WHEN ISHMAEL WOKE, the walls of his trench were seeping water and the dawn was colder than it should have been, the sky an unnatural and ubiquitous pale color that had less to do with the rising of th...
Varina was breathing hard through her nose, her face pinched, not unlike a child’s. You don’t know how mad you can make people, she said. I had tender feelings for you once, whether you knew it or not...
Unfortunately, at a certain age, wanting something you can’t be or wanting what you can’t have can become a way of life.
Tomorrow has no more existence than yesterday, but you can always control now. We live in a series of nows. Think about now.
There are events you witness, or in which you participate, that forever remain sacrosanct and inviolate in memory, no matter how painful that memory is, because of the cost that you or others paid in...
The false dawn, with its illusions and mist-wrapped softness, can be as inadequate and fleeting as Morpheus’ gifts. CHAPTER 2 The days became warmer the first week in April, and on some mornings I wen...
The band played La Jolie Blon a second time. For me, there is no more haunting ballad in the world. Its origins go back to the eighteenth century, but the rendition by Harry Choates is the one that ne...
If you have attended the dying, you know what their last moments are like. They anticipate the separation of themselves from the world of the living before you do, and they accept it with dignity and...
I told myself I did not have to live as I once did. I did not have to re-create the violent moments that used to come aborning like a sulfurous match flaring off a thumbnail.
Get a lot of gone between you and this situation.
Coincidence is your Higher Power acting with anonymity.
But as William Faulkner said, and as I was about to learn, the past is not only still with us, the past is not even the past. The warning call from Wally,
But a line sergeant told me something I never forgot. ‘Don’t think about it before it happens, and don’t think about it when it’s over.
Bienvenu, mon raton laveur et votre tee amis, aussi.
Barbara Shanahan, sometimes known as Battering Ram Shanahan. She was over six feet tall and had freckles and wore her light red hair cut short and wore a blue suit with white hose. She worked hard and...
Baptized Christians ran the ovens in the camps.
As with all megalomaniacs, he had no handles. He was the type of man the Spanish call sin dios, sin verguenza, without God or shame.
Alcoholism is not a disease here but a venerated family heirloom.
These thoughts robbed the light from my eyes,
No matter what the other side does to you, you grin and walk through the cannon smoke. It drives them crazy.