Like most lit nerds, I'm a voracious reader. I never got enough poetry under my belt growing up but I do read it - some of my favorites, Gina Franco and Angela Shaw and Cornelius Eady and Kevin Young, remind me daily that unless the words sing and da...
The things that I have said when I was young and curious about whatever the subject matter was, I respect those - those are growing pains. Even if you make mistakes, I go back to those things, my not-so-great moments because those are my truest momen...
Which is - you know, like check it out, I'm pretty young, I'm only about 40 years old. I still have maybe another four decades of work left in me. And it's exceedingly likely that anything I write from this point forward is going to be judged by the ...
Bernadette: We've only recently discovered that young Anthony here, bats for both teams. Mitzi: I do not! Felicia: Oh, so we're straight? Mitzi: No. Felicia: Oh, we're not. So we're a donut puncher, after all? Mitzi: No. Felicia: Then what the hell a...
[Susan is stealing David's car from the golf course] Susan Vance: Now, don't lose your temper. David Huxley: My dear young lady, I'm not losing my temper. I'm merely trying to play some golf! Susan Vance: Well you choose the funniest places; this is ...
[Lorraine's parents are talking about Marty McFly, Lorraine's future son] Stella Baines: He's a very strange young man. Sam Baines: He's an idiot. Comes from upbringing. His parents are probably idiots, too. Lorraine, you ever have a kid who acts tha...
Amos Calloway: I haven't seen a customer this depressed since the elephant sat on that farmer's wife! Amos Calloway: [laughs, beat] Amos Calloway: Depressed? [Karl laughs] Amos Calloway: See, the big guy likes it. Young Ed Bloom: I just saw the woman...
I just wanted to be who I was, which was like so many other girls I knew. We grew up in the city, had a hard edge and obstacles to overcome, but we were still young and beautiful. I didn't want to be all dressed up, all made up - I wanted to be mysel...
Especially for upwardly mobile young females, declaring one's enthusiasm for Austen (whose heroines almost always move up in social and economic status as a result of the sterling marital alliances they form) has been a classic means of indicating on...
O friend unseen, unborn, unknown, Student of our sweet English tongue, Read out my words at night, alone: I was a poet, I was young. Since I can never see your face, And never shake you by the hand, I send my soul through time and space To greet you....
There are so many steps you have to go through to reach a high level, so you're kind of building your own, I would say, mountain. You have to go piece by piece by piece. When you're young and really ambitious, you want to jump right up. It kind of te...
When you're a teenager, everything seems like the end of the world, and I don't think that's necessarily a silly thing. You're waking up and becoming aware that the world has problems and those problems affect you, whereas when you're young they don'...
I was raised in Harlem. I never found a book that took place in Harlem. I never had a church like mine in a book. I never had people like the people I knew. People who could not find their lives in books and celebrated felt bad about themselves. I ne...
... I was perturbed by the suspicion that the anguish of love contemned was alloyed in her broken heart with the pangs, sordid in my young mind, of wounded vanity. I had not yet learnt how contradictory is human nature; I did not know how much pose t...
When I was young, I used to hear people say, 'He's a golden boy. Look at that guy. Can you imagine what he's going to be like when he grows up?' Well, I unfortunately bought into that. And I hadn't even found myself. Quite honestly, I was running fro...
I haven't changed. I'm the same slob I was during the campaign. I don't take myself seriously, but I think my work is important. I see myself as this relatively young guy who met an unusual man early in his career and stuck with him. We don't go arou...
But people didn't have to pay as much attention to the awful truth. As the living legend of the cruel tyrant in the city and the gentle holy man in the jungle grew, so, too, did the happiness of the people grow. They were all employed full time as ac...
He’d had to fold his long legs into his desk. His boots had seen better days, and his jeans unraveled in a curiously irresistible way at the bottom. He didn’t look like anyone I’d ever seen before. He reminded me of an actor in an old Western�...
Sometimes in the afternoon sky the moon would pass white as a cloud, furtive, lusterless, like an actress who does not have to perform yet and who, from the audience, in street clothes, watches the other actors for a moment, making herself inconspicu...
It seemed like it was always autumn in this field - it was fitting really. Everything was shaded with the bronzes and yellows of faded pictures from an old photo album, it was a realm where uncomfortable nostalgia reigned. I noticed it more after my ...
According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been lef...
