These Moments Cascade Upon One Another "Here at shepherd's dusk, in a valley without echo, I listen for you. With a frayed longing, I hear your shadow voice whispering within me from far away. I grasp at what is left of this husky sun lying golden up...
There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction, and, despite John Ray's assertion, Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exi...
And why don't you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven't written. (And why I didn't write before the age of twenty-seven.) Because writing is at once too high, too great for you, it's re...
If you’d rather skip lunch, that’s fine with me. I’ve got some things to take care of anyway before I can leave the store to Robin for the weekend.” “I don’t want to skip lunch,” he bit out. “I’m starving.” Her temper got the bett...
Sometimes she'd go a whole day without thinking of him or missing him. Why not? She had quite a full life, and really, he'd often been hard to deal with and hard to live with. A project, the Yankee oldtimers like her very own Dad might have said. And...
It has been observed in all ages that the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness; and that those whom the splendour of their rank, or the extent of their capacity, have placed upon the summits of...
I have been branded with folly and madness for attempting what the world calls impossibilities, and even from the great engineer, the late , who said ... that I deserved hanging for bringing into use the high-pressure engine. This has so far been my ...
For shit’s sake, it wasn’t like there was a twelve-step for being the Scribe Virgin’s kid: Hi, I’m Vishous. I’m her son and I’ve been her son for three hundred years. HI, VISHOUS. She’s done a head job on me again, and I’m trying not ...
You've always been there for me. Always. Even when I…" V "Even when you what?" B "You know." V "What?" B "Fuck. Even when I was in love with you. Or some shit." V Butch clasped his hands to his chest. "Was? Was? I can't believe you've lost interest...
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the United States entered into World War II to protect our way of life and to help liberate those who had fallen under the Axis occupation. The country rallied to produce one of the largest war efforts in his...
No more tubs for me." I jumped off the bed and pulled on a pair of Pack sweats. "They make me lose all sense." Curran sprawled on the bed with a big self-satisfied smile. "Want to know a secret?" "Sure." "It's not the bathtub, baby." Well, aren't we ...
The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon. Our government's got a war on drugs....But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of...
Who're them?" says he to the curate. "Them are the fallen angels," says the curate. They had a human form, no wings. God took the wings off of 'em after Lucifer rebelled - that way they couldn't go back, d'you see. They had no wings. But there was so...
When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man think...
There’s an organic grocery store just off the highway exit. I can’t remember the last time I went shopping for food.” A smile glittered in his eyes. “I might have gone overboard.” I walked into the kitchen, with gleaming stainless-steel app...
Is it true that man was once perfectly pure and innocent, and that he became degenerate by disobedience? No. The real truth is, and the history of man shows, that he has advanced. Events, like the pendulum of a clock have swung forward and backward, ...
The deeper I went into the valley, the greater the rewards. First, it was a clump of birches, the bottoms wrapped in thick fog, the uppermost branches clear now, nesting birds waking with bright-eyed songs. Next, I passed under the pines, browned nee...
Your violin has only two strings,” I say. “You’re missing the other two.” Yes, he says. He’s well aware. “All I want to do is play music, and the crisis I’m having is right here. This one’s gone,” he says of the missing top string, ...
The quintessential emblem of religion and the clearest manifestation of the perversity that lies at its core is the sacrifice of a child by a parent. Almost all religious faiths incorporate the myth of such a sacrifice, and some have actually m...
We need myths that will help us to identify with all our fellow-beings, not simply with those who belong to our ethnic, national or ideological tribe. We need myths that help us to realize the importance of compassion, which is not always regarded as...
Thanks, you guys." Fiona smiled. "I haven't been with anyone since Jackson and I split. I hate to act like such a hoochie mama, but---" "Hey. There's a little hoochie mama in all of us," Charli said. "Didn't I tell you how I finally got Reno to make ...
