Peter Elbow Quotes

But still I feel I waste a lot of time leaning on my elbow and thinking to myself, "alright sucker, now what?

What’s a meet-cute?” Peter’s lying on his side now, his head propped up on his elbow. He looks so adorable I could pinch his cheeks, but I refrain from saying so. His head is big enough as it is. “A meet-cute is when the hero and heroine meet for the very first time, and it’s always in a charming way. It’s how you know they’re going to end up together. The cuter the better.

Brother Cadfael knew better than to be in a hurry, where souls were concerned. There was plenty of elbow-room in eternity.

The deepest dependency is not of students upon teachers, but of teachers upon students.

Holl?” Seth turned over. “Where you going?” “Home. Sorry. Go back to sleep.” I pulled on my sweatpants. “But we have all night.” He pushed to his elbows. “I know. I can’t.” My voice sounded hoarse, hollow. “I don’t feel good. I’m sorry.” I lurched for the door. I needed to get out, get away. As far away from here as possible. She was in me, in my blood, invading every cell in my body. She was the one I wanted. She was the one I saw, felt, desired. This was wrong. He was wrong. It was all so wrong. (Chapter. 12)

The real reason that language so often carries magic is because humans have trouble not ascribing special power to it. Language makes so many things happen. If we say or write words in a certain way, we can make people see things that aren’t there and feel things they have no reason to feel—all this with mere mouth sounds or paper marks.

Hank Peters woke up in the early hours of the next morning from a dream of huge rats crawling out of an open grave, a grave which held the green and rotting body of Hubie Marsten, with a frayed length of manila hemp around his neck. Peters lay propped on his elbows, breathing heavily, naked torso slicked with sweat, and when his wife touched his arm he screamed aloud. EIGHT

Joan and the Judge had gone to a Sunday brunch with friends. They would be home shortly, in good spirits probably, unless of course they saw their boy frozen to the mailbox. So Claire and Maggie had no choice. They each grabbed a shoulder and hooked under an elbow and yanked suddenly without warning. Scotty brought his hands quickly to his mouth. All three stood quietly staring at the miniature pink circle of flesh still stuck on the mailbox. "It looks like a little pizza," said Maggie without thinking.

writing stories, scenes, and portraits is a very inductive process and will lead you to new insights and new points of view you couldn’t reach by reasoning alone.

One thinks about modern academics, especially philosophers and sociologists. Their language is often voiceless and without power because it is so utterly cut off from experience and things. There is no sense of words carrying experiences, only of reflecting relationships between other words or between "concepts." There is no sense of an actual self seeing a thing or having an experience... Sociology—by its very nature?—seems to be an enterprise whose practitioners cut themselves off from experience and things and deal entirely with categories about categories. As a result sociologists, more even than writers in other disciplines, often write language which has utterly died

The real problem is writers’ refusal to take full and open responsibility for what they are saying. If a writer is willing to say, in effect, “I’m me, I’m saying this, and I’m saying it to you,” his words will not just have more life in them, they will also be clearer and more coherent. The

How’s things, man?” The black man extended his hand for a handshake. Mathematical formulae were jotted on the sleeve of his shirt, right up to the elbow. “Very good,” said Peter. It had never occurred to him before that dark-skinned people didn’t have the option of jotting numbers on their skin. You learned something new about human diversity every day.

Do you really think my feet smell?” I don’t. I love the way he smells after a lacrosse game--like sweat and grass and him. But I love to tease, to see that unsure look cross his face for just half a beat. “Well, I mean, on game days…” I say. Then Peter attacks me again, and we’re wrestling around, laughing, when Kitty walks in, balancing a tray with a cheese sandwich and a glass of orange juice. “Take it upstairs,” she says, sitting down on the floor. “This is a public area.” Disentangling myself, I give her a glare. “We aren’t doing anything private, Katherine.” “Your sister says my feet stink,” Peter says, pointing his foot in her direction. “She’s lying, isn’t she?” She deflects it with a pop of her elbow. “I’m not smelling your foot.” She shudders. “You guys are kinky.” I yelp and throw a pillow at her. She gasps. “You’re lucky you didn’t knock over my juice! Daddy will kill you if you mess up the rug again.” Pointedly she says, “Remember the nail-polish-remover incident?” Peter ruffles my hair. “Clumsy Lara Jean.” I shove him away from me. “I’m not clumsy. You’re the one who tripped over his own feet trying to get to the pizza the other night at Gabe’s.” Kitty bursts into giggles and Peter throws a pillow at her. “You guys need to stop ganging up on me!” he yells.

