Forrest Gump: Those must be comfortable shoes, I bet you could walk all day in shoes like those and not feel a thing. Nurse at Park Bench: My feet hurt. Forrest Gump: My momma always said you can tell a lot about a person by their shoes, where they g...
Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks obl...
It is a well-worn truth that cops grow callous, a cliché so tattered that it is even common on television. All cops face things every day that are so gruesome, brutal, and bizarre that no normal human being could deal with them on a daily basis and ...
Isn’t it weird?” he said, glancing up as I measured salt. “All the variety that life offers? Here we sit, me reading expressions of creativity.” He held up the poetry book, which to my dismay, was now worn and dog-eared. “And you doing scie...
One swing set, well worn but structurally sound, seeks new home. Make memories with your kid or kids so that someday he or she or they will look into the backyard and feel the ache of sentimentality as desperately as I did this afternoon. It's all fr...
She had never driven far alone before. The notion of dividing her lovely journey into miles and hours was silly; she saw it [...] as a passage of moments, each one new, carrying her along with them, taking her down a path of incredible novelty to a n...
(On differences between men and boys) Men know what they want. Men make concrete plans. Men own alarm clocks. Men sleep on a mattress that isn't on the floor. Men tip generously. Men buy new shampoo instead of adding water to a nearly empty bottle of...
It was the same Dimitri from long ago, the fierce one who was willing to risk his life for what was right. I almost wished he'd go back to being annoying, distant Dimitri, the one who told me to stay away. Seeing him now brought back too many memorie...
As a youth, I listened to the rain from the bowers of pleasure houses, Red silk drapes translucent in the glow of candlelight. In my prime, I listened to the rain as a traveler, The sky low, the river broad, the calls of the wild geese harsh and cold...
When you have been with your partner for so many years, they become the glove compartment map that you've worn dog-eared and white-creased, the trail you recogonize so well you could draw it by heart and for this very reason keep it with you on journ...
He’s as tense as I am, maybe even more so, but it’s so hard to reconcile that with the serenity of weightlessness. His faux-blond hair is floating out away from his head. He’s wearing a worn, much-mended, and too-large shirt his friend in town ...
I walked back to the window to look down at the people who shared this city with me. The people who made every day a series of mediocrities. The unreformed murderers masquerading as businessmen in borrowed suits and debt-laden cars. The voluptuous bi...
You can't put your heart into everything; you've just got to show up. And if your heart is worn all over you, then so be it, but you can't pull it out of you and put it in places, or put it in people's hands. Because you are like this wild and quiet ...
Enough! we're tired, my heart and I. We sit beside the headstone thus, And wish that name were carved for us. The moss reprints more tenderly The hard types of the mason's knife, As Heaven's sweet life renews earth's life With which we're tired, my h...
It was a fossilized path: the will which had cut this gash out of these solitary places so that the blood and sap would flow there was long since dead - and dead too were the circumstances which had guided this will. A whitish and indurated scar rema...
At least if you don’t ask, I don’t have to lie. I’ve spent most of the past few months asleep on the bathroom floor; sick of keeping everything in, too tired to let it out. “Home” is such an empty word. I’m not sure why it felt whole comi...
By now it was too late to call St. Jude. He chose an out-of-the-way patch of airport carpeting and lay it down to sleep. He didn't understand what had happened to him. He felt like a piece of paper that had once had coherent writing on it but had bee...
There are different ways people make this place. Sweat, exercise and pain is one way. You can see them in the gyms, in the well-ordered swimming pools. You can see them jogging in the small, worn parks. Another way to make your place is TV. A bright,...
Pausing on the threshold, he looked in, conscious not so much of the few familiar sticks of furniture - the trucklebed, the worn strip of Brussels carpet, the chipped blue-banded ewer and basin, the framed illuminated texts on the walls - as of a per...
A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit, Dumb As old medallions to the thumb, Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown— A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds. A poem should be motionless in...
Her heart sprang up into her throat. Watching that shadow play was like paying a quarter for a peep show. Only she got it for free. He thinks I'm pretty. Butterflies did a dance around her heart before she could swat them away. Behind the shade. his ...
