I appreciate a straightforward apology the way a tone-deaf person enjoys a fine piece of music.
Smile, it can’t be that bad! Yeah, actually, it can, jackwad.
Nothing to it but to do it.
It’s an insane, insane crime, a lot of it isn’t going to make sense. That’s why people are so obsessed with these murders. If they made any sense, they wouldn’t really be mysteries, right?
Thirteen years old, I thought to myself, but I felt a spear of admiration for the girl. When I’d been sad, I hurt myself. Amma hurt other people. When I’d wanted attention, I’d submitted myself to boys: Do what you want; just like me. Amma’s sexual offerings seemed a form of aggression. Long skinny legs and slim wrists and high, babied voice, all aimed like a gun. Do what I want; I might like you.
There were a lot of people who deserved a lesson, deserved to really understand, that nothing came easy, that most things were going to go sour.
When we got home, she’d trail off to her room like an unfinished sentence, and I would sit outside with my face pressed against her door and replay the day in my head, searching for clues to what I’d done to displease her.
I was lying in bed thinking about killing myself, a hobby of mine. Indulgent afternoon daydreaming: A shotgun, my mouth, a bang and my head jerking once, twice, blood on the wall. Spatter, splatter.
I can feel a better version of me somewhere in there – hidden behind a liver or attached to a bit of spleen.
I heard you could do that – buy books by the yard, turn them into furniture. People are dumb. I’ll never get over how dumb people are.
He was born to be lonely, that’s what he knew for certain.
Instead of asking yourself what happened, just accept that it happened. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Serenity Prayer.
To me, all that urgent hopefulness was more frightening than if I’d found a pile of skulls with hair still attached.
No parents should see their child die, that such an event is like nature spun backward.
Things might not be great, but things would be okay.
People whispered comfort about Marian being called back to heaven, but my mother would not be distracted from her grief. To this day it remains a hobby.
I had that overwhelming feeling I get when I’m about to give up on a plan, that big rush of air when I realize that my stroke of genius has flaws, and I don’t have the brains or energy to fix them.
Millions of dollars later, and neither of them were happy. Money is wasted on the rich.
What can I say about a man who knows how I think and still sleeps next to me with the lights off?
She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did.