They had such a good meet-cute,” I croak. “What’s a meet-cute?” Peter’s lying on his side now, his head propped up on his elbow. He looks so adorable I could pinch his cheeks, but I refrain from saying so. His head is big enough as it is. “A meet-cute is when the hero and heroine meet for the very first time, and it’s always in a charming way. It’s how you know they’re going to end up together. The cuter the better.” “Like in Terminator, when Reese saves Sarah Connor from the Terminator and he says, ‘Come with me if you want to live.’ Freaking amazing line.” “I mean, sure, I guess that’s technically a meet-cute…I was thinking more like It Happened One Night. We should add that to our list.” “Is that in color or black-and-white?” “Black-and-white.” Peter groans and falls back against the couch cushions. “It’s too bad we don’t have a meet-cute,” I muse. “You jumped me in the hallway at school. I think that’s pretty cute.” “But we already knew each other, so it doesn’t really count.” I frown. “We don’t even remember how we met. How sad.” “I remember meeting you for the first time.” “Nuh-uh. Liar!” “Hey just because you don’t remember something doesn’t mean I don’t. I remember a lot of things.” “Okay, so how did we meet?” I challenge. I’m sure that whatever comes out of his mouth next will be a lie. Peter opens his mouth, then snaps it shut. “I’m not telling.” “See! You just can’t think of anything.” “No, you don’t deserve to know, because you don’t believe me.” I roll my eyes. “So full of it.

I've come to suspect that whenever any ability is difficult to learn and rarely performed well, it's probably because contraries are called for - patting the head and rubbing the belly. Thus, good writing is hard because it means trying to be creative and critical; good teaching is hard because it means trying to be ally and adversary of students; good evaluation is hard because it means trying to be subjective and objective; good intelligence is rare because it means trying to be intuitive and logical.

You do a girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men, maybe. Bless you, child, when you set out to thread a needle don’t hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hold the needle still and poke the thread at it; that’s the way a woman most always does, but a man always does t’other way. And when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tiptoe and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot. Throw stiff-armed from the shoulder, like there was a pivot there for it to turn on, like a girl; not from the wrist and elbow, with your arm out to one side, like a boy. And, mind you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap she throws her knees apart; she don’t clap them together, the way you did when you catched the lump of lead. Why, I spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle; and I contrived the other things just to make certain. Now trot along to your uncle, Sarah Mary Williams George Elexander Peters, and if you get into trouble you send word to Mrs. Judith Loftus, which is me, and I’ll do what I can to get you out of it.

It’s always the common places that turn out to be holy, isn’t it? A burning bush in that same familiar field where Moses punched the clock every day for forty years. The sitting room where Esther presented her request to the king. The upstairs windowsill where Daniel rested his elbows while he defiantly prayed against royal law. The depressed old barn of a poor farmer on the outskirts of Bethlehem. The beach that Peter had docked at since he was a boy. The duplex on a seedy street in Jerusalem where the wind started blowing inside. It only takes a moment to turn an everyday place into holy ground.

