An American Marriage

“You know my folks love you,” I said.

“They love you.”

“And I love you, so they love you. It’s basic math.”

Marriage is between two people. There is no studio audience

Love makes a place in your life, it makes a place for itself in your bed. Invisibly, it makes a place in your body, rerouting all your blood vessels, throbbing right alongside your heart. When it’s gone, nothing is whole again

Maybe that’s what innocence is, having no way to predict the pain of the future. When something happens that eclipses the imaginable, it changes a person. It’s like the difference between a raw egg and a scrambled egg. It’s the same thing, but it’s not the same at all. That’s the best way that I can put it. I look in the mirror and I know it’s me, but I can’t quite recognize myself

If you need a kid to keep you together, then how together are you?

I don’t want to jeopardize what I have with her over a dream that may not even fit me anymore

The vast generosity of women is a mysterious tunnel, and nobody knows where it leads. The writing on the walls spells out trick questions, and as a man, you must know that you cannot reason your way out. What unkindness showed me that she loved me by revealing the ways that she didn’t love me?

Someone always pays. Bullet don’t have nobody’s name on it, that’s what people say. I think the same is true for vengeance. Maybe even for love. It’s out there, random and deadly, like a tornado

Get on your knees when you talk to the Lord. Do not call yourself praying by lying in the bed thinking

Yes means yes and no means no, but what is the meaning of silence?