Tom Lake

first time is luxury, the second time privilege.

liked school fine but hated the gym and everything it stood for: team sports, pep rallies, vicious games of kickball, running in circles when it was too cold to go outside, formal dances, graduations.

You think the thing that hurt you is going to hurt you forever but it doesn’t.

Good marriages are never as interesting as bad affairs.

The rage dissipates along with the love, and all we’re left with is a story

The excitement in his voice when he talked about this kid was moving to me.

But they were long days, summer stock days. For me, it may as well have been a geological age.

She stayed with me after the rest of them had faded, maybe because we remember the people we hurt so much more clearly than the people who hurt us.

Neither of us could have said those words but we knew.

These were the things I used to think about, how with a slight shift in circumstances the outcome might have gone another way.