Ron Koertge

The guys can't take their eyes off Colleen... one of them... probably sees her just like I do, she's the gatekeeper to another world.

Little kids I don't mind. Every kid wants a pony. It's grown-ups that get my robe in a knot. Stop with the begging, okay? Adore me for a change. Or give thanks. I like gratitude. Or ask for guidance. But oh, no. It's always the pony.

Dark night of the soul,_ said Jesus, __appens to everybody sooner or later.

Margaux looks around the table; this is not working. All of a sudden she's thinking about a safe room, something she's only heard of but suddenly wants: water, oxygen, bulletproof door, dead bolts, a thousand books. Utterly quiet. Completely silent. No girls she barely knows in saggy leather pants, no girls in mesh strippers' gloves and jeans sanded thin as a bee's wing, and no girls who can't stay home one night a year because they are always and forever out. On their way to. Coming from.And then her heart open. Just a little, but it does. Because she remembers all that. How she felt then: the self-reproach, the utter confusion... That's why her heart opens. For those girls at the table who always feel baffled and sad, tender and malign, repulsive and desirable, innocent and contemptuous of innocence.So she cries. For them, mostly. For herself a little... everything hesitates. So that for a second there's no sound in the enormous room but that of Margaux sobbing.

No wonder I want to be Robert Mitchum: big, strong, super-cool, with those Freon eyes of his. That's who I was pretending to be a minute ago - Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past. - Ben

I'm not a big fan of inspiration. I'm too old to sit and wait for the muse to give me a little kiss... I write a lot, and I'm not afraid to make mistakes or to write badly. I can alsways fix something weak and dull. But I can't fix a blank page.

OMG. He's a gift shop, a lamb kebab with mint,/a solar panel poetry machine with biceps. He's the path/through the dark woods, the light on the page, a postcard/from the castle and a one-way ticket there. He's the most/astounding arrangement of molecules ever!/Just look at those tights! An honest-to-God prince at last.

You're a miracle, Walker. Your fingers are. Your toes are. Your crushing sadness and guilt are.

Statements make sense for somebody who needs advice. I__ not giving advice. I don__ instruct. At my best, I delight. That__ my job.