Our army is composed of the scum of the earth - the mere scum of the earth.
I think it's more interesting if you go all the way with the world you have, and really look at it, and push it to an even more extreme extreme.
. . . we had once called out hello into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond.
The idea that you might end up in a job that doesn't allow you to be who you are, over the course of a lifetime, is still one of the most chilling nightmares to me. It's a good metaphor for fears I have about losing my soul in some accidental, mundane way. So, to me, these jobs that my characters have are very loaded. They immediately suggest a complex character to me, a woman who is, say, a secretary, but also a vigilante on behalf of her own soul.
Most of life is offline, and I think it always will be; eating and aching and sleeping and loving happen in the body. But it's not impossible to imagine losing my appetite for those things; they aren't always easy, and they take so much time. In twenty years I'd be interviewing air and water and heat just to remember they mattered.
People who would not be using the word gender or thinking about gayness or trans-ness may actually, without even thinking about it, be not their own gender in their inner world. I think that's actually so normal, because female sexuality is sold to all of us. It doesn't just reach the eyes of men. You might not care about the idea of boobs or jugs or whatever, but it could impact your inner sexual life.
He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done. I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it into his lungs.
One cannot resist the lure of Africa.
I also believe on a practical level, if you're taking time away from people, besides entertaining them, I think it's important that there's something to react to.
I don't like to discuss my marriage, but I will tell you something which may sound corny but which happens to be true. I have steak at home. Why should I go out for hamburger?
Very often people give to others to control them and dominant them.