I could almost hear the characters inside, murmuring and jostling, impatient for me to open the cover and let them out.
I need a boy who thinks with his big head, not his little one. Since they do not exist, I have fashioned my own.
I play until my fingertips are raw. Until I rip a nail and bleed on the strings. Until my hands hurt so bad I forget my heart does.
Yeah. Sure. My brother’s dead. My mother’s insame. Hey, let’s have a crepe.
Happiness was useless to me. It was heartache that filled my purse. What happy man has need of Shakespeare?
The guitar’s still around me. I slip it off and put it down. I want to feel him. To feel his breath on my neck. The warmth of his skin. To feel something other than sadness. Hold me, I tell him silently. Hold me here. To this place. This life. Make me want you. Want this. Want something. Please.
Because in a small dark room, a broken child lies on a filthy bed and stares up at a high window. He waits for me, too. And I – I who have failed at everything and have failed everyone – I must not, I cannot, I will not fail him.
For the first time in a long time, he didn’t think of the past. And of all the things he’d lost. He thought only of the present, and what he had. And how it was so much more than he deserved. And he prayed then that he would never, ever lose it.
She’s got a big belt around her hips. It has a shiny buckle with PRADA on it, which is Italian for insecure.
It is hope, not despair, that undoes us all.
One expects decent people to stand up for the good of all. Decent people shut their doors and hide behind them as decent people do. Massacres could never happen if it weren’t for decent people.
Every heart is made of stories.
He loves the sparkling fountains and their cascades and says the strangest things as he watches them. they look like stars breaking. Or, They look like Mama’s diamonds. Or, They look like all the souls in heaven.
Airports should all belong to the same country. The country of Crappacia. Or Bleakovania. Or Suckitan.
I’ve always admired your rather formidable will, your refusal to back away from difficulties, but sometimes strength isn’t about perseverance. Sometimes it’s about knowing when to quit.
Be careful what you show the world. You never know when the wolf is watching.
Because just for a few seconds, someone else hurts, too. For just a few seconds, I’m not alone.
It’s only the body that’s gone. Only the body. There’s a part that doesn’t go in the ground, a part that stays inside you forever.
Who needs make-believe monsters when there are so many real ones.
I struggled for a long time to get anything published.