Maybe a certain kind of ignorance was the condition. Into the pure nothingness of my non-knowledge something sublime (an event?) beyond (beneath?) consciousness was able to occur.
Last year, when Zora was a freshman, sophomores had seemed altogether a different kind of human: so very definite in their tastes and opinions, in ther loves and ideas. Zora woke up this morning hopef...
It was a garden of abundance and decay: the tomatoes were too ripe, the marijuana too strong, woodlice were hiding under everything.
It was a competition in agony. Like rich women in posh restaurants ordering ever-smaller salads.
In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time.
I knew my mother was in the process of becoming, or trying to become, an intellectual, because my father often threw this term at her as a form of insult during their arguments.
I don't ask myself what did I live for, said Carlene strongly. That is a man's question. I ask whom did I live for.
I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.
I am a citizen as well as an individual soul and one of the things citizenship teaches us, over the long stretch, is that there is no perfectibility in human affairs.
For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.
Faith is hard to achieve, easy to lose.
Don’t give me face! How you be offended? You know! Is truth!
But it’s my sense that no matter how many rooms you have, and however many books and movies and songs declaim the wholesome beauty of family life, the truth is the family is always an event of some vi...
Because this is the other thing about immigrants ('fugees, émigrés, travellers): they cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
Archie’s marriage felt like buying a pair of shoes, taking them home and finding they don’t fit. For the sake of appearances, he put up with them
And were they still like that, she wondered--these new girls, this new generation? Did they still feel one thing and do another? Did they still only want to be wanted? Were they still objects of desir...
A referendum magnifies the worst aspects of an already imperfect system—democracy—channeling a dazzlingly wide variety of issues through a very narrow gate. It has
A lot of women, when they're young, feel they have very good friends, and find later on that friendship is complicated. It's easy to be friends when everyone's 18.
She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.
Although entrapment in this case was only another word for love.