Invisible

She wasn’t curious about my past, she didn’t care about my opinions on literature or politics, and she had no interest in what I was studying. She simply took me for what I represented in her own mind—her choice of the moment, the physical being she desired—and every time I looked at her, I sensed that she was drinking me in, as if just having me t

By writing about myself in the first person, I had smothered myself and made myself invisible, had made it impossible for me to find the thing I was looking for. I needed to separate myself from myself, to step back and carve out some space between myself and my subject (which was myself), and therefore I returned to the beginning of Part Two and b

No, you have not forgotten the vow you took when you were twelve years old, the promise you made to yourself to live your life as an ethical human being. You want to be a good person, and every day you struggle to follow the oath you swore on your dead brother’s memory, but as you sit on the sofa watching your sister put her glass down on the table

Without Margot’s influence, without Margot’s body to instruct him in the intricate workings of his own heart, the story with Gwyn never would have been possible. Margot the fearless, Margot the silent, Margot the cipher. Yes, he very much wants to see her again, even if it is only for an innocent cup of coffee.

I loved my brother, Jim. When I was young, he was closer to me than anyone else. But I never slept with him. There was no grand experiment when we were kids. There was no incestuous affair in the summer of 1967. Yes, we lived together in that apartment for two months, but we had separate bedrooms, and there was never any sex. What Adam wrote was pu

A couple of months ago, he told me that if he died before he finished it, he wanted me to delete the text from his computer. Just wipe it out and forget it, he said, it’s of no importance. So you erased it? Of course I did. It’s a sin to disobey a person’s dying wish. Good, I thought to myself. Good that this woman won’t have to set eyes on Walker’

She calls your dick a variety show. She says it has multiple personalities. She claims she wants to adopt it.

I found it revolting and brilliant. My faux ancestor was a true samurai madman, wasn’t he? But at least he had the courage of his convictions. At least he knew what he stood for. How little the world has changed since eleven eighty-six, no matter how much we prefer to think otherwise. If the magazine gets off the ground, I think we should publish d

Anyway, Margot wasn’t talking about Vietnam. Yes, you might land in jail—or come home in a box two or three years from now—but she wasn’t thinking about the war. She believes you’re too good for this world, and because of that, the world will eventually crush you.

He confronts Mr. X and tells him that if he doesn’t quit the service immediately, he will have him arrested. These are the early sixties, remember. Capital punishment was still in force, and arrest means the guillotine for Mr. X. What can he do? He has no choice but to kill Mr. Y. Not with a bullet, of course. Not with a blow to the head or a knife