Epiphanies

Relax, son, you’ll find another job. Only when she was antagonistic did she feel, as she said, “true to myself.” Help is sought for identifying new bodies. Oh, my, I guess I forgot to duck. In negotiating with one’s relatives, it is smarter to take the low road over the high. I no longer cared who I killed. It’s discipline and not innate intelligence that makes some people feel smart when others who are bright are doomed to strike everyone as amiable dunces. Isn’t this the beginning of a beautiful friendship?

Why am I getting so many laughs where I shouldn’t?

How could some like me solicit a prostitute—I have enough trouble calling the plumber.

Gold is where you find it and where you think it is.

Finally my body and myself have become one.

Since her eyes didn’t blink as she spoke, you wondered if she might be blind.

I must be setting drunk, she thought, because I’m quoting obscure poetry.

I want my hair back. The less you do to annoy your enemy can sometimes provoke him more. I could have been a contender. Why don’t you pretend to be a prostitute while I’ll play the role of an undercover cop.

I didn’t write any of this stuff; it’s all plagiarized.

She may have passed on, passed out, or just passed.

Having never seen her before, I doubt if I’ll ever see her again.

When he asked me to marry him, I must have answered “yes.” No other former lover’s name appeared in fifty years of address books. So intellectually overwhelmed, I peed in my bathing suit. Remember, she said as she walked out the door, the sexual revolution begins at home.

He was a fool to believe he could deliver superior culture to people who didn’t know what it was.

Words spoken by voices so monotonous were vanishing from her ears.

When she lifted her skirt, we could see what we already suspected—that she had no sex.

Lovers taught her what love was worth; the memory earned no one could take away. There are some things that money can’t buy and other things your parents’ money can’t buy for you, ever. Everything in my stories is true, even if they didn’t actually happen. Had I got any further away from him, I would have fallen off the continent and into the ocean. A discipline that can’t be rigorously observed and enforced is no discipline at all. I awoke exhausted from so much agitated dreaming. Whenever my son was given a cup of water, he would appear to drink from it for at least an hour. Regular napping can forestall senility, especially if taken while driving a car or flying an airplane. In this family the dead were not buried or cremated but traditionally caged and deposited in idle sanitation trucks. If “love” was the correct answer, the question must have been dumb. We are not your sheep, and you are not our shepherd and should never think you will be. Never admit that you’ve made a mistake. Once I looked in the toilet bowl I realized that I also inherited my father’s predisposition for oddly shaped turds.

This girl friend is so unbearable that no one should be surprised if I start smoking again.

I need a tailor to fix my tale.

Men so unattractive must necessarily greet you with expensive seductive gifts.

The most crucial decision my ex-wife made was that she wouldn’t be bothered with husbands anymore.

A year ago, unlike now, he would have kissed me goodbye.

Even as a teenager, he was way too tall to be a legitimate child of mine.

I’m a stranger here myself, and so is she.

Normal she isn’t now, never was, and probably never will be.

Why is it that we are never fully prepared for the important challenges in life—that we haven’t read enough to gotten enough advice.

He expired the same day as his visa to live in my country.

Even with a rifle in his hand, he couldn’t kill a rabbit.

So often I’ve asked the question of why I don’t write a novel.

Nothing in my life has been less inane than anything else.

Conquering one of the universe’s planets makes me want to conquer another.

It’s possible that the things in their house might belong to me.

No predicament is wore for a law officer than hearing two conflicting stories about a murder whose surest witnesses had been silenced.

Growing up with an addiction to heroin I forgot failure.

They arrested me not for a crime I committed but a crime the policeman imagined I might commit.

May I expect to enjoy death as much as I enjoy life?

She doesn’t have to think; she doesn’t need to learn. This is whom I love. Pigeon racing must be the most popular sport around here. Flies spread disease; keep yours closed. What he could never accept in a relationship was inattention. Greed can be someone’s principal gullibility. When I was a kid, such ideas were beyond our imaginations. Merely by entering a room, he made it seem smaller. She called me “a homosexual in good standing.” Poof, and once again I was no longer rich. I wonder if I’ll ever fall in love again and again. His lovers from years past found great comfort in first commentary and then socializing with one another. Hallelujah. Prudence is the principle I postponed. So much bad air arose between us that I felt like my wife was talking to me over a telephone. Winter’s kind of cold for outdoor swimming. What should one do when the box purchased at the grocery store contains only ten eggs? Some of these dreams I had in English; others, in Spanish. Imagination is a fictioner’s muscle that I don’t have. Whenever she kissed me, she always tasted fresh. She bore him thirteen children. For all my need to challenge bosses, I’ve never fallen off anyone’s payroll. Mysteries should never be solved or resolved.

Don’t think this disaster was my responsibility.

Was I talking to a live audience or were chairs upholstered to look like people?

His army, like God’s, was staffed mostly by angels.

I just can’t help imagining.

History doesn’t repeat itself as often as historians repeat one another.

I don’t like not trusting people.

Only a woman deeply in love can be awoken from sleep without complaint.

Now that I’ve had a baby I’ve changed my mind.

I did the best I could, even though my efforts apparently weren’t good enough.

[tab5]Somebody must have hurt you badly.[/tab5]

In the land of fat, someone so thin will inevitably command everyone’s attention.

These are some of the things that money, at least my money, can’t buy.

I wasn’t exactly lost until I was found.

For once he saw himself exactly as others see him.

His genius lay in hiding his genius from anyone who might be envious.