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Most People Use Twenty Verbs To Describe Everything From A Run In Their Stocking To The Explosion Of An Atomic Bomb. You Know The Ones: Was, Did, Had, Made, Went, Looked... One-size-fits-all Looks Like Crap On Anyone. Sew Yourself A Custom Made Suit. Pick A Better Verb. Challenge All Those Verbs To Really Lift Some Weight For You.

-Janet Fitch

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Most People Use Twenty

Janet Fitch

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Most People Use Twenty Verbs To Describe Everything From A Run In Their Stocking To The Explosion Of An Atomic Bomb. You Know The Ones: Was, Did, Had, Made, Went, Looked... One-size-fits-all Looks Like Crap On Anyone. Sew Yourself A Custom Made Suit. Pick A Better Verb. Challenge All Those Verbs To Really Lift Some Weight For You.

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You Paid For Every Second Of Beauty You Managed To Steal.

I Emitted Some Civetlike Female Stink, A Distinct Perfume Of Sexual Wanting, That He Had Followed To Find Me Here In The Dark.

This Was The Life I Was Going To Be Living, Everybody Separated From Everybody Else, Hanging On For A Moment Only To Be Washed Away.

Girls Were Born Knowing How Destructive The Truth Could Be. They Learned To Hold It In, Tamp It Down, Like Gunpowder In An Old Fashioned Gun. Then It Exploded In Your Face On A November Day In The Rain.

Loneliness Is The Human Condition. Cultivate It. The Way It Tunnels Into You Allows Your Soul Room To Grow.

There Is No God, There Is Only What You Want.

There Is No God

We Recived Our Colouring From The Norsemen,hairy Savages Who Hacked Their Gods To Pieces And Hung The Flesh From Trees.we Are The Ones Who Sacked Rome.fear Only Feeble Old Age And Death In Bed.don't Forget Who You Are.

History Only Existed In The Human Mind, Subject To Endless Revision. 'each Man Kills The Thing He Loves'-oscar Wilde. You Kill It Before It Kills You, But He Was Wrong. You Killed It By Accident. Thinking You Were Doing Something Else. Shattering, When All You Wanted To Do Was Keep It Safe.

What Was Beauty Unless You Intended To Use It, Like A Hammer, Or A Key? It Was Just Something For Other People To Use And Admire, Or Envy, Despise. To Nail Their Dreams Onto Like A Picture Hanger On A Blank Wall. And So Many Girls Saying, Use Me, Dream Me.

A Cliché Is Like A Coin That Has Been Handled Too Much. Once Language Has Been Overly Handled, It No Longer Leaves A Clear Imprint.

Memory Is The Fourth Dimension To Any Landscape.

The Word Rattled In My Head Like Rocks In An Oatmeal Box.

In Our Exterior Life, We Can Be Only One Person. But In Our Imagination, We Can Be Anyone, Anywhere.

The Pearls Weren't Really White, They Were A Warm Oyster Beige, With Little Knots In Between So If They Broke, You Only Lost One. I Wished My Life Could Be Like That, Knotted Up So That Even If Something Broke, The Whole Thing Wouldn't Come Apart.

It's All I Ever Really Wanted, That Revelation. The Possibility Of Fixed Stars.

I Felt Suddenly Cruel, Like I´d Told Dmall Children There Was No Tooth Fairy, That It Was Just Their Mom Sneaking Into Their Room After They Went To Bed.

Dawn Tinted The Darkness Like Water Ink.

My Loneliness Tasted Like Pennies.

I Thought Of My Mother As Queen Christina, Cool And Sad, Eyes Trained On Some Distant Horizon. That Was Where She Belonged, In Furs And Palaces Of Rare Treasures, Fireplaces Large Enough To Roast A Reindeer, Ships Of Swedish Maple.

Depression, Suffering And Anger Are All Part Of Being Human.

It Was Her First Book, An Indigo Cover With A Silver Moonflower, An Art Nouveau Flower, I Traced My Finger Along The Silver Line Like Smoke, Whiplash Curves. ... I Touched The Pages Her Hands Touched, I Pressed Them To My Lips, The Soft Thick Old Paper, Yellow Now, Fragile As Skin. I Stuck My Nose Between The Bindings And Smelled All The Readings She Had Given, The Smell Of Unfiltered Cigarettes And The Espresso Machine, Beaches And Incense And Whispered Words In The Night. I Could Hear Her Voice Rising From The Pages. The Cover Curled Outward Like Sails.

But I Knew One More Thing. That People W Ho Denied Who They Were Or Where They Had Been Were In The Greatest Danger.