I’m sipping cranberry-and-ginger-ale punch and talking to Aunt D. about her divorce when Peter Kavinsky walks in wearing a hunter-green sweater with a button-down shirt underneath, carrying a Christmas tin. I almost choke on my punch. Kitty spots him when I do. “You came!” she cries. She runs right into his arms, and he puts down the cookie tin and picks her up and throws her around. When he sets her down, she takes him by the hand and over to the buffet table, where I’m busying myself rearranging the cookie plate. “Look what Peter brought,” she says, pushing him forward. He hands me the cookie tin. “Here. Fruitcake cookies my mom made.” “What are you doing here?” I whisper accusingly. “The kid invited me.” He jerks his head toward Kitty, who has conveniently run back over to the puppy. Josh is standing up now, looking over at us with a frown on his face. “We need to talk.” So now he wants to talk. Well, too late. “We don’t have anything to talk about.” Peter takes me by the elbow and I try to shake him off, but he won’t let go. He steers me into the kitchen. “I want you to make up an excuse to Kitty and leave,” I say. “And you can take your fruitcake cookies with you.” “First tell me why you’re so pissed at me.” “Because!” I burst out. “Everyone is saying how we had sex in the hot tub and I’m a slut and you don’t even care!” “I told the guys we didn’t!” “Did you? Did you tell them that all we did was kiss and that’s all we’ve ever done?” Peter hesitates, and I go on. “Or did you say, ‘Guys, we didn’t have sex in the hot tub,’ wink wink, nudge nudge.

WRITING GUIDES AND REFERENCES: A SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY The Artful Edit, by Susan Bell (Norton) The Art of Time in Memoir, by Sven Birkerts (Graywolf Press) The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard (Harper & Row) Writing with Power, by Peter Elbow (Oxford University Press) Writing Creative Nonfiction, edited by Carolyn Forché and Philip Gerard (Story Press) Tough, Sweet and Stuffy, by Walker Gibson (Indiana University Press) The Situation and the Story, by Vivian Gornick (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Intimate Journalism: The Art and Craft of Reporting Everyday Life, by Walt Harrington (Sage) On Writing, by Stephen King (Scribner) Telling True Stories, edited by Mark Kramer and Wendy Call (Plume) Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott (Pantheon) The Forest for the Trees, by Betsy Lerner (Riverhead) Unless It Moves the Human Heart, by Roger Rosenblatt (Ecco) The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White (Macmillan) Clear and Simple as the Truth, by Francis-Noel Thomas and Mark Turner (Princeton University Press) Word Court, by Barbara Wallraff (Harcourt) Style, by Joseph M. Williams and Gregory G. Colomb (Longman) On Writing Well, by William Zinsser (Harper & Row) The Chicago Manual of Style, by University of Chicago Press staff (University of Chicago Press) Modern English Usage, by H. W. Fowler, revised edition by Sir Ernest Gowers (Oxford University Press) Modern American Usage, by Wilson Follett (Hill and Wang) Words into Type, by Marjorie E. Skillin and Robert M. Gay (Prentice-Hall) To CHRIS, SAMMY, NICK, AND MADDIE, AND TO TOMMY, JAMIE, THEODORE, AND PENNY

We’re moving up in the line, and I realize I’m nervous, which is strange, because this is Peter. But he’s also a different Peter, and I’m a different Lara Jean, because this is a date, an actual date. Just to make conversation, I ask, “So, when you go to the movies are you more of a chocolate kind of candy or a gummy kind of candy?” “Neither. All I want is popcorn.” “Then we’re doomed! You’re neither, and I’m either or all of the above.” We get to the cashier and I start fishing around for my wallet. Peter laughs. “You think I’m going to make a girl pay on her first date?” He puffs out his chest and says to the cashier, “Can we have one medium popcorn with butter, and can you later the butter? And a Sour Patch Kids and a box of Milk Duds. And one small Cherry Coke.” “How did you know that was what I wanted?” “I pay a lot better attention than you think, Covey.” Peter slings his arm around my shoulders with a self-satisfied smirk, and he accidentally hits my right boob. “Ow!” He laughs an embarrassed laugh. “Whoops. Sorry. Are you okay?” I give him a hard elbow to the side, and he’s still laughing as we walk into the theater.

