Beauty is frightening," they will tell you — Lazily you will arrange A Spanish shawl on your shoulders, A red rose in your hair. "Beauty is simple," they will tell you — Clumsily with a motley shawl You will cover a child up, A red rose on the fl...
Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer's heart. I want a novel so poetic that I do not have to turn ...
Great things are done when men and mountains meet; This is not done by jostling in the street. -William Blake This admirable couplet should be posted in conspicuous places all over England. The truth it embodies is threatened by two parties of opinio...
They gathered after mass, sang hymns and read. Everyone had grown even more serene; beneath the sisters' kerchiefs it was as if there were no faces. When they met Daryushka — it was as if they bowed down lower. She was walking in the Spirit. Daryus...
The thing is, someday the sun is going to die and everything on Earth will freeze. This will happen. Even if we end global warming and clean up our radiation. The complete works of William Shakespeare, Monet’s lilies, all of Hemingway, all of Milto...
That black, maddening firmament; that vast cosmic ocean, endlessly deep in every direction, both Heaven and Pandemonium at once; mystical Zodiac, speckled flesh of Tiamat; all that is chaos, infinite and eternal. And yet, it's somehow the bringing to...
On the third day Vera said: 'I love your body because it is beautiful. But I do not know your soul. I do not know whether there is a soul. Nor is it necessary for me because your body is beautiful. But everything is mutable and you will grow old. At ...
Even in their reading, More charged, too many women were prone to superficiality. In search of a passing knowledge of books and authors, many read anthologies of excerpted works, that selected the brightest passages but left out deeper contexts—eig...
Perhaps the most powerful and appealing aspect of another's words, however, is simply their convenience. Whether distilled in the briefest apophthegm, or spread out across some voluminous tome, the thought is ready-made, the heavy lifting done. It's ...
Son: Father, you are my father. You sired me. I have sired no one because I left the primordial. I left you, I studied, I suffered, and my visions were pure. Before me, my father, new horizons were opened. Father: Yes, I am your father. I sired you a...
He asked her, 'Why do you feel sorry for me, Old Woman?' The Old Woman stood beside him and looked out the window at the Garden, so beautiful, flowering and everywhere illuminated by the rays of the setting sun, and said, 'I feel sorry for you, dear ...
That evening, in her apartment, still in Warsaw, Ana takes down a book from her shelf – a rather thick, ordinary paperback. It looks old, because it's worn out and somehow shabby. But it's not ordinary. I can tell by the way she handles it so caref...
Do you know why teachers use me? Because I speak in tongues. I write metaphors. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can remember. The great religions are all metaphor. We appreciate things like Daniel and the lion’s den, and the Tower of Babe...
I was standing alone with him when she burst impetuously through the door, tall and wearing a rain-cape on top of a queen's costume, a forgotten crown on her head. She directed some rapid words at him. He began to tremble all over and dropped my hand...
From the short story (and anthology containing it) DONNY DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE : Donny acted like he didn’t hear me. “You can’t send your mom off into eternity looking like that, Artie. She wouldn’t like it.” He reached into my mother�...