I Could Hear The Icy Winds Of Sweden, But He Didn't Seem To Feel The Chill.

At Least If You Were Ignorant You Could Do Wat You Wanted. You Had No Idea Wat Had Been Acheived In The Past. You Were Free Instead Of Chewed At By Bleeding Impotence, Dissolved Away Like A Pearl In Acid

No Matter How Unappealing, Each Of Them Imagines He Is Somehow Worthy.

I Wondered Where He Was Now Whether I Would Ever Hear Him Again. Whether Someone Would Love Him, Someday Show Him What Beauty Mean't.

How Can I Shed Tears For A Man I Should Never Have Allowed To Touch Me In Any Way?

Remember...we Don't See Objects, We See Light. [...] Light Can Do Anything Water Can Do--flow, Wash, Trickle. It Can Do Anything An Artist Can Do--paint, Burnish, Carve. Candlelight Falls, Licks A Face. There Is Always Light In A Room.

Just Because A Poet Said Something Didn’t Mean It Was True, Only That It Sounded Good.

Beauty Was Empty As A Gourd, Vain As A Parakeet. But It Had Power. It Smelled Of Musk And Oranges And Made You Close Your Eyes In A Prayer.

Her Scruffy Innoscense To Impregnate With His Dreams. Reason Was Seductive, It Gave The Appearance Of Truth

I Watched Her For A Long Time, Memorizing Her Shoulders, Her Long-legged Gait. This Was How Girls Left. They Packed Up Their Suitcases And Walked Away In High Heels. They Pretended They Weren't Crying, That It Wasn't The Worst Day Of Their Lives. That They Didn't Want Their Mothers To Come Running After Them, Begging Their Forgiveness, That They Wouldn't Have Gone Down On Their Knees And Thanked God If They Could Stay.

This Involves More Than I Can Discuss Here, But Do It. Read The Writers Of Great Prose Dialogue-people Like Robert Stone And Joan Didion. Compression, Saying As Little As Possible, Making Everything Carry Much More Than Is Actually Said. Conflict. Dialogue As Part Of An Ongoing World, Not Just Voices In A Dark Room. Never Say The Obvious. Skip The Meet And Greet.

They Say Drugs Are Not The Answer, But Really, What Is The Question?

I Was Always Mortified.didn't They Know They Were Tying Thier Mothers To The Ground? Weren't Chains Ashamed Of Their Prisoners?

She Would Buy Magic Every Day Of The Week. Love Me, That Face Said. I'm So Lonely, So Desperate. I'll Give You Whatever You Want.

A Book's Flaws Make It Less Predictable.

My House Is Modern, But I Like My Writing Room To Be Old Fashioned. I Write On A Little Wooden Secretary Desk.

I Wandered Through The Stacks, Running My Hands Along The Spines Of The Books On The Shelves, They Reminded Me Of Cultured Or Opinionated Guests At A Wonderful Party, Whispering To Each Other.

Once You Get Below The Floor Of Our Personal Identities, We're All Connected. Perhaps That's Why We Can Move Into Others' Lives.

Personal Identity

What Is Real Is Always Worth It.

We Have No Home, She Told Me. I Am Your Home.

 loneliness Is The Human Condition. Cultivate It. The Way It Tunnels Into You Allows Your Soul Room To Grow. Never Expect To Outgrow Loneliness. Never Hope To Find People Who Will Understand You, Someone To Fill That Space. An Intelligent, Sensitive Person Is The Exception, The Very Great Exception. If You Expect To Find People Who Will Understand You, You Will Grow Murderous With Disappointment. The Best You'll Ever Do Is To Understand Yourself, Know What It Is That You Want, And Not Let The Cattle Stand In Your Way.

Take My Advice. Stay Away From All Broken People.

Love Could Never Bloom In A Concrete Block Room.

To Make Films, You Have To Have Boundless Energy; You Have To Work And Play With Others Really, Really Well, And I'm Really A More Contemplative Kind Of Person. I Like To Sit At Home And Think, A Lot.

Most People Write The Same Sentence Over And Over Again. The Same Number Of Words-say, 8-10, Or 10-12. The Same Sentence Structure. Try To Become Stretchy-if You Generally Write 8 Words, Throw A 20 Word Sentence In There, And A Few Three-word Shorties. If You're Generally A 20 Word Writer, Make Sure You Throw In Some Threes, Fivers And Sevens, Just To Keep The Reader From Going Crosseyed.

A Couple Of Times, I Could Have Turned A Trick. But I Didn't Want To Start. I Knew How It Would Play. When You Started Thinking It Was Easy, You Were Forgetting What It Cost.

