In my house, our parents put us to bed with two simple words: Shut up. That was always the last thing we heard before our lights were turned off. Our artwork did not hang on the refrigerator or anywhe...
If she’d had it her way, we would never have known about the cancer. It was our father’s idea to tell us, and she had fought it, agreeing only when he threatened to tell us himself. Our mother worried...
I would clear the table and Hugh would do the dishes, neither of us speaking and both of us wondering if this just might be the one to do it. 'I hear you guys broke up over a plastic hand,' people wou...
I thought the president-elect’s identity as a despicable human being was something we could all agree on.
I should be used to the way Americans dress when traveling, yet it still manages to amaze me. It’s as if the person next to you had been washing shoe polish off a pig, then suddenly threw down his spo...
I said that Santa no longer traffics in coal. Instead, if you’re bad he comes to your house and steals things.
I had just turned twenty-nine, and honestly, I still didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. Sometimes it felt like life was more a process of elimination than a series of choices.
I don’t know how these couples do it, spend hours each night tucking their kids in, reading them books about misguided kittens or seals who wear uniforms, and then rereading them if the child so order...
I can't promise I'll never kill anyone again, he once said, strapping a refrigerator to his back. It's unrealistic to live your life within such strict parameters
Hugh and I returned to Normandy the following summer, and I resumed my identity as the village idiot. See you again yesterday! I said to the butcher. Ashtray! Bottleneck!
Honestly, though, does choice even come into it? Is it my fault that the good times fade to nothing while the bad ones burn forever bright?
He didn't understand that it's all connected, that one subject leads to another and forms a kind of chain that rises its head and nods like cobra when you're sucking on a bong after three days of no s...
For the first sixteen years we were together, I'd give Hugh chocolates for Valentine's Day, and he'd give me a carton of cigarettes. Both of us got exactly what we wanted, and it couldn't have been ea...
Everyone had taken their places, when I excused myself to visit the bathroom, and there, in the toilet, was the absolute biggest turd I have ever seen in my life - no toilet paper or anything, just th...
Drawing attention to Gretchen's weight was the sort of behavior my mother referred to as 'stirring the turd,' and I did it a lot that summer.
Don't tell me I don't know how to hate,' I wanted to say. Then I stopped and asked myself, 'Do you really want that to be your message? Think you can out-hate me, asshole? I was fucking hating people...
Do you mind if we make this a no-smoking bench? There is no we. Our votes automatically cancel one another out. What she meant was, Do you mind if I make this a no-smoking bench?This woman was wearing...
Dad doesn’t pay attention when you talk to him, so Paul’s taken to throwing the term IRS into his sentences. Then it’s suddenly: Hold on a second, what did you say?
Boston's That is good is Berlin's Das ist gut. It's an excellent way to start and leaves the listener thinking, 'Hey, Ich kann do dis.' :D
Amy adored both the new look and the new person it allowed her to be. Following the photo shoot, she wore her bruises to the dry cleaner and the grocery store. Most people nervously looked away, but o...