Do you mind?” she asked.“Mind what?”“While you were looking in the mirror I couldn’t help myself and I began fantasizing about you. And I figured if I was going to continue to fantasize about you, the only polite thing to do was to ask your permission. So now I’m doing the polite thing again and asking, ‘do you mind?’”“No, Nina. I don’t mind at all.”Then she leaned down and kissed him.

An optimist and a gentleman, I like that in my men.

We do not know if she collapsed because of overwhelming joy, extreme surprise, grave disappointment, or heavy anxiety that for the next months and years she would live with a human male, because in fact she had been honest when she told her girlfriends that she had given up on men, OR NONE OF THE ABOVE.

Maybe the price of forgetting that even in America, even in New York City, when a man from back home is talking, you better listen closely. (Dark City Lights).

The measure of a man, or a woman for that matter, is not so much how much they have done, but what they have overcome to do what they have done. My favorite poets have said:'Do not go gentle into that good night!'-Dylan Thomas'...Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance ran...'-Rudyard Kipling.

The sultan had enormous eyebrows, fibrous like angora wool. In moments of strife, his eyebrows twitched violently. Like now!His Excellency’s royal blood boiled. Once again another mesmerized American news anchor gushed about Dubai’s vision, hailing the imagination of the al-Maktoum family.“Where is this vision coming from?” probed Katie Couric.“Ignorant Yankee!” Sultan Mo-Mo’s British twang bore traces of Basil Fawlty.The sultan wanted to retch. Dubai’s showboating gave him indigestion, but he continued helping himself to more chips and fiery salsa, downing cold Guinness, smoking excellent hash, humming the theme song of The Wonder Years.

As the wind continued to howl and groan through her decaying body, she began to sing her story.

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

Mr Benz, the parapet of an Italian bridge doesn’t look like the proper place for you,” said Chase.

Becky was a weed.  Nobody ever wanted them taking over the bigger, prettier plants.  People went to all extremes to make them go away.  They sprayed poison, pulled until the roots gave way. They felt only like their garden was complete when every tendril was extirpated.  This was how she felt from birth.