And so he did the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life: he picked up his hat and walked away.
And it's like some tiny nothing that sets off a natural disaster halfway across the world, only this was the opposite of disaster, how by accident she saved me with that thoughtless act of grace, and...
And he isn't crying for her, not for his grandma, he's crying for himself: that he: too, is going to die one day. And before that his friends wil die, and the friends of his friends, and, as time pass...
A place belongs to anyone who has a use for it.
15. WHENEVER I WENT OUT TO PLAY, MY MOTHER WANTED TO KNOW EXACTLY WHERE I WAS GOING TO BEWhen I'd come in, she'd call me into her bedroom, take me in her arms, and cover me with kisses. She'd stroke m...
An average of seventy-four species become extinct every day, which was one good reason but not the only one to hold someone's hand...
. . to survive the dark and often terrifying passage of my life I came to believe certain thing about myself . . . I simply came to believe that one, factual circumstances of my life were almost accid...
You know, sometimes I get the feeling that we're just a bunch of habits, she said. The gestures we repeat over and over, they're just our need to be recognized. Her eyes were fixed on the TV, as if sh...
When we went into the ocean, I watched his body as he dove into the waves, and it gave me a feeling in my stomach that wasn't an ache but something different.
When I was young, I thought that I would live my life as freely as the writers and artists I took as my heroes. But in the end I wasn’t brave enough to resist the current pulling me toward convention.
These things were lost to oblivion like so much about so many who are born and die without anyone ever taking the time to write it all down.
That he liked to think of himself as a philosopher. That he questioned all things, even the most simple, to the extent that when someone passing him on the street raised his hat and said, 'Good day,'...
Tell me, was I the sort of person who took your elbow when cars passed on the street, touched your cheek while you talked, combed your wet hair, stopped by the side of the road in the country to point...
Only now that my son was gone did I realize how much I'd been living for him. When I woke up in the morning it was because he existed, and when I ordered food it was because he existed, and when I wro...
Only after they charged him with the crime of silence did Babel discover how many kinds of silences existed. When he heard music he no longer listened to the notes, but the silences in between. When h...
Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered and everything was possible. A stick could...
It wasn't always like this. There was a time when I imagined my life could happen in another way. It's true that early on I became used to the long hours I spent alone. I discovered that I did not nee...
If you don't know what it feels like to have someone you love put a hand below your bottom rib for the first time, what chance is there for love?
I was never a man of great ambitionI cried too easilyI didn't have a head for scienceWords often failed meWhile others prayed I only moved my lips
I spent the morning reading Ovid. I read differently now, more painstakingly, knowing I am probably revisiting the books I love for the last time.