When You Started Thinking It Was Easy, You Were Forgetting What It Cost.

The Stupid Things You Say In The Rain, That Can't Ever Be Washed Away.

What Can I Say About Life? Do I Praise It For Letting You Live, Or Damn It For Allowing The Rest?

Aquamarines Grew With Emeralds, Claire Told Me. But Emeralds Were Fragile And Always Broke Into Smaller Pieces, While Aquamarines Were Stronger, Grew In Huge Crystals Without Any Trouble, So They Weren't Worth As Much. It Was The Emerald That Didn't Break That Was The Really Valuable Thing.

Let Me Tell You A Few Things About Regret...there Is No End To It. You Cannot Find The Beginning Of The Chain That Brought Us From There To Here. Should You Regret The Whole Chain, And The Air In Between, Or Each Link Separately As If You Could Uncouple Them? Do You Regret The Beginning Which Ended So Badly, Or Just The Ending Itself?

Don't Hoard The Past. Don't Cherish Anything. Burn It. The Artist Is The Phoenix Who Burns To Emerge.

She Would Be Half A Planet Away, Floating In A Turquoise Sea, Dancing By Moonlight To Flamenco Guitar.

She’s Never Where She Is,' I Said. 'she’s Only Inside Her Head.

When I Read, I Want To Be Fully Transported To Another Place. I Want To Feel Things, Smell Things.

I Thought Clay Must Feel Happy In The Good Potter's Hand.

What Can She Possibly Teach You, Twenty Seven Names For Tears?

A Fish Has No Concept Of Water.

Purification In Fire. Public Cremation

Never Apologize. Never Explain.

We Don't Have A Unitary Society Anymore, You Know; It's Very Fragmented. I Look Up And Down My Block In Silverlake And There Is A Different Universe In Every House.

Different Universes

I Nodded. A Man's World. But What Did It Mean? That Men Whistled And Stared And Yelled Things At You, And You Had To Take It, Or You Get Raped Or Beat Up? A Man's World Meant Places Men Could Go But Not Women. It Meant They Had More Money,and Didn't Have Kids, Not The Way Women Did, To Look After Every Second. And It Meant That Women Loved Them More Than They Loved The Women, That They Could Want Something With All Their Hearts, And Then Not.

She Was Sitting Cross-legged On Her Bed In Her White Kimono, Writing In A Notebook With An Ink Pen She Dipped In A Bottle. 'never Let A Man Stay The Night,' She Told Me. 'dawn Has A Way Of Casting A Pall On Any Night Magic.' The Night Magic Sounded Lovely. Someday I Would Have Lovers And Write A Poem After.

Most People Use Twenty Verbs To Describe Everything From A Run In Their Stocking To The Explosion Of An Atomic Bomb. You Know The Ones: Was, Did, Had, Made, Went, Looked... One-size-fits-all Looks Like Crap On Anyone. Sew Yourself A Custom Made Suit. Pick A Better Verb. Challenge All Those Verbs To Really Lift Some Weight For You.

That Was The Thing About Words, They Were Clear And Specific-chair, Eye, Stone- But When You Talked About Feelings, Words Were Too Stiff, They Were This And Not That, They Couldn't Include All The Meanings. In Defining, They Always Left Something Out.

If Sinners Where So Unhappy, Why Would They Prefer Their Suffering? But Now I Knew Why. Without My Wounds, Who Was I?

Her Fingers Moved Among Barnacles And Mussels, Blue-black, Sharp-edged. Neon Red Starfish Were Limp Dalis On The Rocks, Surrounded By Bouquets Of Stinging Anemones And Purple Bursts Of Spiny Sea Urchins.

I Took My Mother's Knife And Played Johnny Johnny Johnny On The Playhouse Floor. I Was Drunk, Stabbed Myself Every Few Throws. I Held My Hand Up And There Was Satisfaction At Seeing My Blood, The Way There Was When I Saw The Red Gouges Onmy Face That People Stared At And Turned Away. They Were Thinking I Was Beautiful, But They Were Wrong, Now They Could See How Ugly And Mutilated I Was.

...you Know The Mistrust Of Heights Is The Mistrust Of Self, You Don't Know Whether You're Going To Jump.

How Right That The Body Changed Over Time, Becoming A Gallery Of Scars, A Canvas Of Experience, A Testament To Life And One's Capacity To Endure It.

A Cliche Is Everything You've Ever Heard Of.

The Sound Of Her Laughter Was Sticky As Sap, The Smell Of Night-blooming Jasmine Soft As A Milk Bath.

