Everyone wanted to call her sweetheart. But she only danced for me. That’s how it was. She told me that every other step was just for me.” “But that’s only half of the dance,” I said. “Yeah,” my father said. “She was keeping the rest for herself. Nobody can give everything away. It ain’t healthy.
Nothing ever really happens, you know. Life is infinitesimal and incremental and inconsequential.
I can’t remember how to cry.
Oh, no, no, you’ve got that all wrong. You’re not required to respect elders. After all, most people are idiots, regardless of age. In tribal cultures, we just make sure that elders remain an active part of the culture, even if they’re idiots. Especially if they’re idiots. You can’t just abandon your old people, even if they have nothing intelligent to say. Even if they’re crazy.
Mary was a bright and shining star,” Mr. P said. “And then she faded year by year until you could barely see her anymore.
There’s never enough time to change your life. You don’t get to change your life, period.
And the tombstone will never answer. Because the dead have only the voices we give to them.
My grandmother’s last act on earth was a call for forgiveness, love, and tolerance.
You’re always making up stuff from the past,” she said. “And the stuff you imagine is always better than the stuff that actually happened.
I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I could write “I don’t know” one million times and publish that as my memoir. And, yes, it would be repetitive, experimental, and more metaphor than history, but it would also be emotionally accurate.
If God were good, why would he create Rush Limbaugh?
Imagine Columbus landed in 1492 and some tribe or another drowned him in the ocean. Would Lester FallsApart still be shoplifting in the 7-11?
My sister is running away to get lost, but I am running away because I want to find something. And my parents love me so much that they want to help me. Yeah, Dad is a drunk and Mom is an ex-drunk, but they don’t want their kids to be drunks.
All of these white kids and teachers, who were so suspicious of me when I first arrived, had learned to care about me. Maybe some of them even loved me. And I’d been so suspicious of them. And now I care about a lot of them. And loved a few of them.
But how can I get enough experience if they don’t give me a chance to get experience?
I don’t know if hope is white. But I do know that hope for me is like some mythical creature.
How can we imagine a new language when the language of the enemy keeps our dismembered tongues tied to his belt?
But now I want it to pour. I want it to storm. I want to be clean.
But it wasn’t okay. It was about as far from okay as you can get. If okay was the earth, then I was standing on Jupiter. I don’t know why I said it was okay. For some reason, I was protecting the feelings of the man who had broken my heart yet again.
I am surrounded by people who trust me to be a respectful stranger.