Time and chance. The twin offspring of destiny. That wondrous branching of our fates.
I don't know how to get things started... It's like there's this great big wheel I've got to start rolling only I don't seem to have the muscles to get it going.
How does a poet know when a poem is ended? Because it lies flat, taut; nothing can be added or subtracted. How does a woman know when a marriage is over? Because of the way her life suddenly shears of...
It is miracle enough to find that love lies in his grasp, that it can be spoken aloud, that he, so diffident, so slow, so thwarted by the poverty of his own beginnings, is able to put into words the f...
When we think of the past we tend to assume that people were simpler in their functions, and shaped by forces that were primary and irreducible. We take for granted that our forbears were imbued with...
What I'd like is a lobotomy, a clean job, the top of my head neatly sawn off and designated contents removed.
It has never been easy for me to understand the obliteration of time, to accept, as others seem to do, the swelling and corresponding shrinkage of seasons or the conscious acceptance that one year has...
There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.
In one day I had altered my life; my life, therefore, was alterable. This simple axiom did not call out for exegesis; no, it entered my bloodstream directly, as powerful as heroin. I could feel it pum...
Dreaming her way backward in time, resurrecting images, the young girl realized, with wonder, that the absent are always present, that you don't make them go away simply because you get on a train and...
I presented him with an African violet, which I saw as symbolically useful, though I’m not sure the others understood the subtleties. (African violets must be watered from the bottom, not the top, and...
He was discomfited to see how easily men (and women as well) stepped from the train to station platform, from platform to train – with ease, with levity, laughing and talking and greeting each other a...
A glance can both submit and subvert; it can be sharp or shy, scornful or adoring; it can be a near cousin to scrutiny – but it almost always assumes a degree of mutually encoded knowledge. A spark is...
…it's occurred to her that there are millions, billions, of other men and women in the world who wake up early in their separate beds, greedy for the substance of their own lives, but obliged every da...
Why should men be allowed to strut under the privilege of their life adventures, wearing them like a breast full of medals, while women went all gray and silent beneath the weight of theirs?
This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.
Question your assumptions, be kind to yourself, live for the moment, loosen up, pray, scream, curse the world, count your blessings, just let go, just be.
Nothing matters except for the harvest, the gathering in, the adding up, the bringing together, the whole story, the way it happens and happens and goes on happening.(from Collision)
Love is not, anywhere, taken seriously. It's not respected. It's the one thing in the world everyone wants, but for some reason people are obliged to pretend that love is trifling and foolish.
It's the arrangement of events which makes the stories. It's throwing away, compressing, underlining. Hindsight can give structure to anything, but you have to be able to see it. Breathing, waking and...