The score had stood so long, it had burned into the monitor.
How is it that he gets to do so many things and he never changes? How is it that you have done so little and you change like a second hand on a clock?
She feels very sorry for her mother because people who don’t wake up can’t go downstairs to the bookstore in the morning.
Their happiness is not her unhappiness. Unless it is. What if there is only an equal ratio of happiness to unhappiness in the world at any given time? She should be nicer.
Janine looks at her watch. “Janine looks at her watch,” Daniel says. “She is bored with the old writer.” Janine smiles. “Strike the second sentence. Reader will know. Show, don’t tell.
The failure was in the conception.
It was a fine speech from a putz.
It wasn’t illegal, but it was possibly immoral,” Ruby said. “Maybe it wasn’t immoral, but it was definitely disloyal. Maybe – ” “Never mind, this seems terribly complicated,” said Embeth. “Let’s put a pin in that.
Oh God, the relief felt like oxygen. The relief felt like getting off a plane, after a long winter and a turbulent flight, and finding yourself outside the airport in a tropical clime. The relief was so profound, I felt undone.
Jeanne, who belonged to a book club where no one ever finished the book. Jeanne, whose primary workout was swimming.
She savored the quiet time alone at the podium. Alone, but with people. She looked into the audience, a sea of soft, shapeless neutrals, and she wondered how many of those women loved their husbands as much as she loved Aaron.
I loathe collectible books anyway. People getting all moony over particular paper carcasses. It’s the ideas that matter, man. The words,” Daniel Parish says.
Lambiase is recently divorced. He had married his high school sweetheart, so it took him a long time to realize that she was not, in fact, a sweetheart or a very nice person at all.
All stories – anecdotes, cave paintings, blog posts, book reviews, news articles, songs, poems – are attempts to explain the world to each other and for ourselves.
We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone. My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart.
Maybe an old favorite like Old School by Tobias Wolff, though his time would certainly be better spent on something new.
She was pretty enough but somehow like dough that had not been allowed to rise.
She chose the brassavola, which looked like clusters of delicate calla lilies.
When you figured out Sam’s dead mother’s name, you decided that it was fate, and from that day forward, Sam would be your brother. A name is destiny, if you think it is.
Visto che siamo al mondo, stiamo tutti morendo.