They were always saying ‘Take your medicine.’ The therapists and the doctors, my parents, the counselors– anyone with an opinion about my illness. They all told me about pe… Read More

“Even if we write fiction, the most beautiful literary subterfuge, we can tap into certain personal wells and it can feel (to us, at least) like those boundaries become translucent. Ho… Read More

“I know this about myself: I finish things. Most people can’t start things or most people can’t finish things, but if you can start something and finish something, you&rsqu&hell…Read More

“If somebody gives you a really good critique or a really bad critique, all they’re doing is diagnosing something off in the energy of the art. If the critiquer has taste you agr… Read More

“I write stories where whiteness is not the center. I think that when you are not white in America, you are not at the center. Asians definitely aren’t at the center: they’… Read More

“When I read something I legitimately like, from an author, especially an underground writer, I reach out to them and let them know. It isn’t just like, ‘Here’s a cha… Read More

“I’ve been in a long process of trying to understand the difference between loneliness and solitude. Part of that is not being afraid of being alone, and then getting past that f… Read More

“I felt different as a child. I was nearly mute, or expressed myself in timid monosyllables. But then my moment arrived and it seemed to me that I lowered a bucket into my head and pul… Read More

“Change will always be both noun and verb; it is a thing that happens to us and also a thing we make happen. Stability is less of a reasonable expectation than an ideal or illusion. Th… Read More

“Have no hierarchy of importance when it comes to your work. Make whatever. Be at play, always. Get comfortable doing sloppy work, malformed, phoned in, wonky work—believe you ca… Read More

“It may be that you, like many, think that writing fiction does not require study. And not only that: that it is not improved by study. That talent is preeminent, the only thing requir… Read More

“The story of your life, described, will not describe how you came to think about your life or yourself, nor describe any of what you learned. This is what fiction can do – I thi… Read More

“I was with him in a way that I had been with no one else, and from what I understand, this was also true for him. It isn’t just that you fall in love with someone – you ea… Read More

“If you are reading this, and you’re a writer, and you, like me, are gripped with despair, when you think you might stop: Speak to your dead. Write for your dead. Tell them a sto… Read More

“I have a theory of the first novel now, that it is something that makes the writer, even as the writer makes the novel. That it must be something you care about enough to see through… Read More

“Women are not going to start claiming too much. Women are just getting closer to claiming something closer to their share. What looks like overreach is simply reach. Any time that a… Read More

“Five minutes before the class, I checked my face in my rearview mirror. Why do some straight women need to be beautiful in front of other women? If men were wiped from the planet, how… Read More

“I looked like a young girl in the mirror. Perhaps it was a trick of the light. My eyes shone with the absurdity of it all. I felt peace, you see, because I’d embraced the madnes… Read More

“But what I was becoming so frustrated with, and the reason I felt more and more like not teaching, was that I believed that art was not a moral enterprise. That morality in art was wh… Read More

“She took a breath after all of it was finished and laughed, not the laugh of a disturbed person, but the deeply ironic laugh of someone who has never lived without the company of pain… Read More

“And what of that person, her most beautiful boy? He opened his eyes each morning, and the first word from his mouth was Mama. He needed to be lifted from bed, for he was so tiny and s… Read More

“How many generations of women had delayed their greatness only to have time extinguish it completely? How many women had run out of time while the men didn’t know what to do wit… Read More

“You need three or more points to define a shape. The triangle is the strongest of all the shapes. When you think geometry, think triangles. The theorem that everyone knows by name, Py… Read More

“How do you predict things like angst and risky behavior? How do you predict things like ungratefulness? We’ve mapped the entire human genome but don’t know what most of it… Read More

“There is a period of time when my students wonder if I am angry at them. What? No. Why would you think that? Because it’s cold? Everyone is angry about the cold. Who doesn&rsq&hell…Read More

“It could be worse, you know, I tell the best friend, and she says, Really? How so? The optimist sees the glass half full. The pessimist sees the glass half empty. The chemist sees th… Read More

“A lot of the feedback I would get in my early workshop days was that I was ‘piling on tragedy.’ But the answer for me is not to take away the tragedy from the story. The a… Read More

“I told her how that weekend I died the death of the single woman obsessed with the married man. I imagined that he and his wife were at farmers’ markets picking out misshapen eg… Read More

“At times she terrified herself, wondering if she was a god, if being a mother was one way of being a god. Of course, she couldn’t strike anyone down with a lightning bolt, but s… Read More

“I can tell you a lot about sex with a man to whom you are not attracted. It becomes all about your own performance, your own body and how it looks on the outside, the way it moves abo… Read More

“She was grateful he was bathing the boy, though during said bath he had asked that she put the boy’s towel in the dryer to warm it, that she bring in a piece of toast for the bo… Read More

“Do you see how it’s a cycle? I was standing there with the lead singer of a seventies folk band. I was attracted to this faded man because he looked like Big Sky, because I crav… Read More

“She wanted to tell the girl: It’s complicated. I am now a person I never imagined I would be, and I don’t know how to square that. I would like to be content, but instead… Read More

