But, oh, how precious those things were! To look at the sky, breathe the cold wind, have fingers nipped by chill and skin stung red and heart stirred to life, gods, he had been dead until Tristen arrived and asked him the first vexing question, and p...
The air was motionless, carved, a block of warm copper fitting neatly around the earth, molded while soft to fit every house and every human being on the earth, and now hardened forever so that no man could move and no air ever came through. The eart...
When someone you love dies, you get a big bowl of sadness put down in front of you, steaming hot. You can start eating now, or you can let it cool and eat it bit by bit later one. Either way, you end up eating the whole thing. There's really no way a...
I still get angry when older people assume that everyone in my generation, screws around. They're probably the same ones who think all kids use dope. It's true that we are more open than our parents but that just means we accept sex and talk about it...
One swing set, well worn but structurally sound, seeks new home ... With this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may also learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard ...
The book was turned to the page with Anne Frank's name, but what got me about it was the fact that right beneath her name there were four Aron Franks. FOUR. Four Aron Franks without museums, without historical markers, without anyone to mourn them. I...
I'm recapitulating...condensing...it's the style...people only have time to read thirty pages...apparently!...maximum!...that's all they have time for! they horse around for sixteen hours out of twenty-four, they sleep, they copulate the rest, where ...
Her silent singing wrapped around the story she was telling herself, which she extended further every night on the deck. (Averill often told herself stories-- the activity seemed to her as unavoidable as dreaming.) Her singing was a barrier set betwe...
These leaders are like the drug lords who ruled America’s ghettos in the crack age, men (and some women) interested in just two things: staying in power, and hoovering up enough of what’s left of the cash on their blocks to drive around in an Esc...
You looked so beautiful- your hair spread out around your head against the linoleum. Though your think brown curls had thinned since you'd started losing weight, they still fell in soft waves. You reminded me of a mermaid, your skin all shiny, your l...
A thousand years ago the Chinese had an entirely codified kitchen while the French were still gnawing on bones. Chopsticks have been around since the fourth century B.C. Forks didn't show up in England until 1611, and even then they weren't meant for...
My yogurt was nestled into a bag, waiting to turn into aushak, and all around us were sausages and pastry, lollipops and spices, chicken and cheese. Any world that contained all this, I thought surveying our loot, was a very fine place. I felt reinvi...
But you know that any showing of such an innovation is apt to start gossip. Just why, I don’t know. It, though, is a trait of Mankind only. Animals don’t ‘bloom’ out so abruptly. You can hunt through Biology, Zoology or any similar study, and...
I meant that the hatred of that July day in Nashville was alive and well on that horrible day in Pittsburgh. People hate others so they strike like snakes. It’s all connected—we’re all connected, bumping around into each other, some of us good,...
He carried her over the Owl Creek mountain range without stopping,” he said, quietly this time. “He carried her until he reached one of the hot springs around what became Chapin, and then he walked into the water with her and held her there for t...
That year, when the trees burned the fire of late summer into their leaves and the ground mist was a ghost of the river, long and wet and cold, the aunt looked from her windows to the walls around her and imagined another winter inside them. She bega...
I’ve known her long enough to know that this was purely intentional.” He peered sideways at me, judging my reaction. “I like her just fine, but you should watch yourself around her. Tennyson is given to obsession, and her obsessions tend to run...
I almost forgot how gorgeous Adonis is," she [Ava] said, "We should have made him one of us." She [Ava] wouldn't have gotten any argument out of me, but a strange sound escaped from James, almost like he was growling. "And have to endure another narc...
He froze, and for one moment, we stood locked in time. I could feel the silk of his shirt against my skin and the warmth of his body. The lingering scent of the overpriced cologne he wore floated around me. No smoke for a change. I’d always told hi...
He broke away from my mouth and trailed his lips down the front of my throat. I felt his lips close around my scars. He kissed away their ugliness. His lips parted in tingling butterfly kisses that drained the strength from my knees. I realized he wa...
That top," he said when he dipped his face close, and I realized his voice sounded funny. It was intense but it was also hoarse like when we were fooling around and I understood why when he again spoke. "Tonight, when I fuck you, I want you naked. La...
