You said, ‘I’m going to leave him because my love for you makes any other life a lie.’ I’ve hidden those words in the lining of my coat. I take them out like a jewel thief when no-one’s watching. They...
You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear?
You might reason that you can easily feed a leopard and that your garden is big enough, but you will know in your dreams at least that no leopard is ever satisfied with what it is given. After nine ni...
Yes. Just pass me my leg will you? It's on top of the wardrobe where he threw it, and I think my right arm is leaning over by the wall. My head is in the gas oven but it will probably be all right, I'...
When the children of Israel left Egypt, they were guided by the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night. For them, this did not seem to be a problem. For me, it was an enormous problem...
When I touch her, my fingers don’t question what she is. My body knows who she is. The strange thing about strangers is that they are unknown and known. There is a pattern to her, a shape I understand...
When I had no books and had to learn everything I needed off by heart, and when I had to hide what books I had, I promised myself a library filled with the best editions I could afford. I have it now....
Whelks are strange and comforting.They have no notion of community life and they breed very quietly.But they have a strong sense of personal dignity.Even lying face down in a tray of vinegar there is...
What you are pursuing is meaning -- a meaningful life. There's the hap -- the fate, the draw that is yours, and it isn't fixed, but changing the course of the stream, or dealing new cards, whichever m...
What is it that you contain?The Dead. Time. Light patterns of millennia. The expanding universe opening in your gut. Are your twenty-three feet of intestines loaded with stars?
Well done, my fine fellow out of my womb. What have you gained? Nothing! And oh, what have you lost? Everything!
We're here, there, not here, not there, swirling like specks of dust, claiming for ourselves the rights of the universe. Being important, being nothing, being caught in lives of our own making that we...
We were all nomads once, and crossed the deserts and the seas on tracks that could not be detected, but were clear to those who knew the way. Since settling down and rooting like trees, but without th...
We gamble with the thought of winning. But it's the thought of what we might lose that excites us.
Unlike him she knew this and sat many hours with her head in her hands, I thought then, to make the words fall out. But the words did not fall out and her feelings hung inside her, preserved.
Two hundred miles from the surface of the earth there is no gravity. The laws of motion are suspended. You could turn somersaults slowly slowly, weight into weightlessness, nowhere to fall. As you lay...
Travellers at least have a choice. Those who set sail know that things will not be the same as at home. Explorers are prepared. But for us, who travel along the blood vessels, who come to the cities o...
To love someone else enough to forget about yourself even for one moment is to be free.
To escape from the weight of the world, I leave my body where it is, in conversation or at dinner, and walk through a series of winding streets to a house standing back from the road.
To borrow against the trust someone has placed in you costs nothing at first. You get away with it, you take a little more and a little more until there is no more to draw on. Oddly, your hands should...