How paltry are the traces left behind by a life, even one concentrated around those supposed things of permanence called words. We spend our time upon the earth and then disappear, and only one one-thousandth of what we were lasts. We send all those ...
She sat, rediscovering the fullness of her first tongue in one long submersion. Again and again she would pause on a word Melio uttered. She would roll it around in her mind, feeling the contours of it. At times her mouth gaped open, her lips moving ...
Think of your brain as a radio transmitter. It broadcasts thoughts, directions and vibrations into your life. Every day you get to choose the station it’s tuned into to. Learn to tune out negativity to make room for positivity. Walk away from the n...
It occurred to Susan that men were always waiting for something cataclysmic--love or war or a giant asteroid. Every man wanted to be a hot-headed Bruce Willis character, fighting against the evil foreign enemy while despising the domestic bureaucracy...
Hemlock's attentions had not only healed Aelfric's body of its wounds but also given him curious sensitivity. Aside from the voice in his mind, he felt things in the natural surroundings: the presence of beasts, the whispers of trees to the overcast ...
There is an Anglo-Saxon form of riddling that plays with the polarities of words like bright and dark, cold and warm, throwing them against one another and crafting lines of rich, humorous nonsense like this poem that has been around for so many hund...
When the wounded were screaming, you dreamed of sharing a little house somewhere, of an ordinary life, of a family line, connection. All around him, men were walking silently with their thoughts, reforming their lives, making resolutions. If I ever g...
The sound of your voice makes the chaos around me vanish. The smell of your hair calms my soul. The sight of your smile tames the wolf inside of me, and touching your skin…” He glanced at our joined hands. “Touching your skin makes the broken p...
this creature moved on all fours. Long, pointed ears lay flat against the monster's head. The long, tapered snout was wrinkled into a snarl, lips pulled back to reveal two rows of razor-sharp fangs. Muscles moved like liquid beneath the layers of coa...
The intelligent poor individual was a much finer observer than the intelligent rich one. The poor individual looks around him at every step, listens suspiciously to every word he hears from the people he meets; thus, every step he takes presents a pr...
Isn't that someone we know?" asked Horace. He pointed to where a cloaked figure sat by the side of the road a few hundred meters away, arms wrapped around his knees. Close by him, a small shaggy horse cropped the grass growing at the edge of the drai...
Courage was no that hard to come by for children. No matter the hardships they faced, given a little love and encouragement, their spirits rebounded and thrived. Adults were different. Their habits and experiences made them inflexible, welding their ...
The walls were coming down around me, but still, I couldn't imagine telling the truth. Not now. It was too late. How can I tell Mom and Dad what we'd done? It would ruin everything. It would ruin their image of me; it would ruin every thought they'd ...
I had a dream about a motorcycle," said Harry, remembering suddenly. "It was flying." Uncle Vernon nearly crashed into the car in front. He turned right around in his seat and yelled at Harry, his face like a gigantic beet with a mustache: "MOTORCYCL...
Do you understand any of this?" he said, pointing to the lines and symbols that covered the massive screens. "Some people understand the value of an education." Hale stretched and crossed his legs, the settled his arm around Kat's shoulders. "That's ...
For what it’s worth”—he rose from his seat, moved around the table and bent over her, whispering in her ear as he pressed a kiss to her cheek— “I like you better in a pair of worn jeans, and I think you deserve someone who appreciates what ...
What happened?" he asked brusquely, interrupting me. "What do you mean, what happened?" "I sensed your fear, heard you call out my name." "I...no, I didn't." I told myself. Great Wall of China, around my thoughts. "The Great Wall of China isn't...
I had a dream about you. You wrapped the American flag around you like a towel, while I let Russia shower me with praise. The people over there really seemed to love me, probably because they are over there and I am not.
Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He's gotta pick this one. He's got to. I don't see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there's not a sign of hy...
All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.
Rachel knew what she was doing. And when she didn't, she could improvise on the fly, coming up with options that left a lot of collateral damage but usually only hurt herself, not the people around her. It was one of the things he would never admit t...