Why is “like a painting” seen as a compliment to the photographer?

You fail to avoid an old coworker on street, and just shake your head in greeting. It’s been that kind of year.

Figuratively speaking, he hit the windshield.
Figuratively speaking, it took weeks to clean him off.

Affliction and disease present the greatest advertising opportunity in the history of mankind.

I think about the beach cottage we always rented the first week or two of August. The photograph I took each day, hoping to preserve it all. The older couple we saw every year, who we never saw again. The roadside farm where we bought eggs, vegetables and topnecks. I wonder if the same books are on the shelves. I wonder if it has crumbled into the sea.

The symbol of the cross, which refers to the indivisible nature of the spirit and the incarnate existence it is nailed to.

The illusion of control is the source of untold human misery.

I don’t even look in the mirror—why would I take a selfie?

Dinner with an old friend and his younger wife. She is lovely and shy, and in compensation you are more outgoing than usual. As you launch into another story about your friend as you knew him in college, a look passes between them and he squeezes her hand. You realize that her reticence is actually boredom and that dinner is, for them, an obligation to be endured as quickly and painlessly as possible.

He drove past the old house on the way to the liquor store. The familiar bay window above the porch, where she used to sit waiting when he came home. Halfway down the block he had to pull over. He couldn’t go forward, and he couldn’t go back.

The billion flinches that rebuilt your face.

My aunt had a big old chunky hand-carved Dubrovnik set she picked up in Yugoslavia in the early 80s. Each piece was over 5 feet tall and moved around on a football field-sized board with an elaborately geared system of pulleys and levers. Tournaments were winner-take-all affairs, with the losers consigned to tower jail cells. In the event of a draw both players were executed.

The best thing about God was all the money.

Holding your breath and breathing at the same time. That’s no way to live.

One afternoon as he was stealing wifi behind the public library a dog ran by and licked his hand. Later he realized that in those 15 seconds he already loved the dog more than he would ever love himself.