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Paul would have gotten inventive revenge.
The word love was replaced by a heart shape I’m guessing they’ll put on the typewriter keyboard any day now, right beside the exclamation point.
The article says he belongs to a skinhead group and has tattoos, which is strange, I think, because Jews in concentration camps had shaved heads and tattoos. You’d think the anti-Semites would go for a different look.
She left herself out of a lot this Christmas. Every night has ended with Amy, Gretchen, Paul, and me sitting on one bed or another and laughing until four in the morning.
Get into a car with a stranger on that stretch of Irving and you can’t really complain should something awful happen.
Like the ALDI grocery store further down Broadway, their motto is “Leave us alone. Let us smoke in peace, for God’s sake.” Goldblatt’s is even worse. All of the mannequins in their front windows are missing their fingers.
I asked if he had children and he said yes, why else would he work six days a week?
She said that her five-year-old got sick, and that when he sat on his potty seat, his intestines came out. I dropped my screwdriver when I heard that.
a Frankenstein bike, made of different bits and pieces.
an anthology called Sudden Fiction because everything in it is short and it’ll make writing seem possible.
They’re all great books, but between now and the start of school, I have to figure out why they’re great.
I think I’m the ideal viewer for a show like this. After watching, I felt so lucky, like it’s a blessing just to be broke and have bad teeth.
The radio was so loud I couldn’t hear their argument, but at the end of it the one-handed man lowered the volume.
If you want the cops to come in Chicago, you really have to put the word gun in your sentence.
The door was locked, but she could hear the woman on the other side, cursing in one voice and defending herself in another.
I want this kid. If he were mine, though, he wouldn’t be so charming.
It looks beautiful, much better than it would have if he’d followed directions. It’s like the knobs are spreading good cheer to the comparatively sober white doors.
left three weeks ago to manage a hotel restaurant in Evanston. She told me that she loves it but misses throwing people out and calling the police.
“Well, if you’re free sometime, I’d like to take you out,” he said. Mary put her hands on her hips. “Are you kidding? The only place I want you to go is hell. Understand? You can go straight to hell.”
When I was a student, I always felt better when the teacher dressed up. It suggested that his or her job was a real one.
As for the briefcase, I look at it like a safe. Students see me putting their papers into it, and it makes them feel that their stories are valuable, though it is a drag to carry.
As for keys, it would never occur to me that mine were dirty, though they probably are. Filthy, actually.
As a child she shot a robin. Shocked at what she’d done, she tried to set it back in the tree, thinking it might spring to life once it was returned to its rightful place.
He wasn’t particularly articulate, but he believed in his cause and didn’t evade questions the way so many speakers before the Commonwealth Club do.
Man ordering at Butera’s deli/prepared-foods counter: “Hey, give me one of them chickens what spins around.”
M is for the Morbid things you showed me O is for the Other things you did T is for the Thousand bucks you owe me H is for the things you found I Hid E is for the Error of my caring R is for the Ranch house you call home Mother dear, I wish that you had shown me how to shave and how to use a comb.
I get the feeling I’m supposed to know who this person is, but I’ve been watching regularly for only four years so I’m at a loss.
Anatole Broyard on Jane and Paul Bowles in this week’s New York Times Book Review: “Their marriage was so open it yawned.”
“What are you, begging for money again, Ronald? Begging? Dogs beg, man.”
One of the T-shirts they’re selling pictures a handgun and the words SMITH & WESSON, THE BEST IN FEMININE PROTECTION.
“All my life I’ve been looking for Mr. Right, and here I’ve wound up with Mr. Wong,” he said, referring to his new boyfriend, James Wong, who is from Hong Kong.
Everyone says, “Thank God the eighties are over,” and I wonder if they say that about every decade.
“How will these change my life?” I asked. “Well, I guess that’s up to you,” he said.
Just as I started looking for the baseball bat I don’t have—that and my missing courage
At around five I called the mother of the deaf child whose birthday party I was supposed to go to.
I really felt like I was in prison yesterday.
I’m often talked to like this by taxi drivers, and it makes me think their cabs should be a different color than the others—that way women will know to avoid them.
skin that was too white even for a white person.
“Everything’s ‘lite’ now,” I said. “And the letters that spell it out are always yellow so our eyes won’t get fat looking at the label.”
“The only hard part was finding two sober doctors at the convention.”
I’m hoping that a year from now I’m not regretting my decision to leave Chicago.
One of the other acts last night performed a rap number with two other guys. Backstage he’d hogged the dressing room and made a big deal out of having a manager. Then he got out there and I saw that his fly was down.
In the background of the photo I took are the rotisserie chickens, the ones what spin around.
The white guy seemed a little crazy and I got the idea that the kid and his friends had provoked him into being just that much crazier.
One of her last ideas was for a recipe book called How to Cook for One While Drunk.
doesn’t pay attention when you talk to him, so Paul’s taken to throwing the term IRS into his sentences. Then it’s suddenly: “Hold on a second, what did you say?”
The neighborhood is too beautiful for me. I don’t deserve it. Or, OK, my block I deserve.
a ginger ale costs three dollars. Three dollars!
Rusty then told me that I wanted William Morris. They’re the talent agency. Philip Morris is the cigarette company.
my downstairs neighbors, who have been complaining about the sound of my footsteps. “Because of them I now go barefoot when I’m at home,” I told her. “And I tiptoe.” A woman sitting near us finished her meal and said to me on her way out, “Listen, you pay rent too. There’s no need for you to tiptoe around your own apartment.”
