A bad leader wouldn't stress the importance of staying together to stop the enemy. You want peace? You can't forgive the enemy, if you can't forgive your men for losing faith. You can't force every one single Union deserter to fight, but I know, only...
Every once in a while I don't think it's a bad idea for lawyers to remember that what goes on, at least on some level of our brains, is that we have to imagine everything coming apart. ... It's what we are. Out of control, always prepared, Boy Scout ...
How must it have felt, Pikes, the night they seized your films, like entrails yanked from the camera, out of your guts, clutching them in coils and wads to stuff them up a stove to burn away! Did it feel as bad as having some fifty thousand books ann...
Though I imagine we're killing ourselves right now in all manner of ways that'll seem insane to people in the future. And as doors to the next world go, a bog ain't a bad choice. It's not quite water and it's not quite land - it's an in-between place...
If I never went home, what exactly would I be missing? I pictured my cold cavernous house, my friendless town full of bad memories, the utterly unremarkable life that had been mapped out for me. It had never once occurred to me, I realized, to refuse...
This isn't your fight, Patch," I said quietly. His eyes burned with an intensity I'd never seen before. "You're mine, Angel, and don't you forget it. Your fights are my fights. What if something had happened today? It was bad enough when I your ghost...
Mythologically speaking, if there's anything I hate worse than trios of old ladies, it's bulls. Last summer, I fought the Minotaur on top of Half-Blood Hill. This time what I saw up there was even worse: two bulls. And not just regular bulls - bronze...
I love you when you’re happy. I love you when you’re sad. I love you if you’re angry, And I love you if you’re bad. No matter how you feel, I love you all the time. Oh my sweet, dear baby, I love you all the time.
She needed to recover. His father had died in January; it was only the end of May. They needed to stick to the routine they'd established during the intervening months. in that way, their life would return to its original shape, like a spring stretch...
Grief was like a terrible burden, but at least you could lay it down by the side of the road and walk away from it. Antonia had come only a few paces, but already she could turn and look back and not weep. It wasn't anything to do with forgetting. It...
Graveyards were usually, in his team's experience, a bad idea. This one was full of greenish lights that danced between the graves, and there were a couple of swaying figures, one an emaciated husk with glowing eyes who had taken to ... yes, there he...
There will always be reservations, things one must leave out, events one can’t explain without handing over a full map of one’s life, unfolding it, making clear that all the lines and contours stand for long days and nights when things were bad o...
But the greatest cause of verbicide is the fact that most people are obviously far more anxious to express their approval and disapproval of things than to describe them. Hence the tendency of words to become less descriptive and more evaluative; the...
[Gina] I got them Bad Old Cosmic C-Word Blues Again. [Mark] What does ‘c-word’ mean? [Gina] It means continuing to believe even when you don’t feel it. Not letting go even when you can’t find squat to hold onto. Going all the way from the beg...
I hate it when storm clouds roll in, heralded by dazzling claps of thunder and lightning that boast an ocean of tears. This majestic performance of bad temper manages to overshadow my pathetic attempts at pouting. No one broods like Mother Nature, he...
Am I crazy?" she asked. "I feel like I am sometimes." "Maybe," he said, rubbing her forehead. "But don't worry about it. You need to be a little bit crazy. Crazy is the price you pay for having an imagination. It's your superpower. Tapping into the d...
It was February sixth: eight days until Valentine's Day. I was dateless, as usual, deep in the vice grip of unrequited love. It was bad enough not having a boyfriend for New Year's Eve. Now I had to cope with Valentine datelessness, feeling consummat...
It is possible to be in two dreams at once. If I dream about you, and you are asleep at the time, you are in both your dreams, and mine. Still, you’re not really in my dream, are you? It’s like a party you’re invited to, but aren’t allowed en...
Our best intentions are often thwarted by external forces - forces that we ourselves set in motion long ago. Decisions, especially bad ones, create their own kind of momentum, and momentum can be a bitch to stop, as every athlete knows. Even when we ...
Saint Thomas Aquinas says, wisely, that the only way to drive out a bad passion is by a stronger good passion. The same is true of thoughts as of passions. When your mind wanders, like a child, your will must bring it back, like a mother. [. . .] The...
I have a bad feeling about this,” she said. “We’ll fake it. And if push comes to shove, we can just sing Goober Peas and waltz around.” “Rebecca might not find that very funny.” “Rebecca is a Northerner. You can tell because there aren�...