He defined himself almost wholly in the negative: It was not who he was, it was who he was not.
Dead … might not be quiet at all.
A moment later, all of the men at the party, stupefied by the way the hooker had gone banshee,
The plain unvarnished reality that we cannot escape who we are and most of the time we die as we lived.
We have on earth exactly the amount of time that has been allotted to us, no more and no less. We really have precious little control.
Quid pro quo,
Are an Armenian, says the Turk with the handgun. I am. Where are you going? Damascus. Why? My sister lives there. What do you do? I’m an engineer. I’m working on the Baghdad Railway—the spur from Alep...
You know the type—will give herself to the first nobleman in a uniform who comes calling with a couple of eggs and a piece of rat meat.You’re selling yourself short.I’ve just sold myself for rat meat,...
We always have choices. Isn’t that what Dante teaches us?
Tsunamis. School shootings. Syria. We watch it, we read about it, and then we move on. As a species, we're either very resilient or super callous. I don't know which.
Too often we presume that the unexpected strangers in our lives bode ill,or we are skeptical of their designs.We think we know more.And while I am well aware that there is indeed all manner of malevol...
Those who participate in a genocide as well as those who merely look away rarely volunteer much in the way of anecdote or observation. Same with the heroic and the righteous. Usually it's only the sur...
The message, if you think about it this way, is all about taking chances because fate or destiny or God will protect you. Take a risk, have a little faith. It’s all about life, not death.
The honest answer is more complex. On some level I was sent. Or inspired. Or called. But my calling, such as it was, wasn't a single booming invitation from above (really, is it ever?)...
Sometimes I believe we would all be better off if we always treated people like this was the last time we were ever going to see them
She talks and talks because whenever she is silent she finds herself looking at him and her breath grows a little short.
She did it because it was, like so much else that made her happy, dangerous and self-destructive and just a little bit sick.
Serafina may think I’m a crazy person, but I’m not. She has her scars, too—and not only the ones I saw when she turned her head and her hair fell aside. We are both living out our lives in a Purgatori...
Remember that person you wanted to be? There’s still time. She wanted to believe that; she wanted to believe it almost desperately. She wanted to be different from what she was—to be anything but what...
My presence scared them. I reminded them of the one thing in the world we want most to forget.