There are people, she once wrote, who think that we cannot rule ourselves because the few times we tried, we failed, as if all the others who rule themselves today got it right the first time. It is like telling a crawling baby who tries to walk, and...
... as a breath of wind or some echo rebounds from smooth, hard surfaces and returns to the source from which it issued, so the stream of beauty passes back into its possessor through his eyes, which is its natural route to the soul; arriving there a...
Justice based purely on laws is about as accurate as a portrait created out of large low-resolution color pixels. If you stand back far enough it looks good. Come any closer and the glaring approximations overtake all semblance of the original. Justi...
Maybe that's why the good Lord gave us these vivid memory capabilities. When stress hits, we can just close our eyes, lean back and relax, and enjoy a game of Tidly-Winks, the sound of a Pete Rose baseball card in the spokes of our bike, or maybe a n...
For here, inside the crypt, was where he truly lived. Which is to say, for well over twenty hours a day in total darkness and in total silence and in total immobility, he sat on his horse blanket at the end of the stony corridor, his back resting on ...
Too many years fighting back tears. Why can't the past just die? Wishing you were somehow here again, knowing we must say goodbye. Try to forgive, teach me to live, give me the strength to try! No more memories, no more silent tears, no more gazing a...
Our one employee came warily out of the back. He was always skittish with me, and if Lizzy wasn't around, h made a point of keeping his distance. I think he was expecting me to make a pass at him. He was seventeen, had stringy black hair,bad skin, an...
As I look back on my own life, I recognize this simple truth: The greatest opportunities were the scariest lions. Part of me has wanted to play it safe, but I’ve learned that taking no risks is the greatest risk of all.
Sandrine opened her eyes to the soft gray light of early dawn. Recollections of sensual pleasure seemed to caress her body, bringing a smile to her lips. She lay back in the pillow and listened to the breathing of Philippe beside her. She lingered in...
What if I shave?" he said. "I look much better when I'm shaved. My cousin will vouch for that—do I not look almost handsome when I shave, Edward? " He didn't wait for the duke's reply but turned earnestly back to Prudence. "Do you think you could m...
Technology won’t protect you from being attacked for fresh water. A badass blade will. Back in Eden where I grew up, the closest thing to knifework I’d experienced was cutting up a loaf of warm bread. Last night, I’d gutted a wild prairie chick...
When his writing is going well, Gordon Strangle Mars likes to wake up at 6 a.m. and go out driving. He works out new plot lines about giant spiders and keeps an eye out for abandoned couches, which he wrestles into the back of his pickup truck. Then ...
It’s one way or another, Summer. For me, it’s black and white. You’re either in the friend zone or the lover zone. And with you…Gosh, Summer, you’re in my danger zone. My rip-my-heart-out and change-me-forever zone. I have to tread lightly ...
Getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds," I added. Radar tapped a locker twice with his fist to show his approval, and then came back with another. "Ben, getting you a date to prom is s...
Brother Row you could trust to make a long shot with a short bow. You could trust him to come out of a knife fight with somebody else's blood on his shirt. You could trust him to lie, to cheat, to steal, and to watch your back. You couldn't trust his...
Jesus is the Commander of two armies. One is an army of angels in heaven and one is the army of prayer warriors on earth. As Commander of these armies, He shows us how to take back from the enemy all he has stolen that is rightfully ours. We do that ...
...'undertow'. It describes (...) how underneath our own everyday lives - the shopping and squabbles and weeding and trips to the vet - there's a sense of being dragged slowly off, not against our will but regardless of it. And fighting the undertow,...
One day soon you'll be in the world, and you'll have so many options you won't know what to do with them. Everyone will fall in love with you, because you're so beautiful and so charming, and you'll look back on high school as such a tiny blip.
I know this may come as a shock, Jade, but I’m not perfect.” He can’t even say it without laughing. “And neither are you.” I sit up, trying not to laugh. “Hey, I’m totally perfect!” “You’re not.” He lays me back down and drops a...
You have never seen such animals as these who without a sound or a sign carry you off. You race with them across the long familiar ground that in that moment seems so glorious, so charged with beauty, strange. In their jaws you are carried so effortl...
After the fire, when I'd tried to express my gratitude for their kindness to our customers, they'd been awkward, uncomfortable. My father had had to explain to me that giving thanks is not a common practice in India. 'Then how do you know if people a...
