand out in the downpour, for one, and I had high hopes of finding a phone, for two. "That sounded more like a question th...
Sitti knows that modern-day wars are fought over simple things, like the length and fit of a shirt—the shorter the sleeve, the greater the misfortune. Many times she wants to ask the one-hundred-year-old fig tree in the village center what it is li...
A boy adopts a hero for two reasons: because a hero captivates his soul and serves as a projection of his innermost self; and, because a hero seems to have solved many problems that may worry a boy, or at least demonstrates the capacity to solve them...
One reads the truer deeper facts of Reconstruction with a great despair. It is at once so simple and human, and yet so futile. There is no villain, no idiot, no saint. There are just men; men who crave ease and power, men who know want and hunger, me...
In his suicide note, Kurt Cobain wrote, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." He was quoting a Neil Young song about Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols. When I was twenty-four, I interviewed John Lennon. I asked him about this sentiment, one tha...
A book a week I heave a sigh; That Slogan's peremptory cry I will not hear, I will not heed. How can They say that I should need The book They bid me weekly buy? But Slogans change, as days go by; My Psyche listens, fluttering shy, To newer message "...
He wants a fifteen thousand pound settlement." "Fifteen thousand!" "He says you're a great deal of trouble." She hesitated for one startled moment before choking back a laugh. "I am." "I thought so." He leveled Drew a look. "If I pay you the fifteen ...
Murmuring soothing noises, Dallas settled himself between her thighs and pressed a soft kiss to her clit. "You're all right." He eased the second sphere out of her. "I've got you." She laughed and covered her face with her hands. "No, you don't. I ca...
In your novels do you lie deliberately or just out of ignorance?" Laughter. A murmur of approval. The writer hesitated a few seconds. Then counter-attacked: "I'm a liar by vocation," he shouted. "I lie with joy! Literature is the only chance for a tr...
One of the greatest gifts we receive from dogs is the tenderness they evoke in us. The disappointments of life, the injustices, the battering events that are beyond our control, and the betrayals we endure, from those we befriended and loved, can mak...
Why, when people are leaving their partners because they're having an affair with someone else, do they think it will seem better to pretend there is no one else involved? Do they think it will be less hurtful for their partners to think they just wa...
I pick up a copy of Newsweek on the plane and immediately notice how biased, slanted, and opinionated all the U.S. newsmagazine articles are. Not that the Euro and British press aren't biased as well--they certainly are--but living in the United Stat...
Truth is always stranger than fiction. We craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted. Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees. Reminding us, that the universe does not exist to fulfill...
In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments—which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is d...
I shall not assess arguments and evidence for competing views about when human extinction will occur. We know it will occur, and this fact has a curious effect on my argument. In a strange way it makes my argument an optimistic one. Although things a...
