He found the building in front of which he had stood in the sun all day waiting to be discharged, in which the crazy doctor had suggested that he stay over another day to let him check that heart again and it had taken precious time to persuade the m...
I had a dream about you. You took a cruise, and I took a canoe. I paddled alongside your ship out into the Atlantic Ocean and down to the Caribbean. I shouted “I love you” the whole way, but you couldn’t hear me, probably because that man you w...
and I said, 'That is why you don't climb mountains, Gwen.' But now I wonder. You aren't afraid of heights." "No", she said. "Not particularly." "Only missteps." She paused midstroke. Did he mean to imply this had been a misstep? "I was afraid," she s...
Novels were not arguments; a story worked, or it didn't, on its own merits. What did it matter if a detail was real or imagined? What mattered was that the detail seemed real, and that it was absolutely the best detail for the circumstance. That wasn...
And for once, Donald Rumsfeld, in the news at the time over the Iraq war made sense to me: "As we know," he said, famously, "there are known knowns-things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns-things we know we don't know. But there ...
But one of the things I have learned during the time I have spent in the United States is an old African American saying: Each one, teach one. I want to believe that I am here to teach one and, more, that there is one here who is meant to teach me. A...
I'll say it: I want to see an ugly woman as a spokeswoman for a women's network. Ugly men are out there all the time – look at Larry King, for God's sake. He looks like someone's talking underwear. Why not give America a spokeswoman who ain't much ...
Language is not law; it is in fact a lot like music. Speech is jazz – first you learn the basic rules, and then you become good enough to improvise all the time. Writing is somewhat more like classical composition, where established forms and condi...
The light of artistic creation is also blinding. The artist can’t see the suffering he causes to those around him. And the’ll never understand the purity of his goal, how the heat of his invention won’t melt the ice in his heart. He must be rut...
My reading list grows exponentially. Every time I read a book, it'll mention three other books I feel I have to read. It's like a particularly relentless series of pop-up ads.
The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Those special people who speak out in such a way as to shake up not only the self-assurance of their enemies, but the complacency of their friends, a...
That chain of relationships made me think of how connections are made--you read a book, you meet a person, you have a single experience, and your life is changed in some way. No act, therefore, however small, should be dismissed or ignored.
There is a power that can be created out of pent-up indignation, courage, and the inspiration of a common cause, and that if enough people put their minds and bodies into that cause, they can win. It is a phenomenon recorded again and against in the ...
Remember Rio de Janeiro, the size of God’s hand, sardines fleshed-open at the market, the way I entered you and moved inside? Looking down, is this the kind of density you can live with? What is the slightness of our bodies to stay, to be good at l...
We live in a time that demands a discourse of both critique and possibility, one that recognizes that without an informed citizenry, collective struggle, and viable social movements, democracy will slip out of our reach and we will arrive at a new st...
The coma carried me into a world where time and space seemed to vanish; it was a dreamlike existence in which people, places, and situations shifted as quickly as thoughts. I had a profound sense of being at a crossroads, a turning point, somewhere b...
I want to open a broken marriage repair shop. I’m not a counselor or psychologist, but I am a fan of the magical bonding that occurs between two people when duct tape binds them together for a long period of time in a dark basement. Refer a friend,...
Raw ingredients trump recipes every time; farmers and ranchers who coax the best from the earth can make any of us appear to be a great cook.
The turning point was when I hit my 30th birthday. I thought, if really want to write, it's time to start. I picked up the book How to Write a Novel in 90 Days. The author said to just write three pages a day, and I figured, I can do this. I never go...
The best compliment came from Knopf's Sonny Mehta. We were at lunch in New York with my editor, Gary Fisketjon, it was my first time meeting Sonny, and after ordering our food, he turned to me and said, 'Adam, I read 'Mr. Peanut' in two days; every p...
I look up to my brother - he inspires me so much. He has always been my best friend. He knows everything. I left the house at 16 when I auditioned for 'American Idol' and he was 14. It was one of those things that was so sudden and neither of us expe...
