At eleven, Kate woke Jake up when she went searching in the cooler for juice. "You know, you used to be peaceful," he grumbled. "I can't believe you were ever married." Kate said, as she cracked the can open. "What did you do, make her stand in the c...
You know, I'm not even sure how we ended up living together." "I am," Jake said, turning back to the lake. "Sex. It's a powerful force, my boy, and women use it." "Is that why you gave them up?" Will asked, sympathetically. "Did paranoia drive you to...
The principal result of my investigation is that a uniform developmental principle controls the individual elementary units of all organisms, analogous to the finding that crystals are formed by the same laws in spite of the diversity of their forms.
Everybody's heart is like a cup. They stumble from place to place and person to person, trying to get them filled. They get cracked, those cups, and even broken. Some people throw them away, thinking that it will stop the pain. Poor fools. Nobody can...
No, it's human, Curran said. That's the problem. People, especially unhappy people, want a cause. They want something to belong to, to be a part of something great and bigger, and to be led. It's easy to be a cog in a machine: you don't have to think...
I came to the table, pulled up a chair, and sat. “Everyone brought a pet. I feel left out.” An enthusiastic howl broke the silence, and Grendel bounded through the doorway. He galloped through the steak house, skidded on the floor, smashed into m...
Curran let our a ragged snarl and punched the other wall. It burst and the entire wreck of the house came down in a fountain of dust. He shook his hand, his knuckles bloody. "Bricks are hard," I told him patiently, as if to a child. "Don't hit bricks...
Jack was unexpectedly moved when he swore allegiance to the king and country. He had served both for years, could easily have laid down his life. Yet it was different to pledge his loyalty and best efforts toward governing this nation. Dying was easi...
Every hour, Robert thinks, all over the globe, an infinite number of memories disappear, whole glowing atlases dragged into graves. But during that same hour children are moving about, surveying territory that seems to them entirely new. They push ba...
What swells inside me is a love so boundless, I am the sunrise and sunset. I am Liberty Bell in the Cascades. I am Beihai Lake. I am every beautiful, truly beautiful, thing I've ever seen, captured in my personal Geographia, the atlas of myself.
The pressure of his touch through my jacket and my sweater was more assurance than any promise ever made to me. It was a touch that said, I have your back and I am here for you. If a girl wasn't careful, she could fall in love with a touch like that.
From her dubious tone alone, I could see how Karin had no idea how terrifying words spoken quietly could be. How words chosen precisely to wreak maximum damage ticked like a bomb in your head, but exploded in your heart hours later, leaving you scarr...
Well", Fang said, mimicking a thick Southern drawl. "I must say its mighty nice of them Daimons to clean up after themselves when you kill them" He held his hands up to them. "Look Ma, no mess." "Does Fang have an off switch?" Talon asked Vane.
Mama operated under the assumption that I was eight years old and incapable of feeding myself. It was physically impossible for her to cross my threshold without some form of nourishment. She once offered me cheese and crackers from her while we were...
You are the night." "I am the night," I repeated. "You are the night." I cocked my head, sending him a questioning look. "I am the night?" "Jane!" "Why is it that when you say my name, it sounds like a curse word?
Why not? If you're not going to let me see you naked, we might as well be girlfriends." "You're a twisted little man." "Come on, Stretch, share with the class." "No!" I laughed. "Prude." "Perv." "Schoolmarm." "Some other word that essentially means p...
Most of the people you read about being turned meet vamps in clubs or over the Internet...Ew, did you...?" "Yes, I met a vampire on the Internet, went to his evil love den, and let him turn me, because I'm that brainless.
I would have taken Zeb, purely for entertainment value, but he had an actual date, with a real girl. That hadn't happened in a while, so I was a good friend and put my own needs second to the possibility of him actual sex with a real girl.
Not to be rude, but it was all pointless," I noted from across the room. Four eyes narrowed at me. "What? I said 'not to be rude'. That's like saying 'God bless them' right after you say bad things about someone. It means it doesn't count!
Jane: "Missy was not so subtly reminding me that she had done something nice for me and here i was being rude when all she was asking me to do was attend a nice party. This was the way southern women worked all peaches & cream laced with arsenic.
The scent of growth, quiet and green, hung heavy in the air. I heard everything. I saw everything. I could count the craters on the moon. I could count every mosquito buzz past, bypassing my tender skin out of respect for a fellow bloodsucker.
