What began with exuberance and passion always ended with terse accusations and hateful words, with rage and weeping fits.

Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.

i want to give up my bearings, slip out of who i am, shed everything, the way a snake discards old skin.

you say you have no courage, but i see it in you. what you did, the burden you agreed to shoulder, took courage. for that, i honor you.

James Parkinson. George Huntington. Robert Graves. John Down. Now this Lou Gehrig fellow of mine. How did men come to monopolize disease names too?

Soon, he would become an adult. And when he did, there would be not going back because adulthood was akin to what his father had once said about being a war hero: one you became one, you died one.

these random unkind moment that catch you wen you least expect them.

He scarcely knew who was battling whom, who was winning, who was losing, as though he hoped that by doggedly ignoring the war it would return the favor

In my experience, men who understand women seem to rarely want to have anything to do with them.

He used to wonder how such a frail little body could house so much joy, so much goodness. It couldn't. It spilled out of her, came pouring out her eyes.

I would have told them that he lived a life lacking in purpose or direction. Like those aimless rides I took him on. A life lived from the backseat, observed as it blurred by. An indifferent life.

How often have I painted a splendid picture of a journey marked by courageous ascents and daring desert crossings when all along all I’ve really been doing is running?

I wake up wondering if I know we're near mountains because of memory or because of something in the air.

Things are beautiful or ugly only in time and space. The new man's vision being liberated from these two factors, all is unified in one unique beauty.

Dignity is not negotiable. Dignity is the honor of the family.

Motown's policy was to build one act at a time or their favorites.

Negative, I am a meat popsicle.

A wife is like a children's movie; always under-appreciated and without either, life would be incomplete.

Gold was not altogether certain what, anatomically, a gorge was, but he knew that his was rising.

I go into every story thinking I'm going to fail. I think about that all the time - I think it's going to be terrible. Every story is like the first I've ever done.

There has been a lot of progress during my lifetime, but I'm afraid it's heading in the wrong direction.