Everybody sounds stoned, because they’re e-mailing people the whole time they’re talking to you.
I think, The world is actually huge. That’s the part no one can really explain.
Redemption, transformation – God how she wanted these things. Every day, every minute. Didn’t everyone?
A frenzy of activity that had mostly led him in circles: wasn’t that a fairly accurate description of lust?
You can do it alone. But it’s going to be so much harder.
Now there are permanent gray smudges in Scotty’s vision. He says he likes them – actually, what he says is: “I consider them a visual enhancement.” We think they remind him of his mom.
This vision tumbled over Phoebe with the force of revelation: she would stand somewhere and look back, she would live a life.
They sat in silence. Feathers, Phoebe thought, searching in vain for some moment of her own that could rival the beauty and mystery of Faith’s act. She felt a disappointment so familiar it was almost a comfort.
And see those metaphors ‘up front’ and ‘out in the open’ are part of a system we call atavistic purism. AP implies the existence of an ethically perfect state which not only doesn’t exist and never existed but it’s usually used to shore up the prejudices of whoever’s making the judgments.
We’re the survivors. Not everyone is. But we are.
Time’s a goon right? Isn’t that the expression?
They must have looked like traveling companions, Phoebe thought, possibly even a couple. She noticed her voice leaning into laughter, how she tossed her head, each tiny gesture like the sweet ache of a muscle craving exercise.
Read at the level at which you want to write. Reading is the nourishment that feeds the kind of writing you want to do.
A sense of that kind of narrative movement that we experience online could have been in my mind easily, though not consciously. I do rely so much on my unconscious, the way I write my stuff the way I do. I let my unconscious work. I have better ideas that way and more interesting work.
The answers were maddeningly absent – it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.
I guess in my own life, privacy, anonymity, and the mystery of being lost are important. I also feel that people are mysterious and complex no matter what they do, and no matter how hard they try to reveal their own mystery.
The sky was electric blue above the trees but the yard felt dark. Stephanie went to the edge of the lawn and sat her forehead on her knees. The grass and soil were still warm from the day. She wanted to cry but she couldn’t. The feeling was too deep.
Everyone we’ve lost, we’ll find. Or they’ll find us.
There’s something very strange about associating me with that prize. I had hoped for it in a more directed way as a journalist. Somehow as a journalist you know there are Pulitzers out there and you can work hard and get one. To win it for Fiction seems unbelievable.
I am at my worst trying to write about things that overlap with my life.