So who else?” “Who else what?” With his mouth full, he says, “Who else got letters?” “Um, that’s really private.” I shake my head at him, like Wow, how rude. “What? I’m just curious.” Peter dips another fry into my little ramekin of ketchup. Smirking, he says, “Come on, don’t be shy. You can tell me. I know I’m number one, obviously. But I want to hear who else made the cut.” He’s practically flexing, he’s so sure of himself. Fine, if he wants to know so bad, I’ll tell him. “Josh, you--” “Obviously.” “Kenny.” Peter snorts. “Kenny? Who’s he?” I prop my elbows up on the table and rest my chin on my hands. “A boy I met at church camp. He was the best swimmer of the whole boys’ side. He saved a drowning kid once. He swam out to the middle of the lake before the lifeguards even noticed anything was wrong.” “So what’d he say when he got the letter?” “Nothing. It was sent back return to sender.” “Okay, who’s next?” I take a bite of sandwich. “Lucas Krapf.” “He’s gay,” Peter says. “He’s not gay!” “Dude, quit dreaming. The kid is gay. He wore an ascot to school yesterday.” “I’m sure he was wearing it ironically. Besides, wearing an ascot doesn’t make someone gay.” I give him a look like Wow, so homophobic. “Hey, don’t give me that look,” he objects. “My favorite uncle’s gay as hell. I bet you fifty bucks that if I showed my uncle Eddie a picture of Lucas, he’d confirm it in half a second.” “Just because Lucas appreciates fashion, that doesn’t make him gay.” Peter opens his mouth to argue but I lift up a hand to quiet him. “All it means is he’s more of a city guy in the midst of all this…this boring suburbia. I bet you he ends up going to NYU or some other place in New York. He could be a TV actor. He’s got that look, you know. Svelte with fine-boned features. Very sensitive features. He looks like…like an angel.” “So what did Angel Boy say about the letter, then?” “Nothing…I’m sure because he’s a gentleman and didn’t want to embarrass me by bringing it up.” I give him a meaningful look. Unlike some people is what I’m saying with my eyes. Peter rolls his eyes. “All right, all right. Whatever, I don’t care.

During homeroom, before first period, I start a bucket list in one of my notebooks. First on the list? 1) Eat in the cafeteria. Sit with people. TALK TO THEM. 2) And…that’s all I can come up with for now. But this is good. One task to work on. No distractions. I can do this. When my lunch period rolls around, I forgo the safety of my bag lunch and the computer lab and slip into the pizza line, wielding my very own tray of semi-edible fare for the first time in years. “A truly remarkable sight.” Jensen cuts into line beside me, sliding his tray next to mine on the ledge in front of us. He lifts his hands and frames me with his fingers, like he’s shooting a movie. “In search of food, the elusive creature emerges from her den and tries her luck at the watering hole." I shake my head, smiling, moving down the line. “Wow, Peters. I never knew you were such a huge Animal Planet fan.” “I’m a fan of all things nature. Birds. Bees. The like.” He grabs two pudding cups and drops one on my tray. “Pandas?” I say. “How did you know? The panda is my spirit animal.” “Oh, good, because Gran has this great pattern for an embroidered panda cardigan. It would look amazing on you.” “Um, yeah, I know. It was on my Christmas list, but Santa totally stiffed me." I laugh as I grab a carton of milk. So does he. He leans in closer. “Come sit with me.” “At the jock table? Are you kidding?” I hand the cashier my lunch card. Jensen squints his eyes in the direction of his friends. “We’re skinny-ass basketball players, Wayfare. We don’t really scream jock.” “Meatheads, then?” “I believe the correct term is Athletic Types.” We step out from the line and scan the room. “So where were you planning on sitting?" “I was thinking Grady and Marco were my safest bet.” “The nerd table?” I gesture to myself, especially my glasses. “I figure my natural camouflage will help me blend, yo.” He laughs, his honey-blond hair falling in front of his eyes. “And hey,” I say, nudging him with my elbow, “last I heard, Peters was cool with nerdy.” He claps me gently on the back. “Good luck, Wayfare. I’m pulling for ya.

