I let my head fall back, and I gazed into the Eternal Blue Sky. It was morning. Some of the sky was yellow, some the softest blue. One small cloud scuttled along. Strange how everything below can be such death and chaos and pain while above the sky i...
I sit up in bed and watch her fiddle about in the back of my wardrobe. I think she's got a plan. That's what's good about Zoey. She'd better hurry up though, because I'm starting to think of things like carrots. And air. And ducks. And pear trees. Ve...
We keep making decisions, every day, half without thinking, half against our will. If we don't fight back, if we allow ourselves to change, to be changed, then once it's done we have to do other things, and on and on until the person we wanted to be ...
We have all been fooled into believing in people who are entirely imaginary--made-up prisoners in a hypothetical panopticon. But the point isn't whether or not you believe in imaginary people; it's whether or not you want to. "I think I'll stick with...
You’re not going to disappear,” I said. “I won’t let you”. “Even if this is all there is? Going to school and working at my uncle’s restaurant and fighting with Mari? Why would anyone want to remember this?” “I want to remember you....
I had turned to leave and he had called after me. “Miss Maria, I kin no other woman who could be wearing men’s trousers and be dripping such as ye are and look quite so lovely. It’s a right shame your mother is marrying you off to that great so...
People I didn't know formed a circle around me, sheltering me from view. They escorted me safely back to our jurta, undetected. They didn't ask for anything. They were happy to help someone, to succeed at something, even if they weren't to benefit. W...
It is much easier to believe lies than the truth." "Why?" asked Janna. "Because lies are manufactured to satisfy the emotions. A mother would rather believe her pretty girl lazy than accept the fact that she's a dumb cluck. Germans would rather belie...
I’m the least fanciful guy around, but on nights when I wonder whether there was any point to my day, I think about this: the first thing we ever did, when we started turning into humans, was draw a line across the cave door and say: Wild stays out...
I don’t do gentle, Mara,” he felt compelled to warn even as he worked his way down from her lips, over her chin, to the tender spot where her neck met her shoulder. He scraped his teeth over the frantic beat of her pulse and reveled in the delica...
Say it back," he begs. I don't. He offers those words so freely, I'm not sure he realizes how much weight they carry. You have to love yourself before you can love another. You have to see what they see in you. Something worthy. I cannot return those...
I was in the book, and the book was in my head, and as long as I stayed inside my head, I could go on writing the book. It was like living in a padded cell, but of all the lives I could have lived at that moment, it was the only one that made sense t...
The sound is gone. There's nothing left but the insomniac throbbing of crickets. Crickets in the garden, the courtyard, the back courtyard. Close, domestic, identifiable. And those out in the country. Between all of them they raise, little by little,...
He leaned back in his seat throwing his hands behind his head; sort of an open offer for the entire bar to get a good look at what he was working with and it was quite impressive. God why did he have to have tattoos? Or the killer smile he was so bla...
St John had been sitting in the back garden twizzling a pencil, on the end of which a russet deposit was impaled, which had been left on the lawn by Marmaduke, next door’s ginger cat. His father had wandered in to the garden and seen St John mesmer...
I’ve got something for you,” he crooned, reaching down and putting my wedding band back on my finger. The huge diamond ring sparkled in a spotlight against the familiar darkness—the darkness of the bedroom where Tristan had perpetrated so many ...
In one of his last newsletters, Mike Ranney wrote: "In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I'm treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, 'Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?' No,'" I answered, 'but I served in a company of heroes.
BAIT GOAT There is a distance where magnets pull, we feel, having held them back. Likewise there is a distance where words attract. Set one out like a bait goat and wait and seven others will approach. But watch out: roving packs can pull your word a...
Letter to Rose from Strigoi Dimitri. Delivered to Rose after her return from Russia and her quest to Kill Dimitir, which she thought she completed. "You forgot another lesson: Never turn your back until you know your enemy is dead. Looks like we'll h...
Along with people in other creative professions, such as artists and musicians, many scientists experience this transcendence. I do so every day. For one, it's impossible to look an ape in the eye and not see oneself. There are other animals with fro...
