Looking around, I thought the human species was in fine shape and tried to think of something more beautiful than women and couldn’t come up with a thing. The propagation of the species was a dance of total joy.
I wrote to explain my own life to myself, stories are the vessels I use to interpret the world to myself.
Mama always taught her children that words were pretty, but anyone can talk. She said, pay attention to that man or woman who acted, who did, who performed. She taught us to trust in thing we could see, not that we heard.
Basketball allowed me to revere my father without him knowing what I was up to. I took up basketball as a form of homage and mimicry.
If not for sports, I do not think my father would have ever talked to me.
Because she deserved my tears if anyone on earth ever did. I could feel the tears within me, undiscovered, and untouched in their inland sea. Those tears had been with me always.
Every athlete learns by theft and mimicry.
Men are prisoners of their genitalia and women are the keepers of the keys to paradise.
Those wishing to be successful in the market can’t ignore the boomer numbers, the wealth and spending power they have.
The children of warriors in our country learn the grace and caution that come from a permanent sense of estrangement.
Anyone who knows me well must understand and be sympathetic to my genuine need to be my own greatest hero. It is not a flaw of character; it is a catastrophe.
Do you think that Hemingway knew he was a writer at twenty years old? No, he did not. Or Fitzgerald, or Wolfe. This is a difficult concept to grasp. Hemingway didn’t know he was Ernest Hemingway when he was a young man. Faulkner didn’t know he was William Faulkner. But they had to take the first step. They had to call themselves writers. That is the first revolutionary act a writer has to make. It takes courage. But it’s necessary.
Books are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence. You touch them as they quiver with a divine pleasure. You read them and they fall asleep to happy dreams for the next 10 years. If you do them the favor of understanding them, of taking in their portions of grief and wisdom, then they settle down in contented residence in your heart.
Here’s what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, writers of the world. Make me Muslim, heretic, hermaphrodite. Put me into a crusader’s armor, a cardinal’s vestments. Let me feel the pygmy’s heartbeat, the queen’s breast, the torturer’s pleasure, the Nile’s taste, or the nomad’s thirst. Tell me everything that I must know. Hold nothing back.
Like many men and women who make egregious and irretrievable mistakes with their own children, she would redeem herself by becoming the perfect grandmother.
Love has no weapons; it has no fists. Love does not bruise, nor does it draw blood.
Great words, arranged with cunning and artistry, could change the perceived world for some readers.
I’ve always admired people who give accurate directions, and the tribe is small.
I envy the tireless intimacy of women’s friendship, its lastingness, and its unbendable strength.
A good movie had never once affected me in the same life-changing way a good book could. Books had the power to alter my view of the world forever. A great movie could change my perceptions for a day.