And then the finale, its four modest notes. Do, re, fa, mi: half a jumbled scale. Too simple to be called invented. But the thing spills out into the world like one of those African antelopes that fall from the womb, still wet with afterbirth but already running. Young Peter props up on his elbows, ambushed by a memory from the future. The shuffled half scale gathers mass; it sucks up other melodies into its gravity. Tunes and countertunes split off and replicate, chasing each other in a cosmic game of tag. At two minutes, a trapdoor opens beneath the boy. The first floor of the house dissolves above a gaping hole. Boy, stereo, speaker boxes, the love seat he sits on: all hang in place, floating on the gusher of sonority pouring into the room. […] All he wants to do forever is to take the magnificent timepiece apart and put its meshed gears back together again. To recover that feeling of being clear, present, here, various and vibrant, as huge and noble as an outer planet.

I know your given name is Katherine. So why does everyone call you Kitty?” He pulled a bag of dried apple slices from his medical bag. With a few pieces in his hand, he gestured to Kitty but she shook her head to decline.  She sat straight. “Do you not know?” Holding a piece of apple up to his mouth, Nathaniel prepared for a bite. “I’m waiting.” He flicked the morsel in his mouth and began to chew. She grinned and played with the printed floral fabric of her skirt. “Father was in his study reviewing materials one evening, when Peter—” Nathaniel raised his hand, his expression tender. “You mean your older brother... the one you lost.” “Aye.” The pain of her brother’s death, though always fresh, receded as she prepared to share how her dear sibling had given her such a name. She brushed a blade of grass from her knee. “Peter must have been about two and a half years old, perhaps older. Father said Peter came rushing in babbling something about a kitty and pointing vigorously in the direction of the kitchen.”  Kitty imitated the motion, making Nathaniel’s handsome smile widen. “I’m intrigued. Continue.” “Father followed Peter toward the kitchen where, inside the barrel of flour and covered from top to toe was none other than the baby of the family. So, from that moment on Peter, Father, Mother and Liza all called me Kitty.” Nathaniel pelted the air with that buoyant laugh Kitty loved. “How did you get into the barrel without your mother’s notice?” “’Tis a mystery.” He leaned back onto the grass and rested against his elbow, nodding with mock disapproval. “So you were a wily child then?” “Am I not wily now?” “I should say so. And you’ve enjoyed getting your fingers messy in the kitchen ever since.” “Aye, I have.” He

When this happens in our bodies, this force dissipation (as it’s called) leaks out via the path of least resistance—typically via joints like knees, elbows, and shoulders, and/or the spine, any or all of which will give out at some point. Joint injuries are almost always the result of this kind of energy leak.

Most people start shaping and revising what they have written once they get one pretty good idea. "Yes that's it, now I've figured out what I want to say." That's terrible. You shouldn't start revising till you have more good stuff than you can use. (And it won't take long to get it if you make your early writing into a free brainstorming session.) That way you'll have to be critical and throw away genuinely good stuff just to trim your piece down to the right length.

If you are trying to be inventive and come up with lots of interesting new ideas, it's usually the worst thing in the world if someone comes along and starts being critical. Thus, the power of brainstorming: no one is allowed to criticize any idea or suggestion that is offered—no matter how stupid, impractical, or useless it seems. You can't get the good ones and the fruitful interaction among the odd ones unless you welcome the terrible ones.

If you separate the writing process into two stages, you can exploit these opposing muscles one at a time: first be loose and accepting as you do fast early writing; then be critically toughminded as you revise what you have produced. What you'll discover is that these two skills used alternately don't undermine each other at all, they enhance each other.

Most of my own progress in learning to write has come from my gradually learning to listen more carefully to what I haven't yet managed to get into words — and respecting the idea that I know more than I can say. say.

Ryan had read half his book, listened to all his music, eaten two packets of biscuits and an apple, played seventy-two games of Donkey Kong, completing all the levels, and counted every Italian sports car they’d passed in the last hundred miles. Twenty-four hours of groggy sticky travel, twenty-four hours stuck in this overheated tin can on wheels, and he finally knew what it was like to be utterly and unendingly bored. He propped an elbow on the car window frame and stuck his arm out of the opening. Combing his hand through the slipstream, he let the cool air tickle his fingers as he watched the countryside stream past.

