I assemble stories-me and a hundred million other people-at the sentence level. Not by coming up with a sweeping story line.
Since his mother died I have seen him steam a cucumber thinking it was zucchini. That’s the kind of thing that turns my heart right over.
The year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me.
I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story.
I’ve always known when I start a story what the last line is. It’s always been the case, since the first story I ever wrote. I don’t know how it’s going to get there, but I seem to need the destination. I need to know where I end up. It never changes, ever.
There’s so much I can’t read because I get so exasperated. Someone starts describing the character boarding the plane and pulling the seat back. And I just want to say, Babe, I have been downtown. I have been up in a plane. Give me some credit.
An idea might spark an essay, but never a story.
I probably have less revision than those who have that wonderful rush of story to tell – you know, I can’t wait to tell you what happened the other day. It comes tumbling out and maybe then they go back and refine. I kind of envy that way of working, but I just have never done it.
I read about a famous mystery writer who worked for one week in a department store. One day she saw a woman come in and buy a doll. The mystery writer found out the woman’s name, and took a bus to New Jersey to see where the woman lived. That was all. Years later, she referred to this woman as the love of her life. It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it.
What you forget, living here, is that just because you have stopped sinking doesn’t mean you’re not still underwater.
When she sees him, Holly says, it’s like the sunsets at the beach – once the sun drops, the sand chills quickly. Then it’s like a lot of times that were good ten minutes ago and don’t count now.
I am so suggestible. When Chatty asks if I am hungry, I say, “I could be.” I would try to become the woman you wanted without even knowing I was trying. As it is, I am barely the woman I am.
Pretty soon three sleeping bags formed a triangle in the master bedroom. The father was the hypotenuse. The girl asked him to brush out her hair, which he did while the boy ate a tangerine, peeling it up close to his face, inhaling the mist. Then he held each segment to the light to find seeds. In his lap, cat paws fluttered like dreaming eyes. “What.
I’m just headin’ off the coast aimlessly. I haven’t had much impact. Nothing but depression. Tropical, but nonetheless, depression. Headin’ out to sea.
Here is what you do. You ease yourself into a tub of water, you ease yourself down. You lie back and wait for the ripples to smooth away. Then you take a deep breath, and slide your head under, and listen for the playfulness of your heart.
I remember thinking: There will never come a time when I will not be thinking of this. And I was right. And I was wrong.
We keep wanting people to be different.
At a certain point, it would seem, you have to stop caring, and stop trying to protect what someone else is set to destroy.
Some of us are silent sufferers of a noisy disease.
I leave a lot out when I tell the truth. The same when I write a story.