I think about pinball, and how being a kid’s like being shot up the firing lane and there’s no veering left or right; you’re just sort of propelled. But once you clear the top, like when you’re sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, suddenly there�...
every session I had no fewer than sixteen girls with “allergies” to dairy and wheat—cheese and bread basically—but also to garlic, eggplant, corn, and nuts. They had cleverly developed “allergies,” I believe, to the foods they had seen th...
I know I don't have all the answers about weight loss; this is an evolving challenge, and I know I'll always be learning new things. I don't feel like I've uncovered some big mystery, but I've learned what it takes to overcome being overweight--and t...
In August of 1998, I completed , the sequel to my novel , one of many of my books in which a dog is among the cast of principal characters. Every time I wrote a story that included a canine, my yearning for a dog grew. Readers and critics alike said ...
I read that Monica Seles got stabbed. And although I have nothing against Monica Seles, I'm glad somebody in sports got stabbed. I like the idea of it; it's good entertainment. If we're lucky, it'll spread through sports. And show business, too! Woul...
It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it, even with the best right, but without being OBLIGED to do so, proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. ...
When the earliest Vikings started moving into the northern oceans, there’s one story about finding this huge fuckin opening at the top of the world, this deep whirlpool that’d take you down and in, like a black hole, no way to escape. These days ...
She really liked you, Noah,' 'Yeah, well, maybe I'm just an asshole.' I realize my hand is still in his hair and I retract it quickly. He grabs it, holds it against him. You're not an asshole I'm thinking, but for some reason I can't say it. It would...
Here's one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. It's like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if there's no one around to hear it. You keep d...
Most people don't see half of what's in front of them. Your visual cortex does a shit load of imaging processing before the signal even gets to your brain, whose priorities are still checking the ancestral Savannah for dangerous predators, edible ber...
When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear w...
Causing any damage or harm to one party in order to help another party is not justice, and likewise, attacking all feminine conduct [in order to warn men away from individual women who are deceitful] is contrary to the truth, just as I will show you ...
Micah showed up shortly thereafter and was happy to meet our other “brother.” He shook Adrian’s hand and smiled. “Now I see some family resemblance. I was starting to wonder if Jill was adopted, but you two kind of look like each other.” �...
We do not now stand in the middle; in every aspect of our life we have, deliberately or by the 'conditioning' of birth, education or environment, allowed ourselves to stand on one bank of the river of life, with some intolerance of those who were foo...
I don't switch much, don't really want many people to fuck me, because there's a whole code, unwritten but no less rigid than if it were chiseled in stone, about how Tops Must be, how Butches Must Be, and it does not include taking off one's pants. I...
Dimitri is dead," she said. It was a statement, not a question, but she was looking to me for confirmation. I wondered if I'd given away something, some hint that there was still more to the story. Or maybe she just needed the certainty of those word...
Despite his attractiveness, Sandie couldn’t have been more disappointed. She lamented, thinking that she should have known that it would have just been another stupid cowboy like her father to show up. Still, she couldn’t help but hope that he wo...
I wish I worried about my uncle's opinions, and had problems to work out with my mom. Hell, I'd settle for knowing what her voice sounded like." I put a hand on her shoulder. "Trite but true—you don't know what you have until it's gone. People chan...
She stood up and took the book from him, and as he smiled over his shoulder at some other kids, she threw it away and kicked him as hard as she could in the vicinity of the groin. Well, as you might imagine, Ludwig Schmeikl certainly buckled, and on ...
When Olivier had been taken away Gamache had sat back down and stared at the sack. what could be worse than Chaos, Despair, War? What would even the Mountain flee from? Gamache had given it a lot of thought. What haunted people even, perhaps especial...
Why d’you make me suffer?" “Because I love you.” Now it was his turn to get angry. “No, no, you don’t love me! People in love want happiness, not pain!” “People in love want only love, even at the cost of pain.” “Then you’re makin...