Peter looked uncomfortable. Such affection in public was not appropriate. People could get the wrong idea. Jesus pulled away from Susanna and looked at the other woman. “And who is your other friend?” “Joanna.” Mary then lowered her voice with a quick look around. “She is the wife of Chuza, Herod Antipas’ steward.” Jesus’s brow raised with interest. Peter and Simon looked around to see if they were being watched. Joanna said, “I know you must be wary of me. But I assure you, I have been following your travels and teachings, and I believe you are Messiah.” Peter looked around again to see who was watching them. “She has spies.” Simon added, “Antipas killed John the Baptizer.” She tried to allay their fears, “Herod does not know of my interests. My own husband does not know. I’ve told no one, and my servants are believers in you as well.” “He is contagious,” said Simon. He noticed that Mary chuckled at his remark. Joanna said, “I agree with Jesus. Herod is a fox.” The Greek word she used for “fox” was feminine, which was an insulting political reference to the manipulation of Herod by his own wife. Simon elbowed Peter and said to him teasingly, “She has attentive spies.” Another chuckle from Mary, another lifted smile from Simon. Joanna said, “I have money, earmarked for charity, that I have put aside to help you and your disciples. Pay for food, lodgings, fresh clothes.” “I will need a donkey when we get to Jerusalem,” said Jesus thoughtfully. “I can buy you fifty donkeys.

Certainly for many people the most intense music is the music of the spheres—the perception of built-in coherence in nature—and that is the music of pure ideas. We

FOOD FOR ME MY SERVANTS MY MORTALS MY FOOD MY PREY Veek threw her hands over her ears and Nate wrapped his arms around her head and shoulders. He wasn’t sure where the words were coming from. Was he hearing them over the wind or feeling the vibration of them in his gut? There was blood on his arm. A shard of window stuck out near his elbow.

She leaned forward and put her arms around me. Sometimes it used to make me prickly when she did that, and I'd turn into a bag of knees and elbows. . .

The real reason that language so often carries magic is because humans have trouble not ascribing special power to it.

Where, Bredon asked himself, did the money come from that was to be spent so variously and so lavishly? If this hell’s-dance of spending and saving were to stop for a moment, what would happen? If all the advertising in the world were to shut down tomorrow, would people still go on buying more soap, eating more apples, giving their children more vitamins, roughage, milk, olive oil, scooters and laxatives, learning more languages by gramophone, hearing more virtuosos by radio, re-decorating their houses, refreshing themselves with more non-alcoholic thirst-quenchers, cooking more new, appetizing dishes, affording themselves that little extra touch which means so much? Or would the whole desperate whirligig slow down, and the exhausted public relapse upon plain grub and elbow-grease? He did not know. Like all rich men, he had never before paid any attention to advertisements. He had never realized the enormous commercial importance of the comparatively poor. Not on the wealthy, who buy only what they want when they want it, was the vast superstructure of industry founded and built up, but on those who, aching for a luxury beyond their reach and for a leisure for ever denied them, could be bullied or wheedled into spending their few hardly won shillings on whatever might give them, if only for a moment, a leisured and luxurious illusion. Phantasmagoria

I’m Peter, this is-” “No,” Max said loudly as he elbowed his way between our new friends and us. “Not happening,” Caleb agreed forcefully,

Where do I go to get a director? I’ve never hired one in my life. I’ve only starred in three films. I said, “Marty, I don’t know how to interview anybody. This is completely crazy.” He said, “No, you’ve got to do it. That’s it.” So now I had to go to California. I was very unhappy. I went to San Francisco to talk to Peter Yates, who made Bullitt. I went to LA to talk to Mark Rydell. I wound up in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, in what I called the Pompous Room—I didn’t know any other name for it. I’m talking to some guy who’s sort of quiet like me, who’s young and just starting out, but he’s hot off an art film of sorts called Mean Streets, which I hadn’t seen yet, and I’m too busy looking at the tables with red and green felt and the wallpaper with ducks and peacocks on them to understand that I’m speaking to one of our finest filmmakers ever, Martin Scorsese. I was just dizzy and I don’t think we hardly said a word to each other. I guess he must have known I didn’t know my ass from my elbow when it came to hiring a director.

