J is for Judgment

It's disconcerting to realize how little you have to say to someone who once occupied such a prominent place in your bed.

The hard thing about death is that nothing ever changes. The hard thing about life is that nothing stays the same.

The truth isn't always nice. It isn't always small enough to absorb at once. Sometimes the truth washes over you and threatens to take you right down with it.

I thought about the current contamination of beaches, raw sewage spilling into oceans and streams, the hole in the ozone, forests being stripped, the toxic-waste dumps, the merry plunder of mankind added to the drought and the famine that nature dishes up annually as a matter of course. It's hard to know what's actually going to get us first. Sometimes I think we should just blow the whole planet and get it over with. It's the suspense that's killing me.

The downside of fitness, which takes years to achieve, is how quickly it vanishes—almost instantly.

I was determined to run, but my body thought otherwise. (Kinsey Millhone)

One immutable law of travel is that one’s arrival or departure gate is always at the extreme outer limit of the terminal, especially if your bag is heavy or your shoes have just begun to pinch.

What makes these cases so hard to prosecute is the victims don’t want to believe they’ve been deceived. The victims all become dependent on the crook who’s cheating them.

could hear creaking sounds as the boats shifted in the harbor waters, bobbing and swaying with an occasional tinkling of metal on metal. Our footsteps formed an irregular rhythm as we clunked along the walkway.

It looks like Wendell sailed the boat as far as Winterset and then headed out toward the islands. He left the sails up. There was no big sea running, but with the storms coming through, the normal northwesterlies were countered by the hurricane effect. The Lord probably has a seven-knot hull speed, and with the right puff of wind it should have gone much farther. When they found the boat, it was stalled and drifting. The jib was backwinded, sheeted to the windward side, in effect, blowing the bow