A ball had passed between my body and the right arm which supported him, cutting through the sleeve and passing through his chest from shoulder to shoulder. There was no more to be done for him and I left him to his rest. I have never mended that hol...
I write simply because I hear voices of people in my head who won't give me peace until I convey their stories to the rest of the world. Seriously. They've always been with me. While other girls played with dolls, and my brothers with Hot Wheels, I w...
C. Everett 'Chic' Koop became U.S. Surgeon General under President Reagan. He was a world renowned pediatric surgeon who had a tumultuous Senate confirmation process due to partisanship. Chic took office in January 1982, a time of 'tobacco wars' and ...
There are days when I should be writing, and I am so tired that I can't. And the fatigue also affects my emotions, making me not even care about writing. There are days when I wake up so angry I can barely speak, and also days when I am so sad.
There's so much to argue about. That was the goal with 'Really Really.' Somebody asked me once, 'How should I feel when I leave?' and I said, 'Hopefully, you're talkative.' I don't really care if you're happy or sad or loved it or hated it or hate me...
Reading was my hobby, my sport and my activity of choice. It was the prime pleasure of my days, an unfailing escape from whatever realities were distressing me, and the only source of pride I knew, other vanities lying beyond my grasp. I couldn't do ...
Gym class was, of course, where the strongest, best-looking kids were made captains and chose us spazzes last. More important, it was where the figures of supposed authority allowed them to do so. Forget the work our parents did molding our minds and...
I look for a sense of reality with everything I did. I didn't work in a studio, I didn't light anything. I found a way of working which pleased me because I didn't have to frighten people with heavy equipment. It was that little black box and me and ...
I am not really sure that Diana Vreeland did Yves Saint Laurent a favor, as opposed to the world, by putting that exhibition at the Met in 1983. Because I'm sure that Saint Laurent started looking back at his own work. You see that with artists, don'...
I wish I could view the belly that oozes over the top of my pants as a badge of maternal honor. I do try. I make sure that the women whose looks I admire all have sufficient fat reserves to survive a famine, and I make a lot of snide comments about t...
I think credibility is one of those things that, if you work hard and you get it by standing in the trenches and traveling the world, people realize you're multi-faceted. Part of me is a serious journalist and I loved all of the stuff I did. And then...
Younger women are willing to go out with high status males. If you look at the kind of women Salman Rushdie attracts, they tend to be intelligent, arty types. For her, it's a kudos thing. The man just wants a good-looking girl because he imagines tha...
Film seharusnya menjadi alat untuk meningkatkan solidaritas antar bangsa di dunia, bukan untuk menghancurkannya. Inilah cara yang murah untuk menunjukkan keramahan kepada kami. Tanpa dollar. Sekadar membuat film yang menunjukkan Amerika menyukai kami...
Orang kiri adalah mereka yang menghendaki perubahan kekuasaan kapitalis yang ada, orde imperialistis. Keinginan untuk menyebarkan paham keadilan sosial adalah kiri. Dia tak perlu komunistis. Seseorang yang memiliki idealisme seperti itu adalah seoran...
Lucy Mercedes Martinez, my mother, was probably my first mentor. She really tried to take care of me in spite of myself, and in spite of her own struggles with alcohol. She was an immigrant who had never finished school. But she was also a Renaissanc...
For years I heeded the warning: Do monthly breast self-exams. Like most women, I did them on a 'sort of' basis. Every few months I'd sort of do a quick feel, but never as thoroughly as the doctors urged. I didn't want to go looking for trouble. If yo...
when Whitman wrote, “I sing the body electric” I know what he meant I know what he wanted: to be completely alive every moment in spite of the inevitable. we can’t cheat death but we can make it work so hard that when it does take us it will ha...
Every time I sit down to write, I need to commit to a word count goal, otherwise I waste too much time editing and re-editing my previous work, staring dreamily off into space, pretending that I'm thinking profound, poetic thoughts when really I'm ju...
John Keating: O Captain, my Captain. Who knows where that comes from? Anybody? Not a clue? It's from a poem by Walt Whitman about Mr. Abraham Lincoln. Now in this class you can either call me Mr. Keating, or if you're slightly more daring, O Captain ...
I was never a class clown or anything like that, but I do remember being in the first grade and my teacher, Mr. Chad, told the class one day that we were going to do some exercises. He meant math exercises, but I stood up and started doing jumping ja...
I wake up at 4:15 A.M., get some coffee, turn on the news, see what's happening, go clickety-clack on the web to see what I missed overnight. Then I go to the gym, around 5:15, and I do what appears to be a very light workout, but who cares. I'm soci...