My circumstances of unrelieved responsibility and permanent distraction necessitated the short story form.
There is in the soul a desire for not thinking.For being still. Coupled with thisa desire to be strict, yes, and rigorous.But the soul is also a smooth son of a bitch,not always trustworthy. And I for...
Sai bene che non sogno.Ma ieri notte ho sognato che assistevamo a un funerale nel mare. All’inizio ero attonito. Poi pieno di rimpianti. Ma tu
I’d like to go out in the front yard and shout something. None of this is worth it! That’s what I’d like people to hear.
Drinking’s funny. When I look back on it, all of our important decisions have been figured out when we were drinking. Even when we talked about having to cut back on drinking, we’d be sitting at the k...
That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.
There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had.
It was [John Gardner's] conviction that if the words in the story were blurred because of the author's insensitivity, carelessness, or sentimentality, then the story suffered from a tremendous handica...
Fear of seeing a police car pull into the drive.Fear of falling asleep at night.Fear of not falling asleep.Fear of the past rising up.Fear of the present taking flight.Fear of the telephone that rings...
Woke up this morning witha terrific urge to lie in bed all dayand read. Fought against it for a minute.Then looked out the window at the rain.And gave over. Put myself entirelyin the keep of this rain...
There is no God, and conversation is a dying art.
The light was draining out of the room, going back through the window where it had come from.
Something’s died in me, she goes. It took a long time for it to do it, but it’s dead. You’ve killed something, just like you’d took an axe to it. Everything is dirt now.
And did you get whatyou wanted from this life, even so?I did.And what did you want?To call myself beloved, to feel myselfbeloved on the earth.
And it ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.
That was in Crescent City, California, up near the Oregon border. I left soon after. But today I was thinking of that place, of Crescent City, and of how I was trying out a new life there with my wife...
Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.
Close your eyes now,' the blind man said to me. I did it. I closed them just like he said.'Are they closed?' he said. 'Don't fudge.''They're closed,' I said.'Keep them that way,' he said. He said, 'Do...
So early it's still almost dark out.I'm near the window with coffee,and the usual early morning stuffthat passes for thought.When I see the boy and his friendwalking up the roadto deliver the newspape...
Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out that his wife was going to pull through, he was still very depressed. Not about the accident, though. I mean, the ac...