When we think of fear as an acronym meant to support us, we find that fear itself has genius, magic and power in it. We can use any fear that we feel to our advantage in the moment by remembering what FEAR really is: Forgetting Everything is All Righ...
Brrr, who had never admired books particularly...didn't remember that a mere book might reek of sex, possibility, fecundity. Yet a book has a ripe furrow and a yielding spine, he thought, and the nuances to be teased from its pages are nearly infinit...
Dad says that everyone invented baklava.” It occurs to me now to wonder what that means. Aunt Aya rolls her eyes. “Your father? He is the worst of the worst. He thinks he cooks and eats Arabic food but these walnuts were not grown from Jordanian ...
Why can’t you remember your Shakespeare and forget the third-raters. You’ll find what you’re trying to say in him- as you’ll find everything else worth saying. 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with slee...
Why are the photographs of him as a little boy so incredibly hard to look at? Something is over. Now instead of those shiny moments being things we can share together in delighted memories, I, the survivor, have to bear them alone. So it is with all ...
Sheriff Fox was running his fingers through his thin hair. In a few short years, he’d look bald as a peeled apple. The Snoop sisters and their sidekick, the town’s bag lady no less, had traipsed into his office without knocking first. His admin (...
I remember the lightning in the air, and the lovers bidding goodbye to each other in the streets, and I can tell you what I think. We went to war because going to war is fun, because there's something in the human breast that trills at the thought, a...
I think that love is stronger than habits or circumstances. I think it is possible to keep yourself for someone for a long time, and still remember why you were waiting when she comes at last.... I would enter your sleep if I could, and guard you the...
Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don't understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning--either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lo...
Why does it scare me to think I might be ordinary? I remember when I started first grade and I could hardly pay attention for fear I wouldn't learn to read and write. I didn't want to be like everyone else. I didn't want to have to learn. I wanted to...
Since i couldn't remember the "real" first time i'd lost my virginity, this would have become my de facto first time. I wanted a better story then: I did it with this boy who i wasn't very into and who had mysterious Gaterade breath; in his room deco...
If God created the universe, there was a time when he commenced to create. Back of that commencement there must have been an eternity. In that eternity what was this God doing? He certainly did not think. There was nothing to think about. He did not ...
Every week, Michael went to Dean and DeLuca to buy your pears." She shook her head, remembering. "He waas going to school, and he had no money, so he stretched every penny like this -" She made a motion as if she were pulling on rubber band. "But he ...
I don’t dwell on the fact that I may have ridden on planes. That which I can’t remember having needed, I simply accept. It is the most preferable kind of self-insight: one that does not require any accompanying change in behavior.
I remember the second time I took Agatha out. I wanted to go to Dairy Queen, and she wanted to go to Burger King. In the end we settled for wieners and clams at Johnny Hermaphrodite’s.
A first-rate college library with a comfortable campus around it is a fine milieu for a writer. There is, of course, the problem of educating the young. I remember how once, between terms, not at Cornell, a student brought a transistor set with him i...
I thought you guys could detect witches." Jonathan muttered as soon as he got over his shock at seeing two people materialise in front of him. The wiccan sat on the floor, his shoulder being strapped with a makeshift bandage, by the ever-practical Ia...
Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vagu...
Beauty isn’t all about tooth whiteners, hard abs, and hundred-dollar lipstick. Beauty is about growing old together, remembering when together, laughing together. If my picture disgusts you, fine. Go look at the faces of women who named a price you...
You have to take this with you too,” she said, opening a box and holding up a silver necklace with the Syriac cross (a crucifix with a budding flower shape on each tip) dangling from it. “My mother gave it to me mother, who passed it to me. Now i...
I choose to suppress the initial categories I want to put people in - rich, poor, together, not together, druggie, yuppie, rocker, loser, winner, cool, uncool. I choose to remember that I don't know their struggle or their pain. I choose to err on th...