My phone rang, and although it wasn't a sinister time of night, and although nothing had happened that I would later see as foreshadowing, I knew, I knew.

He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.

What he knew, he knew from books, and books lied, they made things prettier.

. . . breathing slowly and rubbing his palm against his chest as if to soothe his heart.

There was something scary and anxiety-inducing about being in a space where nothing seemed to be forbidden to him, where everything was offered to him and nothing was asked in return

This isn't fair, he would think in those moments. This isn't friendship. It's something, but it's not friendship. He felt he had been hustled into a game of complicity, one he never intended to play.

And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.

He will be someone who is defined, first and always, by what he is missing.

It's a good story, ' he said. He even grinned at me. 'I'll tell you.''Please, ' I said.And then he did.

He had never done it before, and so he had no real understanding of how slow, and sad, and difficult it was to end a friendship.

Thank god he wasn't a writer, or he'd have nothing to write about.

Gringos! They have copied us again

The makeup of your thoughts is exposed through your internal dialog.

Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product.

Most artists are notoriously insecure, and I fall into that category.

In practice, socialism didnt work. But socialism could never have worked because it is based on false premises about human psychology and society, and gross ignorance of human economy.

Our own worst enemy cannot harm us as much as our unwise thoughts. No one can help us as much as our own compassionate thoughts.

Well, I couldn't spell my name until I was eight - my second name. I was so dyslexic. Max I could do. Irons, nope.

It was hard to be away from home, but I am glad that I am home now.

If you look for me, I'm in the fiction section. Romance has its own section.

She was one of those Southerners who knew from an early age that the South could never be more for them than a fragrant prison, administered by a collective of loving but treacherous relatives.