Then Israel Finch got to his feet and pointed the light at Dolly. He told Tommy to hold her arms, and Tommy roared as if they were the funniest words in his reduced language. Realizing his cut wasn’t...
Of course vindictiveness is an ugly trait and, yes, I do mean to forgive all these nice deserters; I mean, eventually, to say, to their ghosts if not their living faces, It’s all right. I understand....
My sister comes on like a box of nails, but her devotion to the mythic is profound.
It’s possible to perceive what is coming and still be dumbfounded when it happens.
I loved that kite, that cinnamon hound. We were old friends. I had soared and laughed with that kite. It got me out on the perimeter. I felt I had failed it somehow, and rune too, even though he would...
I experienced an unspooling sense of freedom—genuine antagonism is something I’ve rarely encountered, and it felt good to respond with honesty instead of obsequious scraping.
He stood and nodded at the great whitening sky. We’re sure small, wouldn’t you say? Takes the onus off, somehow.
And now, from beneath the audible, came a low reverberation. It came up through the soles of my feet. I stood still while it hummed upward bone by bone. There is no adequate simile. The pulse of the c...
Telegram saying, Existence is great but don’t read so much into it.
You can embark on new and steeper versions of your old sins, you know, and cry tears while doing it that are genuine as any.
Whenever I didn't know what to write next, I put a swift river in front of his horse and sent the two of them across!
We see a newborn moth unwrapping itself and announce, Look, children, a miracle! But let an irreversible wound be knit back to seamlessness? We won't even see it, though we look at it every day.
The firelight had restored his face to healthy color and she, all Frenchbraided, scarf unslung, resembled an opportunity missed by Rembrandt.
Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic.
Someday, you know, we're going to be shown the great ledger of our recorded decisions-a dread concept you nonetheless know in your deepest soul is true.
So thoughtlessly we sling on our destinies.
Sleep that day was a warm pool in which I dove and stayed, sporadically lifting my head to sense the world.
Once in my life I knew a grief so hard I could actually hear it inside, scraping at the lining of my stomach, an audible ache, dredging with hooks as rivers are dredged when someone’s been missing too...
No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here’s what I saw. Here’s how it went. Make of it what you will.
My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed—though ignoring them will change you also.