THE STORY GOES THAT I sucked too avidly at my mother’s breast, and caused an abscess to bloom in the tender flesh of her left nipple. My grandmother, less kind in those days than afterward, disapprove...
Sometimes even lovers of fiction can be satisfied only by the truth. I
Sammy started to pull the covers up over him. Then he stopped and just stood there looking at Tommy, loving him, and feeling the usual spasm of shame that it should be while he was watching the boy sl...
Miracles prove nothing except to those whose faith is bought very cheap, sir.
Le facce dei bambini erano stupite, esitanti. Il lento, triste, oscuro sottomarino che trasportava il carico delle loro vite, era improvvisamente emerso in superficie. Nel loro sangue ora circolava di...
It would please him well enough to amount to no more in the end than a single great organ of detection, reaching into blankness for a clue.
It was the kind of promise a father makes easily and sincerely, knowing at the same time that it will be impossible to keep. The truth of some promises is not as important as whether or not you can be...
I saw that I could write ten thousand more pages of shimmering prose and still be nothing but a blind minotaur stumbling along broken ground, an unsuccessful, overweight ex-wonder boy with a pot habit...
I remember my mother telling me, when she was in the midst of settling my grandfather's estate, that fifty percent of a person's medical expenses are incurred in the last six months of life. My grandf...
He ordered a slice of the house’s excellent Sacher torte and a cup of coffee that was unusually drinkable for New York, and waited.
You need three things to become a successful novelist: talent, luck and discipline. Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to fo...
— Люди, — сказал он, — замечают, только когда им специально об этом скажешь. И снова замечают, только когда им особо напомнишь.
It is not love, but friendship, that truly eludes you.
[His coat] emitted an odor of bus station so desolate that just standing next to him you could feel your luck changing for the worse.
There was a kind of autumnal stain in the air that reminded me of the smell of leather work gloves, a high-school locker room at homecoming, the inside of an ancient canvas tent.
The short story narrates the moment when a dark door, long closed, is opened, when a forgotten error is unwittingly repeated, when the fabric of a life is revealed to have been woven from frail and du...
The little boy had wandered away from his mother, tacking across the grass to the play structure. His mother watched him go, proud, tickled, unaware that every time they toddled away from you, they ca...
The city was new again, and newly dangerous, and I would walk the streets quickly, eyes averted from those of passersby, like a spy in the employ of lust and happiness, carrying the secret deep within...
The candy-colored pavillions and exhibit halls, fitted out with Saturn rings, lightning bolts, shark's fins, golden grilles and honeycombs, the Italian pavillion with its entire facade dissolving in a...
Superheroes spend a lot of time wishing they could just stay home, spend time with their families and loved ones, date the girl they love, be like everybody else.