That’s the problem with falling in love. It makes you start talking like a bad country song.
Amazing what we can self-rationalize when we really want something.
There are few times that I feel more at peace, more in tune, more Zen, if you will, than when I force myself to unplug.
Painful memories didn’t just ease back in-they shoved the door open hard, all of them and all at once.
You want this so badly – this second chance, this chance at real redemption – that you can’t see the truth.
The most annoying and full- of- crap thing a writer says is, I write only for myself, I don’t care if anyone reads it. A writer without a reader doesn’t exist.
Doctors kept stressing that mental disease was the same as physical disease. Telling someone who was clinically depressed, for example, to shake it off and get out of the house was tantamount to telling a man with two broken legs to sprint across the room. That was all well and good in theory, but in practice, the stigma continued. Maybe, to be more charitable, it was because you could hide a mental disease.
Every person has hopes and dreams.
But sometimes, maybe most times, it isn’t that clear. It is dark and you are near the edge of a cliff, but you’re moving slowly, not sure which direction you’re heading in. Your steps are tentative but they are still blind in the night. You don’t realize how close you are to the edge, how the soft earth could give away, how you could just slip a bit and suddenly plunge into the dark.
If you want to experience love, then you have to be ready for pain. One doesn’t come without the other. If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t have to worry about losing you. If you want laughter, expect tears.
My great-grandfather, Dad often told us, saved his best wines for special occasions. He was killed when the Nazis invaded Paris. The Nazis ended up drinking his wine. Lesson: you never wait. When I was growing up, we used only the good plates. We used the best linens. We drank out of Waterford crystal. When my father died, his wine cellar was nearly empty.
There should have been a dark whisper in the wind. Or maybe a deep chill in the bone. Something. An ethereal song only Elizabeth or I could hear. A tightness in the air. Some textbook premonition. There are misfortunes we almost expect in life – what happened to my parents, for example – and then there are other dark moments, moments of sudden violence that alter everything. There was my life before the tragedy. There is my life now. The two have very little in common.
Things can always be said later, but things can never be unheard.
I said everyone looks happy. That was kinda my point. If you judge the world by Facebook, you wonder why so many people take Prozac.
Myron remembered something his father once told him: People have an amazing capacity to mess up their own lives.
I’d rather read than relax. I’d rather keep the mind engaged.
They – bliss and fear – are constant companions. Rarely does one venture out without the other.
The humpback never sees the hump on his own back.
War is never a meritocracy for the casualties.
Daisy wore a clingy black dress with a neckline so deep it could tutor philosophy.