Isen wasn't a two birds with one stone kind of guy. More like one stone, two birds, a rabbit, a fox, and maybe that deer will trip over the fox and we can get him, too.
How to put this feeling, this certainty, into something as limited as words?
Bleeding isn't optional for most of us.
People always wanted someone to blame, didn't they?
My feelings were hurt. Once I started I couldn't seem to let it go. Be strange if the person who matters most in the whole world couldn't hurt your feelings, wouldn't it?
He stared at the heart of his heart, the one woman in the world for him
Guilt always makes the other feelings worse.
Hating politics was like hating the weather. Pointless, since both were inevitable.
Fear and bigotry don’t need explaining. They simply are, like traffic jams and taxes.
Dogs make sense. They understand hierarchy and the need to cooperate. They come when you call them. A cat though—a cat will take your number and get back to you. Maybe. If he’s in a good mood.
Regrets are the most useless form of guilt. They always arrive too late to do any good.
Living does not undo life. Death does not, either. Life and death are not either-or.
It's okay to play turtle for a while, as long as you don't get too fond of your shell.
What?" She drew herself up, stern as a cat presented with the wrong food for dinner.
Humans were peculiar. They were by turns squeamish and appallingly violent.
Living is very serious, very real. It is also always a game. If we are wise, it is very real, very terrible, and very lovely, and a good deal of fun.
We don't go to the ocean for anything as simple as happiness, do we? We go there to feel alive. Like life, the ocean holds chance and change, grief and terror and beauty. It promises mortality, not peace.
I see you. I will be careful with the places that hurt.
I do love you. I think you know that, but just in case...I love you.
Surely a woman who picked a spot so close to the ocean didn't automatically hide from the rain.
She had of course, kept working. He liked to think she would have moved under the table to continue her task if a gun battle had broken out, but he wasn't sure.
You're so far off base this time you can't even see the base!
Religion turned some folks belligerent.
Marriage and especially the ceremony which announces it, the wedding... That is how we say to the world, 'These two are now a family, and with this joining our families are joined, too. And you had damned well better respect that.
Uh - do you want to do it outside? "Frequently. Oh, you meant the wedding. That, too.
But not all scars showed, did they?
This was what she needed… the quiet turning to the other in the middle of the night, the wordless meeting of lips, skin, breath. The trust, unfurling one pale petal at a time, that he would be there.
But when you slice truth too thin, you deceive.
Who wants to feel everything everyone else feels all the time?
Women were complicated creatures. Any man who thought he had one figured out simply wasn't paying attention.
Don't call the man a claustrophobe just because small spaces scare him. Right.