Panic Was The Worst Thing. When You Panicked, You Couldn't See Possibilities. Then Came Despair.

Appealing To The Five Senses Is The Feature That Will Always Set Writing Apart From The Visual Media. A Good Writer Will Tell Us What The World Smells Like, What The Textures Are, What The Sounds Are, What The Light Looks Like, What The Weather Is.

The Poets Are The Standard Bearers Of Language. Their Work Lives Or Dies Word By Word. When I Write And Can Hear A Clunky Sentence, I Try To Write Up To The Poetry That I Have Recited Beforehand.

I Think That Oprah's On A Mission To Improve The Lives Of The Average American In Various Ways. And One Of Them Is To Bring Literature To People Who Would Normally Not Be Quite As Demanding In Their Reading Tastes, To Show Them Writing That Can Be More Than Just Entertainment.

I Tried Writing Fiction As A Little Kid, But Had A Teacher Humiliate Me, So Didn't Write Again Until I Was A Senior In College.

A Cliche Is Like A Coin That Has Been Handled Too Much. Once Language Has Been Overly Handled, It No Longer Leaves A Clear Imprint.

I Wondered Why It Had To Be So Poisonous. Oleanders Could Live Through Anything, They Could Stand Heat, Drought, Neglect, And Put Out Thousands Of Waxy Blooms. So What Did They Need Poison For? Couldn't They Just Be Bitter? They Weren't Like Rattlesnakes, They Didn't Even Eat What They Killed. The Way She Boiled It Down, Distilled It, Like Her Hatred. Maybe It Was A Poison In The Soil, Something About L.a., The Hatred, The Callousness, Something We Didn't Want To Think About, That The Plant Concentrated In Its Tissues. Maybe It Wasn't A Source Of Poison, But Just Another Victim.

I'm Always Gratified When I Check Something I've Made Up And Discover That I've Gotten It Right. How Can We Imagine Something That Turns Out To Be True? How Can We Know Things We Couldn't Possibly Know? It Makes Me Wonder About The Existence Of A Collective Unconscious.

Collective Unconscious

If This Was A Sandalwood Pyre She Would Have Thrown Herself In And This Paper She'd Become Would Have Caught Fire And She And Him Could Sail Away Like Two Birds.

Find Someone Who Will Tremble For Your Touch, Someone Whose Fingers Are A Poem.

She Laughed So Easily When She Was Happy. But Also When She Was Sad.

I Wanted To Hear What She Was Saying. I Wanted To Smell That Burnt Midnight Again, I Wanted To Feel That Wind. It Was A Secret Wanting, Like A Song I Couldn't Stop Humming, Or Loving Someone I Could Never Have. No Matter Where I Went, My Compass Pointed West. I Would Always Know What Time It Was In California.

How Many People Ask You To Come Share Their Life?

Love Is A Check, That Can Be Forged, That Can Be Cashed. Love Is A Payment That Comes Due.

A Novel Is Like A Dream In Which Everyone Is You. They’re All Parts Of Yourself.

Whenever She Thought She Could Not Feel More Alone, The Universe Peeled Back Another Layer Of Darkness.

Being In The Library Is So Addictive For Me That I Really Have To Exercise Self-control So I Can Get Some Writing Done At Home.

You Can't Shape Me Anymore. I Am The Uncontrolled Element, The Random Act. I Am Forward Movement In Time. You Think You Can See Me? Then Tell Me, Who Am I? You Don't Know.

I Use My Fiction To Explore My Own Unconscious Issues. I Usually Don't Even Know What's Going On With Me Until I'm Writing.

I Felt Beautiful But Also Interrupted. I Wasn't Used To Being So Complicated.

Darkness Coiled Between What He Wanted Them To Believe And The Self He Despised. It Only Made Him More Alone. How Could You Save Someone When He Didn't Let You Kno Him? What A Waste. The Beauty He Murdered In This Place. He Could Never See What He Had, Only What He Failed To Achieve.

Your Protagonist Is Your Reader’s Portal Into The Story. The More Observant He Or She Can Be, The More Vivid Will Be The World You’re Creating. They Don’t Have To Be Super-educated, They Just Have To Be Mentally Active. Keep Them Looking, Thinking, Wondering, Remembering.

For She Is My Love, And Other Women Are But Big Bodies Of Flame.

It Was Only Natural To Want To Destroy Something You Could Never Have.

Many Women Get Involved With A Man That You Pretty Much Know Isn't Suitable And You're Kind Of Breaking Your Rules, But He's Attractive In Some Unknown Way. And Then He Doesn't Even Realize What A Sacrifice You're Making By Being With Him And He Dumps You!

