I laughed and said, Life is easy. What I meant was, Life is easy with you here, and when you leave, it will be hard again.
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No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories
“These delightful stories do that essential-but-rare story thing: they surprise. They skip past the quotidian, the merely real, to the essential, and do so with a spirit of tenderness and wonder that is wholly unique. They are (let me coin a phrase
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Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Re…
I wanted to look at everything through her eyes. I do this before I bring someone new into my life; I try to get a sense of who I am so that I can make it easier for them to know me.
I could not make a move without making love.
She bludgeoned me with a look of such limitless compassion that I immediately began to cry.
Our habits slid apart easily...And our very few intimacies were simply discontinued. Where did they go, those things we did? Were they recycled? Did some new couple in China do them? Were a Swedish man and woman foot to foot at this very moment?
I laughed and said, Life is easy. What I meant was, Life is easy with you here, and when you leave, it will be hard again.
I was going to die and it was taking forever.
I don't believe in psychology; which says everything you do is because of yourself. That is so untrue. We are social animals, and everything we do is because of other people, because we love them, or because we don't.
Have you ever wanted something very badly and then gotten it? Then you know that winning is many things, but it is never the thing you thought it would be.
People just need a little help because they are so used to not loving.
If you are sad, ask yourself why you are sad. Then pick up the phone and call someone and tell him the answer to the question. If you don't know anyone, call the operator and tell him. Most people don't know that the operator has to listen, it is a law. Also, the postman is not allowed to go inside…
She never inquired, but she never recoiled, either. This is a quality that I look for in a person, not recoiling.
There was nothing in this world that was not a con, suddenly I understood this. Nothing really mattered, and nothing could be lost.
Some may say that such a girl is not ready for a relationship with a man, especially a man in his late sixties. But to that I say: We don't know anything. We don't know how to cure a cold or what dogs are thinking. We do terrible things, we make wars, we kill people out of greed. So who are we to sa…
Each day I wondered what would happen next. What happens when you stop wanting, when you are happy. I supposed I would go on being happy forever. I knew I would not mess things up by growing bored. I had done that once before.
I walked down the hall and saw that [she] was sitting on the floor next to a chair. This is always a bad sign. It's a slippery slope, and it's best just to sit in chairs, to eat when hungry, to sleep and rise and work. But we have all been there. Chairs are for people, and you're not sure if you are…
If there were a map of the solar system, but instead of stars it showed people and their degrees of separation, my star would be the one you had to travel the most light-years from to get to his. You would die getting to him.
That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I'm being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea. When I drink relaxing tea I suck it down as if I'm in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest.
I wondered if i would spend the rest of my life inventing complicated ways to depress myself.