Big Thoughts, Human-sized Canvas
“Consider legend and myth,” Goninan said.
“You mean how they’re all based on some kernel of truth, no matter how obscure?” Clare asked.
“In part. Legend and myth are what we use to describe…”
“Today, children are given toys to look up to as heroic figures. Rock performers and movie stars form their pantheon – an amoral pantheon where the performer who eloquently speaks out against drugs is arrested two…”
We are shaped by our experiences, and no matter where those experiences occur, they are still valid. The things you have seen and done don’t lose their resonance because you can only hold them in your memory. In that sense there is little difference between…
Without Izzy being there every day, the emptiness I’ve always carried inside me expanded until it threatened to swallow me whole.
So I thought I’d try therapy. Sophie’s been through it. And Wendy. Even Christy, though lord knows…
I was so surprised that I almost dropped my flute. I didn’t – wouldn’t that give Mom something to yell at me for if I broke it! – but I did muddle the tune. As soon as the music faltered – just like that, as though the only thing that was keeping her in this world was that tune – she…
He looks at me with those mismatched eyes of his, pretending he’s as guileless as a newborn babe, but while my father might have made some mistakes in his life, raising me to be stupid wasn’t one of…
Their sense of community had come apart long before Kathy’s death, but for him, Kathy’s dying had been the final stage of the story collection they’d started when they all first came together in the early seventies.
Most of them still…
I get letters from people telling me how much they enjoy my stories, how much the stories have helped them, allowing them to see the hope that’s still out there in that big old world where most of us spend our days. They…
Even when they were brought over to this world through Izzy’s art, they lived in secret, in their own hidden world. Izzy could find them – or they found her. I could see them, because I knew where to look. I suppose other people…
“I know that, Tony. But maybe I’m just not cut out for making a stand. I came back here to exorcise old ghosts, not take part in a gangster shoot-out.”
Valenti nodded. “Well, it’s your decision, Frankie. Either…”
It wasn’t as though her parents approved, but then they had never approved of anything she did. Sometimes she wondered which was worse: having no family like Kathy, or having such a one as her own.
“It’s probably just a joke…”
Claire nodded in understanding.
“Now,” Goninan said, imagine a book that literally is different for each person who reads it.”
Janey frowned. “Do you men that the story I’m reading in…”