Nobody Had Forgotten Anything Here. In Berlin, You Had To Wrestle With The Past, You Had To Build On The Ruins, Inside Them. It Wasn't Like America Where We Scraped The Earth Clean, Thinking We Could Start Again Every Time.

The Decor Bowled Me Over. Everywhere I Looked, There Was Something More To See. Botanical Prints, A Cross Section Of Pomegranates, A Passionflower Vine And Its Fruit. Stacks Of Thick Books On Art And Design And A Collection Of Glass Paperweights Filled The Coffee Table. It Was Enormously Beautiful, A Sensibility I'd Never Encountered Anywhere, A Relaxed Luxury. I Could Feel My Mother's Contemptuous Gaze Falling On The Cluttered Surfaces, But I Was Tired Of Three White Flowers In A Glass Vase. There Was More To Life Than That.

Dawn Has A Way Of Casting A Pall On Any Night Magic.

And I Realized As I Walked Through The Neighborhood How Each House Could Contain A Completely Different Reality. In A Single Block, There Could Be Fifty Seperate Worlds. Nobody Ever Really Knew What Was Going On Just Next Door.

And If There Is No God? You Act As If There Is, And It's The Same Thing.

There Is No God

Who Was I, Really? I Was The Sole Occupant Of My Mother's Totalitarian State, My Own Personal History Rewritten To Fit The Story She Was Telling That Day. There Were So Many Missing Pieces. I Was Starting To Find Some Of Them, Working My Way Upriver, Collecting A Secret Cache Of Broken Memories In A Shoebox.

Always Learn Poems By Heart. They Have To Become The Marrow In Your Bones. Like Fluoride In The Water, They'll Make Your Soul Impervious To The World's Soft Decay.

Don't Turn Over The Rocks If You Don't Want To See The Pale Creatures Who Live Under Them.

The Phoenix Must Burn To Emerge.

Life Should Always Be Like This. ... Like Lingering Over A Good Meal.

The Story Of Her Life. God Gave You Everything Just To Take It Away. Just So You Knew Exactly What You Were Missing.

I Hated Labels Anyway. People Didn't Fit In Slots--prostitute, Housewife, Saint--like Sorting The Mail. We Were So Mutable, Fluid With Fear And Desire, Ideals And Angles, Changeable As Water.

Pick A Better Verb. Most People Use Twenty Verbs To Describe Everything From A Run In Their Stocking To The Explosion Of An A-bomb.

Poppies Bleed Petals Of Sheer Excess. You And I, This Sweet Battle Ground.

When Most People Looked At Josie Tyrell, They Only Saw A Certain Collection Of Bones, A Selection Of Forms Filling Space. But Michael Saw Past The Mouth And The Eyes, The Architecture Of The Body, Her Fleshly Masquerade. Other Boys Were Happy Enough To Enjoy The Show, They Just Wanted To Be Entertained In The Body's Shadow Theater. But Michael Had To Come Backstage. He Went Down Into The Mines, Into The Dark, And Brought Up The Gold, Your New Self, A Better Self. But What Good Was It If He Was Just Going To Leave Her Behind?

You Were My Home, Mother. I Had No Home But You

Whenever She Turned Her Steep Focus To Me, I Felt The Warmth That Flowers Must Feel When They Bloom Through The Snow, Under The First Concentrated Rays Of The Sun.

She Was Such A Bad Actress. She Never Said Her Lines Rite, It Was Something Perverse In Her Nature. And Wat Was Her Line Anyway?

I Felt Like Time Was A Great Sea, And I Was Floating On The Back Of A Turtle, And No Sails Broke The Horizon.

No Matter Where I Was, My Compass Pointed West. I Would Always Know What Time It Was In California.

...the Men Eyed Her With The Automatic Mix Of Curiosity, Lust, And Aesthetic Judgment They Always Gave Young Women, Subject To Object, The Way You'd Stare At An Animal. She Pretended Not To Notice. To Remind Them She Was A Person Was Too Much Effort. Objects Bore No Guilt.

Don't Attach Yourself To Anyone Who Shows You The Least Bit Of Attention Because You're Lonely. Lonliness Is The Human Condition. No One Is Ever Going To Fill That Space. The Best Thing You Can Do It Know Yourself... Know What You Want.

And I Thought, There Was No God, There Was Only What You Wanted.

Echo, The Death Of A Sound That Had Nowhere To Go But To Come Back.

Although She Was Giddy With Exhaustion, Sleep Was A Lover Who Refused To Be Touched.

