Even sleep offered no respite from my mental disorders. There was Nightmare Disorder, which is diagnosed when the sufferer dreams of being "pursued or declared a failure." All my nightmares involve someone chasing me down the street while yelling, "Y...
When you do your research write down whatever interests you. Whatever stimulates your imagination. Whatever seems important. A story is built like a stone wall. Not all the stones will fit. Some will have to be discarded. Some broken and reshaped. Wh...
Thou therefore on these Herbs, and Fruits, and Flow'rs Feed first, on each Beast next, and Fish, and Fowl, No homely morsels, and whatever thing The Scyth of Time mows down, devour unspar'd, Till I in Man residing through the Race, His thoughts, his ...
I'm terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I 'do' anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on 'time's - it doesn't of course. It merely adds the torment of ...
It's funny: one starts off thinking one is shrinkingly sensitive & intelligent & always one down & all the rest of it: then at thirty one finds one is a great clumping brute, incapable of appreciating anything finer than a kiss or a kick, roaring our...
The pre-history of our species is hag-ridden with episodes of nightmarish ignorance and calamity, for which religion used to identify, not just the wrong explanation but the wrong culprit. Human sacrifices were made preeminently in times of epidemics...
My heart broke when he died, split in half and fell down into my stomach or somewhere deep and muddy, and I'm still not sure where it is now. I hear it beating sometimes in my ears, or feel its fast pulse in my neck, like I do now; but in my chest, w...
Writing and reading are the only ways to find your voice. It won't magically burst forth in your poems the next time you sit down to write, or the next; but little by little, as you become aware of more choices and begin to make them -- consciously a...
When Grant Blue reaches me, he bends his head down close enough that I can smell the soap and promise on his skin. Clean living and popularity—It’s quite the aftershave, let me tell you. If I’m being honest, the fact that he even has to bend to...
To crush fear doesn't mean you eliminate it; crushing fear means you literally crush it down into smaller, more manageable parts and tackle one piece at a time.
I imagined/felt their palms sweating, their sweat mingling, mutually fertilized, and dripping to the ground, where it gave birth to a scolopendra, the forked ends of its tail bedecked with the sparkle of drying tears. Their sweat would mingle again a...
For six months I did what women do: I waited. This is what women are taught to be good at. It's said that a woman's life is merely preparation for the primal nine-month wait. Whatever the reason, they do it well. Sometimes they drink or bite their fi...
He looked the Prince up and down, like a hangman taking his measurements. 'Of course there will be a revolution,' he said. 'You are making a nation of Cromwells. But we can go beyond Cromwell, I hope. In fifteen years you tyrants and parasites will b...
And the New York Journal of Commerce, half-playfully, half-seriously, wrote: "Let us go to war. The world has become stale and insipid, the ships ought all to be captured, and the cities battered down, and the world burned up, so that we can start ag...
…words have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled...
Drawing is what you see of the world, truly see...And sometimes what you see is so deep in your head you're not even sure of what you're seeing. But when it's down there on paper, and you look at it, really look, you'll see the way things are...that'...
The family watched It's a Wonderful Life, which is a very beautiful movie and all I could think was why didn't they make a movie about uncle Billy?...Because he was a drunk and fat and lost all that money in the first place. I wanted an angel to come...
I sat down and tried to write a story. "Ian MacArthur is a wonderful sweet fellow who wears glasses and peers out of them with delight." That was the first sentence. The problem was that I just couldn't think of the next one. After cleaning my room t...
He roughly grated out, "Don't run from me. Not now. This is for both of us." He held her thighs apart to force her to continue to accept the powerful thrusts. Changing his angle ever so slightly, he hit that one location that turned her world into a ...
I know this may come as a shock, Jade, but I’m not perfect.” He can’t even say it without laughing. “And neither are you.” I sit up, trying not to laugh. “Hey, I’m totally perfect!” “You’re not.” He lays me back down and drops a...
Ah! but a man cannot be held to write down in cold blood the wild and black thoughts that storm his brain when an uncontrolled passion has battered a breach for them. Yet, unless he sets up as a saint, he need not hate himself for them. He is better ...
