To the rocket scientist, you are a problem. You are the most irritating piece of machinery he or she will ever have to deal with.
A beloved editor long ago bestowed upon me her loathing of what she called “women who” stories. Women who fight wars. Women who fight fires. Women who accomplish anything significant in worlds once reserved exclusively for men.
3 billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgement Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: The War Against The Machines.
High in the sky, apartment windows were smudges of grimy yellow, and this passed for starlight in New York City.
The first time daddy found out about me, it was from behind glass during a routine visit to prison, when Ma lifted her shirt, teary-eyed, exposing her pregnant belly for emphasis.
“Either erase the story, or we’ll erase you. And maybe your family. But we’ll do them first, so you learn your lesson before you die.”
The freeze-up on Black Bear Lake is a prelude to winter. The freeze-up is a prelude to hardship. The freeze-up is a prelude to loneliness.
Take my hand, she said. He did. Lifted his small hand to Mommy’s hand. This was maybe five minutes before the abduction.
Broken dreams held together with glue. I gotta keep on trying ’til that day comes true.
The syllabus says, “Week One—5 P.M. pick up bone boxes.”
Good and evil have always existed. They always will. It’s only our stories about them that ever change.
John Laroche is a tall guy, skinny as a stick, pale-eyed, slouch-shouldered, and sharply handsome, in spite of the fact that he is missing all his front teeth.
When you have no one, no one can hurt you.
There are some men who enter a woman’s life and screw it up forever. Joseph Morelli did this to me—not forever, but periodically.
Harry locked his mother in the closet.
Today they will find her body. I know how it will happen. I can picture, quite vividly, the sequence of events that will lead to the discovery.
When you love someone, you’ve gotta trust them. There’s no other way. You’ve got to give them the key to everything that’s yours. Otherwise, what’s the point? And for a while, I believed that’s the kind of love I had.
I’m in my penthouse half naked. I cooked this meal for you naked. So where the hell you at?
He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
My father once told me that the most important thing every man should know is what he would die for. If you don’t know that, he said, what are you worth? Nothing. You are not a man at all.
Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
I search for my mother’s face in the mirror and see a stranger.
Ojichama is what I call my Japanese grandfather. In 1945, his Tokyo home was burned to the ground. Grampy is what I call my American grandfather. In 1945, he was serving on the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La, sending off America fighter pilots to burn down Japanese houses.
She shivers in the wind like the last leaf on a dying tree. I let her hear my footsteps. She only goes stiff for a moment.
Dear Dennis, I still think of you. Dear Andre, I saw you kiss her. Haven’t looked back. Dear Patrick, You’re just too young. Dear Eric, I said horrible things about you. Your teeth are fine, it’s the rest of you I don’t like.