...she thought with pity of all the men and women who were not light-hearted when they loved, who were cold, who were reluctant, who were shy, who imagined that passion and tenderness were two things separate from one another, and not the one, glorio...
All right, you got that out of your system. Can I get back in the boat without you striking me again? Or should I stay out here enjoying the marine life?" "Why don't you swim around until you find a shark? Then you can discuss how much the two of you...
In most couples there is the person who wins and the person who doesn't. The winner isn't necessarily stronger or smarter or righter. The winner is the person who won't give up, and the non-winner ("loser" is not the correct word for the person who d...
Jack didn’t fully get Jesus. Audrey tried to explain it, and he could repeat it back to her, word for word, but he still didn’t comprehend most of it. The best he could gather was that Jesus lived long ago, told people to be nice, and they killed...
You don’t say, “I’m sorry,”’ he says. ‘Getting injections, and experiencing pain, is part of life. There’s no reason to apologize for that.’ He seems to be channelling Rousseau, who said, ‘If by too much care you spare them every ki...
The girl, Gary's girl....would keep bowls of Hershey's Kisses on the coffee table, and she'd decorate the house for all the big holidays and most of the small ones. Probably she'd be class mother, and PTA president, and she'd deliver meals to the eld...
Louis-Cesare and Ray were in trouble. I could tell because I could see them, not clearly, but in fits and starts, little glimmers like a couple of ghosts, if ghosts made "oh shit" faces on the one hand agitated French gestures on the other. And that ...
True friendship is worth more than can be measured, a quality forever to be treasured. True friends will staunchly stand beside each other, as loyally brother shieldeth brother, remaining firm in spite of war and strife, in poverty or sickness, throu...
Writers are solitaries by vocation and necessity. I sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is not as rare as people think, but purpose or vocation, which manifests in part as the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working. Be...
Her laugh was a travesty. Which made sense because in a way, so was his apology. But what was he supposed to say? I want you until I hurt. Until I sweat. I love you with a raw, bleeding need that I've never understood. And all I know for sure is that...
But that was all bravado. Already - how had it come about so quickly - desire had begotten need. A few whispered words (perhaps he didn't mean them) and I was ready to follow. It was worse to think of staying behind, to grind one day upon another. No...
I might appear confident and chatty, but I spend most of my time laughing at jokes I don't find funny, saying things I don't really mean - because at the end of the day that's what we're all trying to do: fit in, one way or another, desperately tryin...
The master and mistress of the house and the rest of the Blood -even the Crux himself- brought our food, poured the wine, did our bidding. The centerpiece was a roasted stag. crowned with gilded antlers and stuffed with songbirds; they had hunted wel...
...do you have someone you can stay with? Hell, stay with your mother. The Pentagon doesn’t have the security system she’s got.” I really rather die. “I’m not putting my mother in the path of a serial killer. Thanks for the thought.” “G...
A good journal entry- like a good song, or sketch, or photograph- ought to break up the habitual and life away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought to be a love letter to the world.
We want our children to have a childhood that's magical and enriched, but I'll bet that your best childhood memories involve something you were thrilled to do by yourself. are childhood's magic words: "I did it myself!
These leaders are like the drug lords who ruled America’s ghettos in the crack age, men (and some women) interested in just two things: staying in power, and hoovering up enough of what’s left of the cash on their blocks to drive around in an Esc...
The new America, instead, is fast becoming a vast ghetto in which all of us, conservatives and progressives, are being bled dry by a relatively tiny oligarchy of extremely clever financial criminals and their castrato henchmen in government, whose jo...
The mistake our politicians so often make with these industry leaders is in thinking they are interested in, or respectful of, the power of government. All they want is to keep stealing. If you can offer them the government’s seal of approval on th...
Imagine that the genome is a book. There are twenty-three chapters, called CHROMOSOMES. Each chapter contains several thousand stories, called GENES. Each story is made up of paragraphs, called EXTONS, which are interrupted by advertisements called I...
It doesn't matter what has happened to you, it matters what you do with what has happened to you. Life is like a poker game. You don't get to choose the cards you are dealt, but it's entirely up to you how to play the hand.
