No doubt you've experienced something similar in books, movies, novels–whatever you use as an excuse to get away, to suspend reality. Literary characters, like these projections, draw you in and cultivate feelings of friendship on your part. Althou...
Lacking a clear formula for making decisions, we get reactive and fall back on familiar, comfortable ways to decide what to do. Pinballing through our day like a confused character in a B-horror movie, we end up running up the stairs instead of out t...
You know how they say that right before you die your life flashes before your eyes? It doesn’t. That is just a notion they came up with for books and movies to make death seem romantic. Here’s what really happens: Your intestines feel like a dish...
I will admit it sometimes felt strange to me to make the confession to someone and later catch them laughing, or flirting, or eating a sandwich, instead of tearing at the injustice of it all or sitting quietly at the center of a grand and monstrous g...
They cleared swiftly, dramatically, like a stage set or a movie; we went from black to stunning blue, the day emerging at once wet and crisp, the trees dripping jewels, the flowers drunk on drinking, their heads lolling with dizzy delight, rivulets e...
Disney will never make a movie about my life story, and that's a shame--I'd make a really cute animated creature.
A typical race morning usually starts out looking like a scene from a zombie movie: individuals or pairs of people walking down a deserted street, all headed in the same direction.... Inevitably, regardless of the weather, U2's "Beautiful Day" stream...
Just as television didn't put an end to radio or the movies (to say nothing of books), I don't think e-books will put an end to hard copies, even for someone like me who loves technology and does not fetishize the physical medium of books. ~ Steven P...
Certain moments in my life are imprinted in me memory. They're easy to recall with perfect clarity, whether I want to remember them or not. Any small thing can trigger them: a phrase, a smell, a thought. It brings everything back like I'm reliving th...
GET IN" he says, getting in on the driver side. I get in with no questions. Okay. This is a bad movie waiting to happen-I'm getting in a car with a guy I just met today who is keeping secrets from me. What the hell is wrong with me? I'm too scared to...
A book won't move your eyes for you like TV or a movie does. A book won't move your mind unless you give it your mind, or your heart unless you put your heart in it. It won't do the work for you. To read a good novel well is to follow it, to act it, ...
and the HE stands up. if frenchy's could bottle him up and sell him as porn, they'd probably own half of chicago within a year. he's what would happen after nine months if abercrombie fucked fitch. he's like a movie star, an olympic swimmer, and amer...
Death is around everyone’s corner, people try to run and hide from it, but it al-ways catches up with them. Like a bad scene from a horror movie. Death stalks you like a lion, waiting for just the right moment to attack. You can run but sooner or l...
This isn't television! This isn't a movie! Giles and Buffy aren't gonna appear and show us how to deal with our wonderful new powers! Some fricking owl isn't gonna come sailing in through your window from Hogwarts! There's no Dumbledore! The Cullens ...
The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Ma...
There were elements of Mad Men at Newsweek, except that unlike the natty advertising types, journalists were notorious slobs and our two- and three-martini lunches were out of the office, not in...Kevin Buckley, who was hired in 1963, described the N...
Many of my readers are women and some of them email me their thoughts about the stories I’ve written. Almost all of them find a delicious pleasure in being totally frightened by the strange and dark side of life. Perhaps it’s because horror books...
Is there a support group for people who didn’t like ‘Brokeback Mountain’? We must, if the rave reviews and the newspaper reports are to be believed, be a very tiny — not to mention vulnerable — minority. Am I dead inside because I didn’t ...
Politics is clearly a not so happening topic in our young blood. I could clearly see many students yawning. Some might have been discussing the new Shakira video amongst themselves, the one shown on MTV these days. Bloody donkeys, if it was a porno m...
I like the trail that the Internet created. For example, I was watching one of those Douglas Sirk movies, and I noticed that Rock Hudson towered over everyone, and I typed in "How tall was" and I saw "How tall was Jesus," and I'm like, "Sure," and ha...
Whose idea was it that we should all get jobs, work faster, work better, race from place to place with our brains stewing on tweets, blogs, and sound bites, on must-see movies, must-do experiences, must-have gadgets, when in the end, all any of us wi...