There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.
There's something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you're still alive.
There were a few other moves of his father's he could do without as well - the sucker punches, the ruffling of the hair, the way of pronouncing the word son, in a slightly deeper voice. This hearty wa...
There was always that shadowy twin, thin when i was fat, fat when i was thin, myself in silvery narrative...
There was always an element of melancholy involved in sex. After his indiscriminate adolescence he'd preferred sad women, delicate and breakable, women who'd been messed up and who needed him.
There is only so much manpower and tax revenue that can be devoted to riot control, to social surveillance, to chasing fast youths down dark alleyways, to fire-hosing and pepper-spraying suspicious-lo...
There is never only one, of anyone
There is a Do this or Do that with God, but not any Because.
There I am, in the Grade Six class picture, smiling broadly. , is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hardshelled, firmly closed.
Then we had the irises, rising beautiful and cool on their tall stalks, like blown glass, like pastel water momentarily frozen in a splash, light blue, light mauve, and the darker ones, velvet and pur...
Then she lent me her red flannel petticoat until I should get one of my own, and showed me how to fold and pin the cloths, and said hat some called it Eve's curse but she thought that was stupid, and...
Then I find I'm not ashamed after all. I enjoy the power; power of a dog bone, passive but there.
Their youth is touching, but I know I can't be deceived by it. The young ones are often the most dangerous, the most fanatical, the jumpiest with their guns. They haven't yet learned about existence t...
Their youngness is terrifying. How could I have put myself into the hands of such inexperience?
The tension between her lack of control and her attempt to suppress it is horrible. It's like a fart in church.
The temptation is to stay inside; to subside into the kind of recluse whom neighborhood children regard with derision and little awe; to let the hedges and weeds grow up, to allow the doors to rust sh...
The question about the page is: what is beneath it? It seems to have only two dimensions, you can pick it up and turn it over and the back is the same as the front. Nothing, you say, disappointed.But...
The prospect of his future life stretched before him like a sentence; not a prison sentence, but a long-winded sentence with a lot of unnecessary subordinate clauses,
The pen between my fingers is sensuous, alive almost, I can feel its power, the power of the words it contains.
The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself...