It hides the seams in narrative the way a strip of molding hides the junction where walls and floor meet. And it allows a person to think beyond each new drama, thus moving the story forward and allowing unresolved issues to pile up and increase tension.
What if all our anger and fear is unwarranted? What if world events are unfolding in perfect order to deliver us to a distant joy we can’t conceive of at this time? Please consider that the next ending will be the happy one.
For anything to endure it must be made of either granite or words.
I’ve known fantastic writers who never finished a project. And writers who launched incredible ideas, then never fully executed them.
If Marilyn Monroe was alive right now, what would she be doing?” I say, goodnight. The headliner hangs down in shreds from the ceiling, and Tyler says, “Clawing at the lid of her coffin.
All her life, she never saw a dead person. There was no real sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with. Oh, but now there was dying and death and loss and grief. Weeping and shuddering, terror and remorse. Now that she knows where we’re all going, Marla feels every moment of her life.
These people who need their television or stereo or radio playing all the time. These people so scared of silence. These are my neighbors. These sound-oholics. These quiet-ophobics.
People can’t conceive of a virtue in someone else that they can’t conceive in themselves.
She says that the problem with passive people is that they force you to take action. After that, they hate you for it.
Her hair looks gathered in a field and piled on her head to dry.
Everybody here thinks the whole story is about them. Definitely that goes for everybody in the world.
You’re going up and up and up and not getting anywhere. It’s the illusion of progress. What you want to think is your salvation. What people forget is a.
I’m so horny I have to go downtown and hunt for something to steal. It’s a sexual release. You find what you want. You stalk it. You grab it and make it your own. After you’ve had it, you throw it away.
Still – leave it to an American to take something too far.
It’s that kind of faux wisdom. That kind of Chinese food enlightenment where you know that ten minutes after your head clears, you’ll forget it all.
Since change is constant, you wonder if people crave death because it’s the only way they can get anything really finished. The agent’s yelling that no matter how great you look, your body is just something you wear to accept your Academy Award. Your hand is just so you can hold your Nobel Prize. Your lips are only there for you to air-kiss a talk show host.
Instead of writing about a character, write from within the character.
How many bodybuilders does it take to screw in a lightbulb? It takes four. One bodybuilder to screw in the bulb, and three others to watch and say, “Really, dude, you look huge!
All around us, erosion and insects are just chewing up the world, never mind people and pollution. Everything biodegrades with or without you pushing.
It’s the mark of a very, very young soul,” Mr. Whittier used to say, “to try and fix the world. To try and save anyone from their ration of misery.