The other day I was playing Scrabble. I saw that I could close the space in D-E- -Y. I had an N and an F. Which do you think I chose? What was the word I made?
I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because it’s true – nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.
Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn’t good?
I would like to go for a ride with you, have you take me to stand before a river in the dark where hundreds of lightning bugs blink this code in sequence: right here, nowhere else! Right now, never again!
A five-hour flight works out to three days and nights on land, by rail, from sea to shining sea. You can chalk off the hours on the back of the seat ahead. But seventy-some hours will not seem so long to you if you tell yourself first: This is where I am going to be for the rest of my natural life.
He could not wait to get rid of them so he could enjoy remembering them.
There’s no such thing as luck. Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.
I think you would like Warren. He drinks Courvoisier in a Coke can, and has a laugh like you’d find in a cartoon bubble.
I’m not first and foremost interested in story and the what-happens, but I’m interested in who’s telling it and how they’re telling it and the effects of whatever happened on the characters and the people.
Obviously, in journalism, you’re confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it’s in us. It makes things more interesting, a closer call. But journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one.
I had a mother I could only seem to please with verbal accomplishments of some sort or another. She read constantly, so I read constantly. If I used words that might have seemed surprising at a young age, she would recognize that and it would please her.
In my head there’s a broken balcony I fall off of when I speak.
When the beer is gone, so are they – flexing their cars on up the boulevard.
A love affair begins with a fantasy. For instance, that the beloved will always be there.
He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn’t good.
For peace of mind, I will lie about any thing at any time.
I wanted to be a veterinarian, but slipped up when I hit organic chemistry.
The worst of it is over now, and I can’t say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss – you have gone and lost something else.
I thought, my love is so good, why isn’t it calling the same thing back.
I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.