I suddenly remember being very little and being embraced by my father. I would try to put my arms around my father's waist, hug him back. I could never reach the whole way around the equator of his body; he was that much larger than life. Then one da...
I didn't look over my shoulder; there wasn't a sound behind me on the pavement, but I knew he was coming slowly after me. The crawl of the skin up and down my back told me. Little needles of warning that gathered at the back of my skull told me. I'd ...
But what he said was true enough: I had recently destroyed a perfectly good set of wire braces by straightening them to pick a lock. Father had grumbled, of course, but had made another appointment to have me netted and dragged back up to London, to ...
I lean back and tilt my head so all I see are the clouds in the sky. I'm looking back inside my head with my eyes wide open. I still don't know where I'm going; I decided I'm not crazy or alien. It's just that I'm more like one of those kids they fin...
As the station wagon pulled back onto the highway, the sun was slowly sinking below the horizon like a leaky boat. Well, except for that fact that boats are not generally round, orange and on fire. Hmm. Come to think of it, in no way whatsoever did t...
Looking back, I still can't believe how unprofessional the news media was. So much spin, so few hard facts. All those digestible sound bites from an army of 'experts' all contradicting one another, all trying to seem more 'shocking' and 'in-depth' th...
We were arrogant and naive, thinking we knew what we felt then was love. Love can be a cheap emotion, lightly given, thought it didn´t seem so to me at the time. Looking back, I know we were only filling in the holes in our soles, the way the tide r...
He finished tying the knot and looked me in the face and I felt my gaze fall from his eyes to his lips and back again. "Why are you giving it back to me?" I asked. He pressed his thumb to my bottom lip and I heard an intake of air. That was me, I tho...
A prickle of awareness made the hairs at the back of his neck stand. A deep chill sank into his flesh to settle around his heart, squeezing it. Skeletal fingers scraped along his spine and he wanted to look back over his shoulder, but couldn’t. No,...
It may be that writers in my position,exiles, or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutilated into pillars of salt. But if we do look back, we must do in the know...
A star falls from the sky and into your hands. Then it seeps through your veins and swims inside your blood and becomes every part of you. And then you have to put it back into the sky. And it's the most painful thing you'll ever have to do and that ...
We cannot save everyone, can we?’ I said to her as we continued walking on our way. I turned my head back only to find the spot the beggar had occupied empty. ‘Not everyone,’ she said. She took my hand once more in hers, kissed the back of it, ...
The Islamic faith and ideology is at another pivotal moment in its history. Having survived for a thousand years or more after the Western Crusades it has been hauled back into the fire by some of its frustrated followers. Followers who have literall...
Holly steps back. Being warned about a ghost and seeing him are not the same. 'What did they to you?' Some of the Anchorites laugh. Hugo looks back at his long-ago lover. 'They'-he looks about the Chapel-'cured me. They cured me of a terrible wasting...
It is always the first and last steps that are the hardest to take. We walk away and try not to turn back, or we stand just outside the gates, terrified to find what's waiting for us now that we've returned. In between, we stumble blindly from one pl...
You’re going to work in this life, and you’re going to play. And when the last days come, you’ll look back and find that that’s all there was, an endless stream of days going back to today. But if you can find the thing you should be doing, t...
Holding on will not make something come back. In my experience, it actually pushes it farther away. You cannot go back and undo what’s done, my friends. You can only move forward. And if your deepest compulsions and instincts tell you that you’re...
If you are forced to confront your fears on a daily basis, they disintegrate, like illusions when viewed up close. Maybe being always protected made me more fearful, and I would later dip cautiously into the outside world, never allowing myself to be...
In your Christian walk there will be times that you will have to separate from friends and acquaintances. Otherwise, you'll be tempted to go back to dabble in past behaviors. Understand the enemy...he will use anybody he knows that will carry out his...
Why hadn't she just said yes? Then she could have driven alone back to the city [...] and picked up some guy and brought him back home and screwed him and kicked him out and then picked up her daughter at the train the next day like a spy or a con ar...
My dad was always snoozing on the couch, like Dagwood Bumstead. He was a lazy motherfucker. God bless him. He was always working on some kind of get-rich-quick scheme. This is what my dad was like: I'd say, Hey, Dad, we studied penguins today in scho...
