Jealousy
The voice trembled with glorious details.
It is difficult to tell any story about jealousy without the endings falling apart. Even the simplest tales--where one day you can't remember what it was, exactly, that made you go to all that trouble over a skunk like that--don't have the right ending.
The thing about jealousy that makes it so confusing is that it throws us out of civilizaton and beyond the bonds of humanity and allows us to believe that crimes like suicide and murder and spying are necessary.
Slumming at the Rodeo Gardens
In fact, he looked more like Robert Redford than Robert Redford, who's only about five-foot-ten at best.
They used to go for walks at sunset and scare the movie stars--they were so much more radiant.
"But she's so hideous, so horrible, so ghastly," Emily moaned, although she and Warren were my age, and really Wanda wasn't that old; she was just so patched together it made it worse than she was. If it had been Georgia O'Keeffe, it wouldn't have been so bad.
Free Tibet
"Don't spend any time at all," she said, "with people who don't love you. If you find yourself being attracted across a crowded room, leave."
I never knew how she managed to keep track of looking so great while being such a wonderful artist, but she could. To me, it seemed a full-time occupation, knowing where those red-sequined outfits were.
...his green eyes sharply centered on the present, his willingness to be present at any human event, be it wedding, breakfast, tomato harvesting, or death.
Expensive Regrets
...making stars out of sows' ears...
Hailey looked like a smudged charcoal drawing of Kate done by someone with no talent.
Or at least she never looked kind and beautiful like Kate. She looked mean and stylish, as if she were supposed to be beautiful and you should take her word for it.
Tangloand
Nobody here ever heard of a "Bo-da" meeting, nobody ever heard of suicide hotlines, nobody ever heard of any self-help program--wallowing in self-pity with only a touch of stylish irony was the only idea.
And I loved it for its fearless wrongness.
Nobody "got on with their life" in Tango Argentino; they preferred suffering in hell for all eternity.
Coco
After all, she was a creation, and if you were in for a penny with her, you were in for a pound.
You know certain religions have a word for what happens when two people shouldn't get together; in Hinduism they just out and out say it--"overexcitement," it's called.
Black Swans
Then she wore Navajo jewelry as though trying to make it up to you. But in my opinion, turquoise is no excuse for no mascara.
By the time the gin fizzes arrived, there was too much potential high drama in my bloodstream for the gin to taste like anything but poison.
I was left thinking about the dinner party which had been unsuccessful to say the least (the only memorable moment was when an artist friend of mind spilled this crystal gravy dish full of mayonnaise on the tablecloth, and everyone was so stoned they thought it looked beautiful).
And so, we became friends, after all, thank God, because in spite of everything, he was still one of the few people who could make me laugh, even though he never looked into my eyes in the same innocent way again. A plight I didn't think I deserved, but then he had a right to lost innocence. I just wish it hadn't been me he blamed.