They Wanted The Real Mother, The Blood Mother, The Great Womb, Mother Of Fierce Compassion, A Woman Large Enough To Hold All The Pain, To Carry It Away. What We Needed Was Someone Who Bled...mother's Big Enough, Wide Enough For Us To Hide In...mother's Who Would Breathe For Us When We Could Not Breathe Anymore, Who Would Fight For Us, Who Would Kill For Us, Die For Us.

Now I Wish She'd Never Broken Any Of Her Rules. I Understood Why She Held To Them So Hard. Once You Broke The First One, They All Broke, One By One, Like Firecrackers Exploding In Your Face In A Parking Lot On The Fourth Of July.

I've Been Depressed Many Times In My Life. But Under It All I'm An Optimist.

Isn't It Funny.i'm Enjoying My Hatred So Much More Than I Ever Enjoyed Love. Love Is Temperamental. Tiring. It Makes Demands. Love Uses You, Changes Its Mind. But Hatred, Now, That's Something You Can Use. Sculpt. Wield. It's Hard, Or Soft, However You Need It. Love Humiliates You, But Hatred Cradles You.

Who Are You? The Band Sang. I Tried To Remember But I Really Couldn't Say.

A Person Didn’t Need To Be Beautiful, They Just Needed To Be Loved. But I Couldn’t Help Wanting It. If That Was The Way I Could Be Loved, To Be Beautiful, I’d Take It

I Couldn't Imagine Owning Beauty Like My Mothers. I Wouldn't Dare.

In A Perverse Way, I Was Glad For The Stitches, Glad It Would Show, That There Would Be Scars. What Was The Point In Just Being Hurt On The Inside? It Should Bloody Well Show.

Women Always Put Men First. That's How Everything Got So Screwed Up.

We Strive For Beauty And Balance, The Sensual Over The Sentimental.

How Vast Was A Human Being's Capacity For Suffering. The Only Thing You Could Do Was Stand In Awe Of It. It Wasn't A Question Of Survival At All. It Was The Fullness Of It, How Much Could You Hold, How Much Could You Care.

...i Was Tired Of Men. Hanging In Doorways, Standing Too Close, Their Smell Of Beer Or Fifteen-year-old Whiskey. Men Who Didn't Come To The Emergency Room With You, Men Who Left On Christmas Eve. Men Who Slammed The Security Gates, Who Made You Love Them And Then Changed Their Minds.

As A Person With Terrible Handwriting, I Love The Computer. I've Waited All My Life For The Computer.

She’s Not As Pretty As You,” I Said “but She’s A Simpler Girl,” My Mother Whispered.

The Night Crackled ... Everything Had Turned To Static Electricity In The Heat. I Combed My Hair To Watch The Sparks Fly From The Ends.

I Wish My Life Could Be Like That, Knotted Up So That Even If Something Broke, The Whole Thing Wouldn't Come Apart.

Beauty Was Deceptive. I Would Rather Wear My Pain, My Ugliness. I Was Torn And Stitched. I Was A Strip Mine, And They Would Just Have To Look. I Hoped I Made Them Sick. I Hoped They Saw Me In Their Dreams.

A Dependent Clause (a Sentence Fragment Set Off By Commas, Dontcha Know) Helps You Explore Your Story By Moving You Deeper Into The Sentence. It Allows You To Stop And Think Harder About What You've Already Written. Often The Story You're Looking For Is Inside The Sentence. The Dependent Clause Helps You Uncover It.

His Voice Was Cloves And Nightingales, It Took Us To Spice Markets In The Celebs, We Drifted With Him On A Houseboat Beyond The Coral Sea. We Were Like Cobras Following A Reed Flute.

Writing Mirrors The Interior Self. You Know, Any Book Is Like The Perfect Blueprint Of The Psyche Of The Author.

He Hated Crowds, Never Liked Punk. He Couldn't Handle The Nakedness Of The Rage -his Own So Sophisticated And Finely Tuned. He Could Never See The Similarity Between Himself And Donnie Draino Screaming Into A Mic.

Do You Ever Want To Go Home?' I Asked Paul. He Brushed An Ash From My Face. 'it's The Century Of The Displaced Person,' He Said. 'you Can Never Go Home.

I Felt Like An Undeveloped Photograph That He Was Printing, My Image Rising To The Surface Under His Gaze.

My Father Was An Engineer - He Wasn't Literary, Not A Writer Or A Journalist, But He Was One Of The World's Great Readers. Every Two Weeks, He'd Take Me To Our Local Branch Library And Pull Books Off The Shelf For Me, Stacking Them Up In My Arms - 'have You Read This? And This? And This?"

