On the plane from Paris I heard a man say, “The first thing I’m going to do when I get home is order a Big Gulp. I’m going to supersize everything!” He said he’d been thirsty the entire time he was in Paris, and though I’d never thought about it, if you’re used to carrying a trash-can-size cup filled with crushed ice and soda, I suppose it would be hard to spend a few weeks in Europe.
Half the people I know have dead animals in their freezers: reptiles, birds, mammals. Is that normal?
It’s not lost on me that I’m so busy recording life, I don’t have time to really live it.
Angels, she said, were God’s way of saying howdy.
I like the kind of man John is. He watches things closely and then does nothing with the information.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve enjoyed silence in an American theater. It’s easy to believe that our audiences spend the day saying nothing, actually saving their voices for the moment the picture begins.
Low ceiling, stone walls, a dirt floor stamped with paw prints. I never go in without announcing myself. ‘Hyaa!’ I yell. ‘Hyaa. Hyaa!’ It’s the sound my father makes when entering his toolshed, the cry of cowboys as they round up dogies, and it suggests a certain degree of authority. Snakes, bats, weasels – it’s time to head up and move on out.
You haven’t lived until you’ve sailed.
Teaching you is like having a cesarean section every day of the week.
Some people, I thought, opening the wet wipes so I could wash the tumor off my hands before I touched my wallet.
Adrienne started teaching a few months ago in Denver and wrote that it leaves you with a constant feeling of deceiving people. That you know nothing they don’t, or couldn’t learn on their own if they cared to.
I realized I was a teacher when I felt warm during class and got up to open the door. Later on there was noise in the hallway, so I got up and shut it. Students can’t open and close the door whenever they feel like it.
A young couple strolls by, the adoration of one bouncing off the tolerance of the other.
When I got back to the apartment, the phone rang. It was Dad, who told me I should try to get work as a model. I told him he was being ridiculous and he said no, he’d just been at the barbershop and saw a GQ magazine with a guy on the cover who looked just like me. So I went to the newsstand and found a copy and the person on the cover was not a model but Gary Oldman.
Today the teacher called me a sadist. I tried to say that was like the pot calling the kettle black but came out with something closer to “That is like a pan saying to a dark pan, ‘You are a pan.
Shopping has nothing to do with money. If you have it, you go to stores and galleries, and if not, you haunt flea markets or Goodwills. Never, though, do you not do it, choosing instead to visit a park or a temple or some cultural institution where they don’t sell things.
Something has changed, and now, when I look at my students, I see only people who are going to eat up my time.
She paused, and I took the opportunity to practice the only promotional skill at my disposal: fluttering my fingers over the telephone’s mouthpiece, I attempted to cast a spell, silently chanting, It’s me who you want. Me, me, me.
Still, there were moments when, against all reason, I thought I might be a genius. These moments were provoked not by any particular accomplishment but by cocaine and crystal methamphetamine – drugs that allow you to lean over a mirror with a straw up your nose, suck up an entire week’s paycheck, and think, “God, I’m smart.
It was one of those situations I often find myself in while traveling. Something’s said by a stranger I’ve been randomly thrown into contact with, and I want to say, “Listen. I’m with you on most of this, but before we continue, I need to know who you voted for in the last election.