Where were all the people I loved? I could feel them, flung about, the distance between us a crushing weight that I myself had put there.
The mania had given her a reckless invincibility, as drinking used to give me, a reckless certainty that she could, and should, get what she wanted at any cost. And
Such a terrible word, terminate. A word from a brave new world in which only the flawless are allowed to be born.
She moved across the pool deck with a languor, an unabashed sexual energy that made me feel like I was watching porn.
I came face-to-face with the unwelcome finality of death. What can you do with it? It stops you cold when you think of it; it leaves you no out.
Children will end up a world away, whether you want them to or not—unaware of the havoc being wreaked upon their histories back home.
A moment’s friction for a life in which I would never again be free of my own body.
[we] made love, though it was a stretch to call it that. I was making love, I think; he was taking what I made.
To LAY. To lie. A lay. A lie. It's a versatile but tricky word, isn't it? To get the lay of the land. To lay down the law. To lay blame. To lie low. To lie down on the job. To let it lie. To lie down...
They say the human body can lose 50 percent of its body parts and survive. But it depends on which parts, and which body.
TO LAY. To lie. A lay. A lie. It’s a versatile but tricky word, isn’t it? To get the lay of the land. To lay down the law. To lay blame. To lie low. To lie down on the job. To let it lie. To lie down...
Perhaps blame is the way the universe organizes itself around tragedy and loss. Without blame, suffering is random, and that kind of randomness leads to madness
I suppose unrequited love is the hardest kind to shed because it is not really love at all. It is a half-love, and we are forever stomping around trying to get hold of the other half. W
I hoped until it hurt. I hoped so hard I felt it finally turn to prayer.
How can I be certain I’m not manufacturing a memory to match the evidence? You can’t rely on memory. You can’t rely on ancient artifacts, either, to tell you a story you can live with. You can rely on...
Hope doesn’t like to be beaten down, though, does it? Hope is what gets us through. Hope, and the prayer it wants to become.
At nine, she had begun to see a truer picture of me than Polly could. She had begun to see what I saw—not beauty, but imperfections. I let her pull away from me.
The photo is there in the hatbox, evidence that all the people I love best in the world were once in the same house, at the same time, healthy and whole, celebrating the season together.
Somebody said—some poet, I can’t remember which one—that unrequited love is the best kind. But I can tell you with certainty, Robbie, that the other kind of love, the kind I received from your father...
Of course it is upon the rubble of ancient history that the present stands. L