“I kept listening. Often, at parties, I could be found in the kitchen, a back porch, eliciting still more troubles. If people cried, I held damp hands. With the squash recruit, too; th… Read More

“A woman’s body never really belongs to herself. As an infant, my body was my mother’s, a detachable extension of her own, a digestive passage clamped and unclamped fr… Read More

“You can’t ask someone to help you without letting them know you’re different than advertised, that you’ve been thinking and feeling strange things this whole time. T… Read More

“To get to the housing project, you took one of the medical school shuttles to some part of the medical school, walked past about fifteen hospitals, and then literally crossed some rai… Read More

“Across the street there was a family with a dog that slept most of the day, but a few times each afternoon it ran to throw itself at the front windows, smashing its muzzle against the… Read More

“I tend to keep a story in my mind for a long time—many years, in some cases—until it has resolved itself into a form, at which time I know definitively that it’s a s… Read More

rrrick:Kurt Vonnegut tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope:“Oh, she says, well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred… Read More

“The young man at the cash register noticed me and then didn’t take his eyes off of me. I was in a white nightgownish dress, thin as smoke. He was picking a pimple on his chin an… Read More

“A lot of my story is just me sitting in a prison cell reading a book hoping that that stuff is going to get worked out. Or, you know, one of the stories that I would love to tell, bec… Read More

“I suffered from the classic gifted child cliché of simultaneously being a perfectionist and also expecting everything to come easily to me, because a lot of things did come eas… Read More

“It’s easy and correct to condemn Fox News for increasing our grandparents’ blood pressure, keeping them in a perpetual state of fear about roving gangs of MS-13 coming to… Read More

“What I know is that the nail salon is more than a place of work and workshop for beauty, it is also a place where our children are raised– a number of whom, like cousin Victor… Read More

“For C, it was possible to get along with me even if I, for my part, was not getting along with him. It was lonely being the only one who knew how I was feeling, to not be stored in th… Read More

“Gosia unclipped her hair, which was in a chignon. I loved that word. She shook her head and I watched her platinum hair fall around her shoulders. I was not the only one. I clocked th… Read More

“At home, I make brussels sprouts for dinner. They’re covered in olive oil and likely too much vinegar, but the hissing sound, the fanfare of it all, sounds good. Real home cooki… Read More

“When it came to everything from washing the dishes to wrapping Christmas presents, my mother’s thinking was much in line with General George Patton’s: ‘A good plan v… Read More

“There I was beside a girl smiling as if in midlaugh, tilting her head at a studied angle, documenting her joy beside my whatever. Looking at it, I felt frightened in that way that lar… Read More

“I found myself remembering the day in kindergarten when the teachers showed us Dumbo, and I realized for the first time that all the kids in class, even the bullies, rooted for Dumbo… Read More

“I have and have had many names. Little Dog was what Lan called me. What made a woman who named herself and her daughter after flowers call her grandson a dog? A woman who watches for… Read More

“B and I were both petite, pale, and prone to sunburn. We had dark hair, pointy chins, and skinny wrists; we wore size six shoes. If you reduced each of us to a list of adjectives, we… Read More

“Women have the upper hand. It’s taken me half a lifetime to realize it. We don’t actually care about the man who is bringing flowers to another woman. River was a stand-in… Read More

“if you cling to the idea that pleasure is to be found only in those foods you are not apparently supposed to eat, you thereby limit the amount of pleasure you actually could be allowi… Read More

“A fall 2019 report by the publications Artnet News and In Other Words found that despite much clamor over increased attention being paid to artists from long-marginalized groups, &lsq&hell…Read More

“If you are unhappy, or if you frequently say you are ‘exhausted,’ if maybe you cry at work a little more often than you personally think is reasonable, if you wake up in t… Read More

“in this effort to ‘simplify’ these routines by making the office paperless, Zuboff found that the implementation of computers wound up eradicating the basis of the clerks… Read More

“For many heterosexual women, their same-sex best friend was someone with whom they shared more emotional intimacy than with their male lover. For many heterosexual men, their same-sex… Read More

“Many restaurants, not just those pushing quasi-innovative, social-media-famous degustation ‘experiences,’ transformed themselves into vehicles to reconnect with a lost inn… Read More

“I don’t think ANY teenager needs to be extraordinary, articulate, or interesting. Teenagers who ARE extremely talented do come along, but being a teenager shouldn’t be abo… Read More

“I tried to browse the aisles of stores and look for products with women’s names, but that turned out to be a red herring, since most of them are run by men. That includes Annie… Read More

“I don’t know when I understood that Tamar would leave him. Not right away, but soon. Her mind was already somewhere else, writing a more interesting life for herself, one where… Read More

“In the safe world in which you and I most likely live, the stakes of our creative expression are low. Almost comically low. For instance: If a publisher dislikes my book, they may not… Read More

“Toward the end they had fewer slow dinners, fewer nights talking through the dark, more films and plays where they could quietly forget each other in a crowd. Still, when she overhear… Read More

“I used to feel that cooking was something you did for other people—for your kids or friends—and cooking for yourself was this rather delicious aberration. Whereas now I fe… Read More

