and only when that happens do you realise just how much silence there really is. Silence between lovers, when something really needs to be said; silence from a parent when a child needs some word...

How many times have you tried to talk to someone about something that matters to you, tried to get them to see it the way you do? And how many of those times have ended...

I wash with the can of water I set aside the night before, and eat whatever I put next to it. The washing is not strictly necessary but, again, I have always found it a...

I shut my eyes, turned away for a moment, and it came: a shiver of finality like the one when you decide, in your own mind, that you’re going to have to tell someone who...

You love because you want to need someone the way you did when you were a child, and have them need you too. You eat well because the intensity of taste reminds you of a...

I once met a woman who’d been in therapy… and it seemed like the big thing she’d learned was to ignore everything she thought in the first hour of the day. That’s when the negative...

When you’re born a light is switched on, a light which shines up through your life. As you get older the light still reaches you, sparkling as it comes up through your memories. And if...

There are times when life seems like a struggle where the only reward you get for hanging on is the chance to struggle some more.

You have to accept gifts occasionally, because there are some things you can’t give yourself

Everything feels like a badly designed computer game in which you fall into a pit that doesn’t kill you but from which there’s absolutely no escape. For a while you kick against the walls, but...

He couldn’t make the thought go anywhere, and soon zoned out into watching the television screen. It showed a crazy-haired old gent tramping around an undistinguished patch of countryside. He couldn’t remember selecting the channel,...

Cross-legged on the floor, you drink, hoping each mouthful will hurt; occasional flurries of spastic movement as you try to work out what to do with your hands. When everyone else is gone, your world...

When you’re a child the world forbears you, allows you your flights of imagination, your feelings of specialness. But sooner or later the privileges are withdrawn, and all you’re left with is a stunned bitterness...

Hey presto: time travel. You don’t need a time machine, it turns out, you just need a friend to laugh like a teenager. Chronology shivers.

I caught one last glimpse of her face, howling something at me.There were too many vowels in what she said, and they were in an unkind order. (“Substitutions”)

I guess, like some guy once said, if triangles invented a god, the chances are high it would have three sides.

Storyboarded by the West Coast’s finest, the ceiling celebrated the exploits of that most durable of action heroes—God.