I knocked one of Tony's elbows out from under him so that his chin splashed into his coffee cup, and that ended that discussion.

There goes your pretty face,” hisses Peter. “Oh, wait. You don’t have one.” I recover my balance and walk toward Al. He nods at me. I try to smile encouragingly, but I can’t manage it. I stand in front of the board, and my head doesn’t even reach the center of the target, but it doesn’t matter. I look at Four’s knives: one in his right hand, two in his left hand. My throat is dry. I try to swallow, and then look at Four. He is never sloppy. He won’t hit me. I’ll be fine. I tip my chin up. I will not flinch. If I flinch, I prove to Eric that this is not as easy as I said it was; I prove that I’m a coward. “If you flinch,” Four says, slowly, carefully, “Al takes your place. Understand?” I nod. Four’s eyes are still on mine when he lifts his hand, pulls his elbow back, and throws the knife. It is just a flash in the air, and then I hear a thud. The knife is buried in the board, half a foot away from my cheek. I close my eyes. Thank God. “You about done, Stiff?” asks Four. I remember Al’s wide eyes and his quiet sobs at night and shake my head. “No.” “Eyes open, then.” He taps the spot between his eyebrows. I stare at him, pressing my hands to my sides so no one can see them shake. He passes a knife from his left hand to his right hand, and I see nothing but his eyes as the second knife hits the target above my head. This one is closer than the last one—I feel it hovering over my skull. “Come on, Stiff,” he says. “Let someone else stand there and take it.” Why is he trying to goad me into giving up? Does he want me to fail? “Shut up, Four!” I hold my breath as he turns the last knife in his hand. I see a glint in his eyes as he pulls his arm back and lets the knife fly. It comes straight at me, spinning, blade over handle. My body goes rigid. This time, when it hits the board, my ear stings, and blood tickles my skin. I touch my ear. He nicked it. And judging by the look he gives me, he did it on purpose. “I would love to stay and see if the rest of you are as daring as she is,” says Eric, his voice smooth, “but I think that’s enough for today.” He squeezes my shoulder. His fingers feel dry and cold, and the look he gives me claims me, like he’s taking ownership of what I did. I don’t return Eric’s smile. What I did had nothing to do with him. “I should keep my eye on you,” he adds.

No woman, believe me, will want to rub elbows with the dead woman you keep in your heart.” (CG 254/P 9:1127) Félix, she understands, cannot detach himself from the dead Henriette. And also from himself: she accuses him of an incurable egotism. If he continues to unburden himself to other women as he has to her, they will perceive “the aridity of your heart, and you will always be unhappy

Peter was leaning his elbows on the end of the table, a piece of bread smeared with peanut butter in his hands, chewing wide eyed with his mouth open. Wally tried not to look. Whenever Wally was really hungry at school and didn’t think he could hold out until noon, he thought about the way half-chewed bread and peanut butter looked in Peter’s mouth, and he wasn’t hungry anymore.

measured his own length in the Flemish mud and skidded forward, all elbows and knees; then he jerked erect again, breathless, desperate and angered, at the heart of a sudden

References Baker, Nicholson. U and I: A True Story. New York: Random House, 1991. Didion, Joan. “On Keeping a Notebook,” in Slouching toward Bethlehem. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968. Dunlap, Louise. Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change Writing. Oakland: New Village Press, 2007. Elbow, Peter. Writing with Power. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones. Boston: Shambala, 1996. Junker, Howard, ed. The Writer’s Notebook. San Francisco: HarperCollins West, 1995. Lu Chi. Wen Fu: The Art of Writing. Translated by Sam Hamill. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2000.

I must thank those champions of free-writing—Louise Dunlap, Peter Elbow, Natalie Goldberg—for giving me the tool that allowed me to write.