“I want any novel I write to be full of darlings. If possible, all darlings. I don’t want any published novel of mine to include a single line that bores me, that hasn’t be… Read More

“Some actor friends have noted the privilege required to speak out and get blacklisted by Scott [Rudin] or other decision-makers in his loyalty network. But there’s a difference… Read More

“For whatever reason, I feel this sense that the mail needs to be delivered. There’s stuff in me that needs to get out of me and go to its destination, and I can’t settle u… Read More

“I don’t know what our grieving process will look like as we emerge from this pandemic, but I do know that it will require patience and grace with yourself and others. Not in the… Read More

“This is inchoate fascism, fascism in its experimental, speculative phase, in which is forming a coalition of minoritarian popular forces with elements in the executive and the repress… Read More

Transit chimes by chord interval Read More

“Lately I’ve been thinking that one of the minor and unimportant challenges for me and people like me (inveterate life-recorders, people who write for a living in a non-journalis… Read More

“Perhaps owing to these gonzo genetics, apples are remarkably susceptible to disease and rot.  […]  The closer an apple is to rot, the more rot it spreads—o… Read More

Seth and Rihanna Go Day Drinking Jun 20, 2019 Seth and Rihanna spend a day drinking at The Jane Hotel, where they do things like drink Rihanna-themed cocktails, dish out advice to one anot… Read More

“Every obituary is both a remembrance of a life ended and an instruction to those of us still living. Mr. [Cesar] Quirumbay wasn’t just another 60-year-old who succumbed to a pan… Read More

Epi's Cook-With-What-You've-Got Recipe Finder: “The current cooking moment calls for making dinner with whatever you have on hand, so here’s a tool to help you find the recipes y… Read More

“The only thing that makes this bearable for me, frankly, is at least I’m alone. A couple of people invited me to their houses in the country, houses much more lavish than mine… Read More

“I date, but I’ve had trouble getting into a solid relationship. I’ve been a serial monogamist my entire life. But the older I get, the harder it is to find a match…… Read More

A Radical Guide to Spending Less Time on Your Phone Read More

“Basically before, there was like a very limited amount of gatekeepers. You had MTV, you had the radio, you had the music magazine and then that was basically it. Then, bloggers starte… Read More

twixnmix: Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris during a recording session in February 1978. Photos by Ed Thrasher Read More

twixnmix: Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris during a recording session in February 1978. Photos by Ed Thrasher Read More

“I’ve gotten a lot better at not talking about my personal life, but talking about my feelings. In a world where I do see so many people presenting their feelings as wares in a m… Read More

“The population of New Orleans swells to three times its normal size this time every year, when more than 1 million tourists converge for Fat Tuesday. The festivities bring in an estim… Read More

“As you get older, acting just gets more and more humiliating. When I was younger, I would wonder why the older actors I admired kept talking about quitting. Now I realize it’s b… Read More

“When you are at a party and are thrust into conversation with someone, see how long you can hold off before talking about what they do for a living. And when that painful lull arrives… Read More

“Why do we love our writing teachers so much? Why, years later, do we think of them with such gratitude? I think it’s because they come along when we need them most, when we are… Read More

Two-time Storychord contributor Andrea Sparacio (whose art was featured in Issue 36 and Issue 145) was recently commissioned to illustrate a limited edition deck of playing cards for NARAL P… Read More

“Sometimes, I’ll read a novel written by a man in which a woman walks home alone, late at night, in America, without having a single thought about her physical safety, and it&rsq&hell…Read More

“I occasionally described myself as ‘good at New York.’ I was able to maintain a life there. But that’s just it. I was only maintaining. I was not thriving. And it se… Read More

“I wouldn’t recommend that someone ever recreate themselves; I would recommend that they feature who they are on their best day, in a way that feels very authentic and true to th… Read More

“The idea of being forgotten is terrifying. I fear not just that I, personally, will be forgotten but that we are all doomed to being forgotten; that the sum of life is ultimately noth… Read More

Finally read PLAY IT AS IT LAYS after watching the (great) Didion doc on Netflix 📚 📚 📚 #joandidion Read More

“The reason we break down is that we have not, over years, flexed very much. There were things we needed to hear inside our minds that we deftly put to one side, there were messages we… Read More

How Tiffany Haddish ends her new stand-up special SHE READY! From the Hood to Hollywood! Read More

“I’m deeply frustrated all the time. All my plays usually follow a two-year-period of deep frustration and not-writing and there’s usually an aha moment that surfaces gurgl… Read More

“There’s not a lot of support, in our culture, for slowly and patiently examining our flaws. One of the most revolutionary things for me has been to recognize just how rigid and… Read More

“No words are forthcoming. For six, seven, ten hours no words have been forthcoming. You are blocked, frustrated, in despair. You are nowhere, and that’s where you’ve been… Read More

“I’m not saying that you SHOULDN’T be pretty if you want to. (You don’t owe UN-prettiness to feminism, in other words.) Pretty is pleasant, and fun, and satisfying, a… Read More