I had forgotten what fiction was to me as a boy, forgotten what it was like in the library: fiction was an escape from the intolerable, a doorway into impossibly hospitable worlds where things had rules and could be understood; stories had been a way...
We need our children to get onto the reading ladder: anything that they enjoy reading will move them up, rung by rung, into literacy. (Also, do not do what this author did when his 11-year-old daughter was into RL Stine, which is to go and get a copy...
Then, somehow, I got caught up in one of Kevin's World War II books - a book of excerpts from the recollections of concentration camp survivors. Stories of beatings, starvation, filth, disease, torture, every possible degradation. As though the Germa...
Girl from the fifth floor, who feeds the birds every day, climbs up to the water tank and jumps off. I see her body on the road below, and feel absolutely nothing. Maybe because I expect her to get up and walk off. In a story, the birds would have jo...
The Clown turned his powdered face to the mirror. "If to be fair is to be beautiful," he said, "who can compare with me in my white mask?" "Who can compare with him in his white mask?" I asked Death beside me. "Who can compare with me?" said Death, "...
This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the me...
Tessa had lain down beside him and slid her arm beneath his head, and put her head on his chest,listening to the ever-weakening beat of his heart. And in the shadows they'd whispered, reminding each other of the stories only they knew. Of the girl wh...
Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don't believe them. The only thing for cert...
Conflicting stories continue to circulate concerning the death of the President. A second White House announcement has now called attention to the President's schedule for the day, pointing out that no mention is made there of dying. Also released wa...
Jesus was a penniless teacher who wandered about the dusty sun-bit country of Judea, living upon casual gifts of food; yet he is always represented clean, combed, and sleek, in spotless raiment, erect, and with something motionless about him as thoug...
War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to “a war against” whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness ...
Literature is love. I think it went like this: drawings in the cave, sounds in the cave, songs in the cave, songs about us. Later, stories about us. Part of what we always did was have sex and fight about it and break each other’s hearts. I guess t...
When deception cuts this deep someone has to pay. My father's chance to bring justice to the truly guilty was stolen from him. His only option was to forgive. I have others. They say vengence is a dish best served cold but, sometimes it's as warm as ...
As Hamlet said to Ophelia, ”God has given you one face, and you make yourself another." The battle between these two halves of identity...Who we are and who we prebend to be, is unwinnable. "Just as there are two sides to every story, there are two...
I don't want it to end, and so, as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an end to its “problems” because they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and feel sor...
do not only describe your situation, that event, that person, place or that thing. By describing, we limit our thoughts in pondering. We ought to prescribe. The sick describes his illness to the doctor and the doctor prescribes an antidote. We all do...
This may not be art as art commonly goes; the lack of discipline, of control, would seem to rule it out of that category. And yet Woolrich's lack of control over emotions is a crucial element in his work, not only because it intensifies the fragility...
I decided to devote my life to telling my story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the world and anyone who has endured the pain, the isolation and the betrayal of family members.Though I no longer live in silence, I continued to ...
Don’t try to present your art by making other people read or hear or see or touch it; make them feel it. Wear your art like your heart on your sleeve and keep it alive by making people feel a little better. Feel a little lighter. Create art in orde...
There was a knock on the bedroom door. “Matt?” Fuck. “Nope. Silence. “Would you be the owner of the leather pants?” “Yep.” She paused briefly. “I’m going to pass these through the door. You have exactly thirty seconds to pull them o...
A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of; — and yet we learn to re...
