Jeanne Marie Laskas
There's no telling how many guns we have in America - and when one gets used in a crime, no way for the cops to connect it to its owner. The only place the police can turn for help is a Kafkaesque agency in West Virginia, where, thanks to the gun lobby, computers are illegal and detective work is absurdly antiquated.Collection: Computers
'The melancholy of all things done' is the way Buzz once described his complete mental breakdown after returning from the moon. Booze. A couple of divorces. A psych ward. Broke. At one point he was selling cars.Collection: Car
Seagulls are a landfill nuisance because they fly away with food scraps and, as is their reputation, fight each other over them midflight, often losing them, and soon a lady has a half-eaten hamburger splashing into her backyard pool.Collection: Food
Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment. Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace. I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart.Collection: Being Alone
Solitude is a place where all is quiet - except the beating of your heart.Collection: Heart
You plant a garden one flower at a time. ... You write a book one word at a time, clean a closet one shelf at a time, run a marathon one step at a time. If you feel defeated by some large task, get your spade and dig the first hole.Collection: Running
I wanted to go to a place where I could think, really sink into my own imagination, or ride it, or drift along it, as in a balloon. The kind of place that probably all writers crave. The kind of place where the outside world is still and quiet and you get a chance to listen, to peer, to go inwardCollection: Thinking
But the writing life, it turned out, was difficult. It wasn't like you could sit down and flip a switch and crank on the ventilation system. Sometimes it didn't work, and sometimes you couldn't even find the switch.Collection: Writing
I think the call of the inward life starts here. Solitude helps you differentiate, define the borders of the self. Solitude helps you figure our where everybody else stops and you begins.Collection: Thinking
All peace-loving women shut up when they sense they have stepped onto Guy Turf. Guy Turf is a murky realm of ego and pride and chivalry and testosterone and heroism.Collection: Pride
Dreams are matters of the heart, things that pull you along as if they have hooked you someplace deep inside.Collection: Dream
Maybe the biggest problem with loneliness is that we walk around thinking we're the only ones suffering from it.Collection: Loneliness
Why do we think the people on stage are the only ones having fun?Collection: Fun
Forgiveness is the path to healing.Collection: Forgiveness
It's much better to be apart and wish you were together than to be together and wish you were apart.Collection: Wish
I was suppose to write a book about being a mom, to organize my thoughts into chapters and figure out a structure to hang them on, to make a lasting point, but somehow I decided to go ahead and become a mother instead.Collection: Mom
This is one of the take-home messages for me: we just walk around with this narrative in America that everybody wants to be rich and famous. That that’s why people do what they do. And you know, all through these pages you learn over and over again no, actually not even NFL cheerleaders are doing it for fame and fortune. There’s another motivation going on that is so pure and human. That to me was an eye-opener in a really wonderful way.Collection: Motivation