Come awake, Tom. Fathers can willfully hurt their children. They can be addicts too weak to give up their vices, no matter the pain it causes. Mothers can turn you invisible with neglect. They can era...
Besides, things you loved deeply could be lost in a second, and then there was no filling the hole left inside you.
Besides, things you loved deeply could be lost in a second, and then there was no filling the hole left inside you. So she lived in the moment, as if her life were one long party that never had to sto...
Beside her uncle’s picture was his resident permit, which all Chinese were required to carry. To be caught without it could mean prison time or deportation. Ling had been born right there in Chinatown...
Because you don't notice the light without a bit of shadow. Everything has both dark and light. You have to play with it till you get it exactly right.
As one, they leap, laughing, and that is where we leave them - mouths open, arms spread wide, fingers splayed to take in the whole world, bodies flying high in defiance of gravity, as if they will nev...
Any librarian or scholar will tell you: Close is not the same as accurate.
And yet, you're still alone. All that trying and still you stand apart, watching from the other side of the glass. Afraid to have what you truly want because ? So much better to wrap yourself up in th...
And when I wake, the room is white with the morning sun. The light is so bright it hurts my eyes. But I don't dare close them. I won't. Instead, I try to adjust to the dawn, letting the tears fall whe...
And afterward, in the small cabin, they'd do this, this tangle of bodies, this blurring of the edges that kept people distant and lonely.
Ain't that the way of the world, now? Good luck turns bad. Bad luck turns good. Just a big rolling craps game played between this world and the next, and we the dice getting tossed around.
Absence is a curious thing. When friends are absent, they seem to loom ever larger, till the lack of them is all one can feel.
A guy's gotta live, you know, gotta make his way and find his meaning in life and love, and to do that he needs coffee, he needs coffee and coffee and coffee.
We're never prepared for how much we love our children, for how much we wish we could protect them by being perfect.
I am beginning to understand why those ancient women had to hide in caves. Why our parents and teachers and suitors want us to behave properly and predictably. It's not that they want to protect us; i...
Inside everyone was the chance to change the world. It sat like a seed eager to grow into greatness.
My stomach aches a new. blasted inconvenience. What do young men have to mark their entry into adulthood? Trousers, that's what. Fine, new trousers. I despise absolutely everyone just now.
If there’s anything I’m starting to learn about people it’s (a) that they are fundamentally suspicious and afraid of anyone who is different, and (b) that fear makes them do and say asinine things.
Don’t. I don’t know about you, but if I’m gonna be chained to a rock by the gods, I’d rather go out as the person who brought fire back from the mountain than as a pure princess who didn’t have the se...
You see, Mr. Phillips, the truth of it is, I am so very American. She slapped the pen down on the onerous paper and slid them both toward her boss. And that is precisely why I can’t—no, why I refuse t...