If I Get Ideas Independently Of The Act Of Writing, They Never Really Fit. So For Me, There's No Hanging Out, Waiting For Inspiration.

Only Peons Made Excusses For Themselves She Taught Me. Never Apologize, Never Explain.

These People Picked You Up And Played With You And Then Left You Lying In The Rain

I Thought How Tenuous The Links Were Between Mother And Children Between Friends Family Things You Think Are Eternal. Everything Could Be Lost More Easily Than Anyone Could Imagine.

Kindness Was The Last Thing She Needed. She Had To Stay In The Icy Place, The Numb Place, And Their Warmth Threatened To Melt Her Just When She Needed The Cold.

It Wasn't Awful To Be Dead. The Stillness Would Almost Be A Relief. She Wouldn't Want Pain, She Wouldn't Want To Be Wounded Or Mutilated. She Could Never Shoot Herself Or Jump Off A Building. But Being Dead Wasn't Unthinkable.

I Usually Start With Something That Has Some Energy, Like A Compressed Character Or A Situation That's Wound Up Like A Spring. Then All I Have To Do Is Let It Go, Let Its Energy Carry The Story. And That May Not Turn Out To Be The Beginning Of The Book.

Her Hatred Glittered Irresistibly. I Could See It, The Jewel, It Was Sapphire, It Was The Cold Lakes Of Norway.

You Must Find A Boy Your Own Age. Someone Mild And Beautiful To Be Your Lover. Someone Who Will Tremble For Your Touch, Offer You A Marguerite By Its Long Stem With His Eyes Lowered. Someone Whose Fingers Are A Poem.

I Think We're Starved For A Life Of The Senses. We're In The Garage, We're In The Car, We Drive To Work, We're In A Windowless Cubicle That's Gray And Beige. In A Way, It's Funny That We Consider Ourselves An Advanced Culture, Because People Who Live In So-called Primitive Environments Still Enjoy The Richness Of The Smells, Colors, And Sounds Of Our World. We All Crave That.

How Easy I Was. Like A Limpet I Attached Myself To Anything, Anyone Who Showed Me The Least Attention.

If Evil Means To Be Self-motivated, To Be The Center Of One’s Own Universe, To Live On One’s Own Terms, Then Every Artist, Every Thinker, Every Original Mind, Is Evil.

Reading Love Junkie Is Like Watching A Sleepwalker Taking A Stroll On A Freeway. All You Can Do Is Pray. Gorgeously Written, Piercingly Honest.

Who Can Judge Another Man's Suffering?

At Every Moment, Each Instrument Knew What To Play. Its Little Bit. But None Could See The Whole Thing Like This, All At Once, Only Its Own Part. Just Like Life. Each Person Was Like A Line Of Music, But Nobody Knew What The Symphony Sounded Like. Only The Conductor Had The Whole Score.

This Is What Happens When You Fall In Love. You're Looking At A Natural Disaster.

Falling In Love

I Almost Said, You're Not Broken, You're Just Going Through Something. But I Couldn't. She Knew. There Was Something Terribly Wrong With Her, All The Way Inside. She Was Like A Big Diamond With A Dead Spot In The Middle. I Was Supposed To Breathe Life Into That Dead Spot, But It Hadn't Worked.

The Best You'll Ever Do Is To Understand Yourself, Know What It Is That You Want, And Not Let The Cattle Stand In Your Way.

Love's An Illusion. It's A Dream You Wake Up From With An Enormous Hangover And Net Credit Debt. I'd Rather Have Cash.

Oleander Time, She Said. Lovers Who Kill Each Other Now Will Blame It On The Wind.

I Love Derrick Brown For The Surprise Of One Word Waking Up Next To Another. One Moment Tender, Funny Or Romantic, The Next, Visceral, Ironic And Relevatory-here Is The Full Chaos Of Life. An Amazing Talent.

She Was A Beautiful Woman Dragging A Crippled Foot And I Was That Foot. I Was Bricks Sewn Into The Hem Of Her Clothes, I Was A Steel Dress

To Know I Was Beautiful In His Eyes Made Me Beautiful.

She Kissed Me On The Mouth. Her Mouth Tasted Like Iced Coffee And Cardamom, And I Was Overwhelmed By The Taste, Her Hot Skin And The Smell Of Unwashed Hair. I Was Confused, But Not Unwilling. I Would Have Let Her Do Anything To Me.

When I Start Writing, My Unconscious, My Conflicts, My Thoughts All Start To Come Up. So For Me, Writing Is An Exploration. I Never Know How My Stories Will End.

