If a writer is to tell his own story - tell it slowly, and as if it were a story about other people - if he is to feel the power of the story rise up inside him, if he is to sit down at a table and patiently give himself over to this art - this craft...
When she broke up with me, I didn’t break down or break in to her apartment just to break out of my funk. I didn’t break any dishes either, but I did break dance.
Do you ever see a man who struts around altogether too large to notice an ordinary working mechanic? Do you think he is great? He is nothing but a puffed-up balloon, held down by his big feet. There is no greatness there.
Don't be polite. Bite in. Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that may run down your chin. It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are. You do not need a knife or fork or spoon. For there is no core or stem or rind or pit or seed or skin t...
I was looking for a job, david. I was walking up and down that bloody street and I had gone into a lot of stores. I remember I was really cold and it was really windy and then Ijust found myself standing on the top step. Then I went in, nothing speci...
Life is like the stock market. Some days you're up. Some days you're down. And some days you feel like something the bull left behind.
Self abandoned, relaxed and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, I felt the torrent come; to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength.
I looked her up and down. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. I didn’t recognize her anymore. She was nothing like the image of her I had in my head. Her features meant nothing to me; she was someone else.
And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us of time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing - until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return.
Rosy waited as long as she dared then sat forward and let her eye rove Franny’s lounge, up and down the shelves, looking for something, not even sure she could bring herself to act if she saw it again, already convinced this was her worst ever idea
Ever since the robot was first invented, there have been people who swear up and down that this marks the first step towards the fall of man … To be fair, their arguments are backed with scientific fact taken from documentary films such as The Term...
I have a hidden talent. I hid it in the dungeon. Why don’t you go down there and have a look at it? I’ll lock up after you.
It’s like losing gravity and falling into space – the moment of pitching headlong when the endlessness of space asserts itself and there is no more down, only an eternity of up, and you realize you can fall forever and never run out of stars.
Don't wear anything under this. I want to be on that stage, looking down at you, and knowing that you're bare underneath. Knowing that I could walk up behind you if I wanted and within just a matter of seconds, be lodged deep inside you.
Winner: Getting up more times than life knocks you down
What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won't even stand close to the blade. I'm one of those. We don't bend anything.
Just an observation: it is impossible to be both grateful and depressed. Those with a grateful mindset tend to see the message in the mess. And even though life may knock them down, the grateful find reasons, if even small ones, to get up.
Sydney sighed and stood up, smoothing her rumpled clothes with dismay. 'I need a coffee shop or something.' 'I think I saw one in a cave down the road,' I said. That almost got a smile from her.
Nobody showed up to my wedding, even though I sent out 50 invitations. The problem was 49 of the people were dead when I sent them out, and the 50th person died shortly after I tracked him down.
The world is swirling with so many mysteries and secrets that nobody will ever track down all of them. But with a book you can stay up very late, reading until all the secrets are clear to you. The questions of the world are hidden forever, but the a...
Their notion of training was to march the men up and down in parades and reviews: these were nice to look at and gave them the impression of military discipline and precision, but as a preparation for a modern war they had no value whatsoever.
