But still, sometimes, in the heart of winter when the light outside seemed yellow- sleepy, like a cat curled up on a sofa...
Because talent won't be quiet, doesn't know how to be quiet, he said. Whether it's a talent for safe-cracking, thought-reading, or dividing ten-digit numbers in your head, it screams to be used. It ne...
Anger is the most useless emotion, Henchick intoned, destructive to the mind and hurtful to the heart.
And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness. And they did live.
And I guess you judge how well you're doing by how well you sleep at night... and what your dreams are like.
Almost everyone can remember losing his or her virginity, and most writers can remember the first book he/she put down thinking: I can do better than this. Hell, I am doing better than this! What coul...
A person who doesn't learn from the past is an idiot, in my estimation.
A child blind from birth doesn't even know he's blind until someone tells him. Even then he has only the most academic idea of what blindness is; only the formerly sighted have a real grip on the thin...
Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.
You think , but you hold out that small hope, see, and that's what fucks you up. That's what kills you.
You said 'God is cruel' the way a person who's lived his whole life on Tahiti might say 'Snow is cold'. You knew, but you didn't understand. He stepped close to David and put his palms on the boy's co...
Yet suppose further. Suppose that all worlds, all universes, met at a single nexus, a single pylon, a Tower. And within it, a stairway, perhaps rising to the Godhead itself. Would you dare climb to th...
What I'm saying is that I'm trying to find rational reasons to explain irrational feelings, and that's neveer a good sign.
Thomas Ross appears to have been something of a rarity: a socially conscious young man.
There's nothing like stories on a windy night when folks have found a warm place in a cold world.
There may be fairies, there may be elves, but God helps those who help themselves.
There is a gulf fixed between those who can sleep and those who cannot. It is one of the greatest divisions of the human race. —Iris Murdoch Nuns and Soldiers
The last good time always comes, and when you see the darkness creeping toward you, you hold on to what was bright and good. You hold on for dear life.
The arts are obsessional, and obsession is dangerous. It's like a knife in the mind. In some cases—Dylan Thomas comes to mind, and Ross Lockridge and Hart Crane and Sylvia Plath—the knife can turn sav...
That’s how you know you’re home, I think, no matter how far you’ve gone from it or how long you’ve been in some other place. Home is where they want you to stay longer.