But That Was The Thing About Zero. Its Weakness. Even If Zero Had Taken Over The Entire Universe, The Biggest Fascist Of All, One Tiny Gesture Could Deny It. One Footprint, One Atom. You Didn't Have To Be A Genius. You Didn't Even Have To Know That Was What You Were Doing. You Made A Mark. You Changed Something. It Said, "a Human Being Passed Here." And Changed Zero To One.

I Closed My Eyes To Watch Tiny Dancers Like Jeweled Birds Cross The Dark Screen Of My Eyelids.

What Happened To A Dream Without A Dreamer?

How Could Anybody Confuse Truth With Beauty, I Thought As I Looked At Him. Truth Came With Sunken Eyes, Bony Or Scarred, Decayed. Its Teeth Were Bad, Its Hair Gray And Unkempt. While Beauty Was Empty As A Gourd, Vain As A Parakeet. But It Had Power. It Smelled Of Musk And Oranges And Made You Close Your Eyes In A Prayer.

Here, Here Is My Dark World. You Carry It For A Change. Im Out

I Imagined My Soul Taking In These Words Like Silicated Water In The Petrified Forest, Turning My Wood To Patterned Agate. I Liked It When My Mother Shaped Me This Way. I Thought Clay Must Feel Happy In The Good Potter's Hand.

I'm Always Looking For Something New And Interesting To Say. And It Can't Be Something I'm Directly Experiencing.

My Hatred Gives Me Strength.

Without My Wounds, Who Was I? My Scars Were My Face, My Past Was My Life.

Wasn't That The Way It Always Was? You Didn't Know, You Couldn't Tell, You Just Let It Happen... Perhaps They Didn't Know Themselves. Sometimes The Line Was Very Fine.

It's Their Skins I'm Peeling," She Said. "the Skins Of The Insipid Scribblers, Which I Graft To The Page, Creating Monsters Of Meaninglessness.

I Was Tired Of Men. Hanging In Doorways, Standing Too Close, Men Who Made You Love Them Then Changed Their Minds.

I've Told You, Nobody Becomes An Artist Unless They Have To.

I Understood Why She Did It. At That Moment I Knew Why People Tagged Graffiti On The Walls Of Neat Little Houses And Scratched The Paint On New Cars And Beat Up Well-tended Children. It Was Only Natural To Want To Destroy Something You Could Never Have.

It's Such A Liability To Love Another Person.

That Was What She Really Wanted. To Forget So Thoroughly She'd Never Have Another Memory Again, The Bitter So Bitter You Gave Up The Sweet.

I'm Incredibly Restless. I Read A Lot Of Poetry. I Also Find Myself Reading The First 20 Pages Of Everything, Looking For Something. And You Know What? I'm Usually Looking For The Book I'm Writing. And It's Not Out There!

The Santa Anas Blew In Hot From The Desert, Shriveling The Last Of The Spring Grass Into Whiskers Of Pale Straw. Only The Oleanders Thrived, Their Delicate Poisonous Blooms, Their Dagger Green Leaves. We Could Not Sleep In The Hot Dry Nights, My Mother And I.

He Reminded Me Of Someone Who Put Your Fingers In The Door And Smiled And Talked To You While He Smashed Them.

We Parked In Back And Walked Down The Stairs With Their Polished Brass Railings, Past The Old-fashioned Kitchen. We Could See The Chefs Cooking. It Smelled Like Stew, Or Meat Loaf, The Way Time Should Smell, Solid And Nourishing.

I Use My Fiction To Explore My Own Unconscious Issues. I Usually Don't Even Know What's Going On With Me Until I'm Writing. That Doesn't Mean My Books Are Autobiographical.

I Took The Volume To A Table, Opened Its Soft, Ivory Pages... And Fell Into It As Into A Pool During Dry Season.

Inside Every Human Being, There Is Unlimited Time And Space.

She Should Think About Her Own Soul, What She Was Going To Do With This Funky Tattered Pond Dank Item. Dark And Stained, A Ruined Thing.

Always Tell Us Where We Are. And Don't Just Tell Us Where Something Is, Make It Pay Off. Use Description Of Landscape To Help You Establish The Emotional Tone Of The Scene. Keep Notes Of How Other Authors Establish Mood And Foreshadow Events By Describing The World Around The Character. Look At The Openings Of Fitzgerald Stories, And Graham Greene, They're Great At This.

I'm A Fish Swimming By...catch Me If You Want Me.

Remember It All, Every Insult, Every Tear. Tattoo It On The Inside Of Your Mind. In Life, Knowledge Of Poisons Is Essential. I've Told You, Nobody Becomes An Artist Unless They Have To.

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