Ingrid's skin was the smoothest texture, so pale that it was transparent. I could see the blue veins that ran down her arms, and they made her seem fragile somehow. the way Eric Daniels, my first boyfriend, seemed fragile when I laid my head on his c...
When you're asked to stay out of a bar you don't just punch the owner--you come back with your army and tear the place down, destroy the whole edifice and everything it stands for. No compromise. If a man gets wise, mash his face. If a woman snubs yo...
I love to see those paragliders weaving softly around Moon Point, their legs floating above you in the air. When they drift in for a landing, their feet touch the ground and they trot forward from the continued motion of the glider, which billows dow...
I fell asleep. But later that night I woke up. There was moonlight coming through the window, and shadows of tree branches fell onto the bed, waving gently in the breeze." "And then you saw the ghost?" James laughed. "Dear chap, the branches WERE the...
She sits down and puts her hand to her chest and rocks. Thinks of all she has lost and will lose. All she has had and will have. It seems to her that life is like gathering berries into an apron with a hole. Why do we keep on? Because the berries are...
Writer's block is real. It happens. Some days you sit down at the old typewriter, put your fingers on the keys, and nothing pops into your head. Blanko. Nada. El nothingissimo. What you do when this happens is what separates you from the one-of-these...
A goal of this book has been to tear down in some small part these barriers to understanding by attempting to shatter the “divinity of arithmetic,” through showing that even the methods, which we now take most for granted, were not given to us fr...
Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it really isn't about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe...
Juggling and balancing effectively required that we make clear, legacy-driven choices about what we're trying to keep in the air and how we sequence our movements down the beam. Because the ultimate grade in life is not based on how far and fast we'v...
Then as we passed down this Passage we were knocked against certain Women of the Town, who gave us Eye-language, since there were many Corners and Closets in Bedlam where they would stop and wait for Custom: indeed it was known as a sure Market for L...
But we are not going to talk about that right now, because to talk about it I'll have to think about it, and I've thought it to death over the last year. There are parts of my brain that are still tirelessly thinking about it, about her, an entire re...
I never had what it takes to make a first-rate anything.' 'That's wrong,' she declared. 'Everyone must have one thing that they can excel at. It's just a matter of drawing it out, isn't it?' But school doesn't know how to draw it out. It crushes the ...
was the strangest man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of science. He has been compared to a bursting supernova, illuminating the darkest, most profound corners of mathematics, before being tragically struck down by tuberculosis ...
The pleasure I found in reading books was disconcerting...I felt anxious about every new piece of information. I would latch onto one particular detail and start look for references and other versions of it in other writings. I remembered, for exampl...
Because I'm moved in writing to be irrepressible. Writing to you seems like some holy cause, cause there's not enough female irrepressibility written down. I've fused my silence and repression with the entire female gender's silence and repression. I...
She fished a gum wrapper and pen from her bag and wrote down her number. "I'd like to stay friends with you and Jason. That's my cell number. You can call me any time you want, except at two-thirty-six in the morning." Alice cocked her head. "How com...
Have you ever heard of such a thing as a phone?" I snapped. "You could have called so we knew you weren't dead." My anger bounced off him. "I see my diabolical plan has worked," he observed. "What plan?" I asked with narrow eyes. "Absence makes the h...
I want to grow a flower for every time someone tells me “F*** you.” Then I’ll go back to that person and pin the flower on their lapel in a gesture of friendship. And while they are looking down on it in astonishment, I’ll bunch up my knuckle...
It‘s utterly astounding that every time I get knocked down God’s mercy compassionately raises me to my feet; His grace thoroughly brushes off every trace of assorted filth I accumulated in the fall, His word precisely recalibrates my direction to...
One good thing about New York is that most people function daily while in a low-grade depression. It's not like if you're in Los Angeles, where everyone's so actively working on cheerfulness and mental and physical health that if they sense you're do...
If I was drunk, I wouldn’t be here at all. And really, this is pretty good for four White Russians.” “White what?” I almost sat down but was afraid the chair might dematerialize beneath me. “It’s a drink,” he said. “You’d think I wo...
