Writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.
Time doesn’t fly, it steals. Like some skilled pickpocket or magician, it gets you to look the other way and when you do, it ruthlessly steals your essential things – memories, great moments that end much too soon, the lives of those you love. It knows how to trick you and then steal you blind.
In the end, each of us has only one story to tell. It takes a lifetime to live that story but sometimes less than an hour to tell it. The.
A wish is a dream come true. Since dreams are never clear, they invariably disappoint.
Pilot had never seen this particular ghost before. Head resting on paws, he mildly wondered what it was doing here. Dogs see ghosts about as often as people see cats. They’re there but they’re no big deal.
I’ve noticed most people are at their best during the day, in the light. Night fascinates you with its mystery and potential, but it’s ominous too because things are easily hidden or lost in the dark, especially control. Most species I’ve encountered are powerless there. No matter where that dark is – inside or out – you are all at its mercy. It’s harder to lose things and easier to find them, including yourself, in the light.
When I was younger, I had a girlfriend. She was like a thousand-dollar perfume – unique, gorgeous, but then gone much too soon.
Sometimes happiness is like the sound of a plane overhead. You look up to see it but the plane’s not there. No matter where you look you can’t find it on the sky, although the sound is still there and growing louder. You get a little frantic searching. At the same time you’re thinking, this is stupid. But you keep looking and if you do finally see it, you feel absolved. Most of my life I’d been looking for happiness in the wrong parts of the sky.
Old age arrives like the first days of fall. One afternoon you look up, or smell something in the air, and know instinctively things have changed. I suppose the same thing is true about our own death. Suddenly it’s near enough that we can smell it.
Night keeps its own sounds to itself because most of them come from the other side of silence.
At eight you’re dead serious about what the world owes you: Civilization starts in your own room and moves out from there.
I’d say I’m living, but I’m not alive without you.
Someone made the point somewhere that we must learn to distinguish between the occult and the religious, between magic and true spirituality. The two do sometimes come together – saints do have magical powers, sure, But they don’t exploit these powers, and more important, they consider them only by-products of their real concern, which is spiritual development.
The Angel of Death was nothing special to look at: it had manifested itself today as a plate of someone’s finished meal of bacon and eggs. Egg yolk was smeared across the white plate. Inside this smear were scattered bread crumbs.
Some people are more forgiving when they understand a situation, while others become even more furious once they see the whole picture.
Loving’s not the question – living is. Love builds the house, but then you got to furnish it.
Behind the chain-link fence the skeleton of the structure, floodlit from all sides, looked very much like a rocket ship on its launchpad. The lights, so harsh and intense, refused to admit darkness was behind them, beyond them. But the beams quickly disappeared once they flooded out past the museum and into the Alpine night. You would think so much candlepower could shine well up into the sky, but it can bully the night only so far, which is not far at all.
It’s easy to believe in yourself when you’re lying, because you’re talking about someone else.
I know a lot of artists. The greatest loves of all their lives are their creations. Unfortunately most of us don’t have that kind of talent, so we have to make do with falling in love with real people.
Old age arrives like the first days of fall. One afternoon you look up, or smell something in the air, and know instinctively things have changed.
Sure, he’s an ass, but remember, I have to live in their house. Anyway, that’s how you treat people like that: Make ’em know how dumb they are, and they go away feeling a little less pleased with themselves.