Steve Almond
Steve Almond
Steve Almond is an American short-story writer, essayist and author of ten books, three of which are self-published...
beginning boston came candy century city companies freak half home million national per rise sales twentieth
The first half of the twentieth century was Boston's freak zenith. The city was home to 140 candy companies by 1950, with sales of $200 million per year. The beginning of the end for Boston came with the rise of the national candy conglomerates: Hershey's and Mars.
chewing coconut flavor texture troubles
It isn't the flavor of coconut that troubles me, but the texture I feel as if I'm chewing on a sweetened cuticle.
meant nut strange
I was saddled with this strange name, which meant that I was constantly, constantly, being serenaded with the Sometimes you feel like a nut Almond Joy/Mounds jingle.
beautiful earth final halloween haul
Nothing on Earth so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night.
expectations hardship world
Something is funny, most of all, because it's true, and because the velocity of insight into this truth exceeds our normal standards. Something is funny because it's outside our accepted boundary of decorum. Something is funny because it defies our expectations. Something is funny because it offers a temporary reprieve from the hardship of seeing the world as it actually is. Something is funny because it is able to suggest gently that even the worst of our circumstances and sins is subject to eventual mercy.
distance dirty fog
But something occurred to me as I sped through that dirty shroud of fog, something Vonnegut has been trying to explain to the rest of us for most of his life. And that is this: Despair is a form of hope. It is an acknowledgment of the distance between ourselves and our appointed happiness. At certain moments, it is reason enough to live.
eye night done
At the end of night, before you close your eyes, be content with what you've done and be proud of who you are.
teacher parent who-we-are
A good teacher, after all, wields the authority of a parent with none of the psychological baggage. The best of them are semi-mysterious figures whose wisdom seems boundless and whose approval helps us discover who we are.
beautiful halloween night
Nothing on Earth is so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night.
language aspiration
All language is an aspiration to music.
journey emotional self
It is certainly true that cooking is therapeutic, creative and all those other faintly creepy self-helpish words. I would love to tell you that learning to cook was part of my journey toward actualization. I would love to tell Oprah this. I would love to tell Oprah this while weeping. But I learned to cook for a much simpler reason: in the abject hope that people would spend time with me if I put good things in their mouth. It is, in other words (like practically everything else I do), a function of my desperation for emotional connection and acclaim.
crush song religious
It's like this when you fall hard for a musician. It's a crush with religious overtones. You listen to the songs and you memorize the words and the notes and this is a form of prayer. You attend the shows and this is the liturgy. You're interested in relics -- guitar picks, set lists, the sweaty napkin applied to His brow. You set up shrines in your room. It's not just about the music. It's about who you are when you listen to the music and who you wish to be and the way a particular song can bridge that gap, can make you feel the abrupt thrill of absolute faith.
kindness mistake facts
To look at the work of your peers, and learn how to explain with kindness and precision, the nature of their mistakes is, in fact, how you learn to diagnose your own work.
soul jukebox misery
Misery loves another idiot with a jukebox where his soul should be.