No matter what she was doing-baking cookies, walking around the lake on a beautiful day, making love to her husband-she felt rushed and jittery, as if the last few grains of sand were at that very mom...
I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.
Next time she’d have to ask him to keep the light on while he did it, so she could watch his face. That was the best part of the whole thing as far as she was concerned, the way a guy’s face contorted...
And right now he was feeling the weight of all those losses, and the weight of the years that were behind him, and the weight of the ones that were still ahead, however many there might be – three or...
They both seemed to understand that describing it was beyond their powers, the gratitude that spreads through your body when a burden gets lifted, and the sense of homecoming that follows, when you su...
I'd come to think of sex as this long dark tunnel that turns friends into strangers, strangers into friends.
Today was the dance contest, the one where Squidward takes over Spongebob's body...During the competition, Squidward gets a cramp and Spongebob's body ends up writhing on the floor in agony. The audie...
I’m only human, she told herself. There’s not enough room in my heart for everyone.
It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.
Was it possible that they’d crossed without realizing it, each one rounding the corner of the aisle the other one had just vacated at exactly the same time?
She was the kind of woman who always surprised you with the realization that she was just as lovely as you remembered, though it hardly seemed possible in her absence.
Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.
Back then, when everybody thought the world would last forever, nobody had time for anything.
All she knew was that she’d inflicted pain on someone she cared about, and that always cost you something, even if you were just doing your job. It left you feeling dirty and mean, exposed to the laws...
When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher,' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture.
She remained unreconciled to the loss of her electric toothbrush. She’d pined for it for weeks before realizing that it was more than the sensation of a clean mouth that she missed—it was her marriage...
Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.
It was surprisingly crowded, a bunch of middle-aged people, mostly women, moving enthusiastically, if a bit awkwardly, to Prince’s Little Red Corvette, trying to find a way back to their younger, more...
The chance to leave your old self behind. To take all your mistakes and regrets and erase them from the story. Who wouldn’t want that?
Your poor lungs. We’re not gonna live long enough to get cancer. The Bible says there’s just seven years of Tribulation after the Rapture.