Linda Hertney: It's like a final goodbye from Todd. (Linda = nut. Once claimed crow on ledge was reincarnation of her dead husband. Said she could telly by way crow's head was cocked disapprovingly at...
Kill every dog, every cat, she said slowly. Kill every mouse, every bird. Kill every fish. Anyone objects, kill them too.
I'm not a bad guy. If only I could stop hoping. If only I could say to my heart: Give up. Be alone forever. There's always opera. There's angel-food cake and neighborhood children caroling, and the lo...
I have plenty of friends, she says.Name one.She looks at me.Which I guess is sort of sweet.
His mind was freshly inclined toward sorrow; toward the fact that the world was full of sorrow; that everyone labored under some burden of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever way one took i...
Anyway, what I really think good writing does: It enlivens that part of us that actually believes we are in this world, right now, and that being here somehow matters. It reawakens the reader to the f...
America is, and always has been, undecided about whether it will be the United States of Tom or the United States of Huck. The United States of Tom looks at misery and says: Hey, I didn't do it. It lo...
A hip-looking teen watches an elderly woman hobble across the street on a walker.Grammy's here! he shouts.He puts some MacAttack Mac&Cheese in the microwave and dons headphones and takes out a video g...
Which maybe that’s what love was: liking someone how he was and doing things to help him get even better.
We pretend to catch and eat more pretend bugs than could ever actually live in one cave. The number of pretend bugs we pretend to catch and eat would in reality basically fill a cave the size of our c...
The best stories proceed from a mysterious truth-seeking impulse that narrative has when revised extensively; they are complex and baffling and ambiguous; they tend to make us slower to act, rather th...
Oh, mansion shmansion. Did Gandhi's house have the largest outdoor trampoline in the tristate area? Did Jesus have a two-acre remote-controlled car track, with mountains to scale and a little village...
Note to future generations: In our time, are such things as credit cards. Company loans money, you pay back at high interest rate. Is nice for when you do not actually have money to do thing you want...
Maybe the God we see, the God who calls the daily shots, is merely a subGod. Maybe there’s a God above this subGod who’s busy for a few God minutes with something else, and will be right back; and whe...
Lightning strikes the slaughterhouse flagpole and the antelope scatter like minnows as the rain begins to fall, and finally, having lost what was to be lost, my torn and black heart rebels, saying eno...
In spite of the strife the stars were bright as crystal.
He never appeared ugly to me, for his face, beaming with boundless kindness and benevolence towards mankind, had the stamp of intellectual beauty.
He is going, he realizes. He is going, and will not be coming back as Brad. He must try at least to retain this feeling of pity. If he can, whoever he becomes will inherit this feeling, and be driven...
Doubt will fester as long as we live. And when one occasion of doubt has been addressed, another and then another will arise in its place.
But hereby resolve to write in this book at least twenty minutes a night. (If discouraged, just think of how much will have been recorded for posterity after one mere year!) (September 5) Oops. Missed...