The thought of her gave me such a continual anguish that I could no more forget her than an aching tooth. It was involuntary, hopeless, compulsive. For years she had been the first thing I remembered when I woke up, the last thing that drifted throug...
In Venice, things not always as they first appear. I contemplate this observation from my post on the aft deck of one of Master Fumagalli’s gondolas, taking in the panorama of bridges, domes, bell towers, and quaysides of my native city. I row into...
From the first time I saw you. You were beautiful and… you had this light to you. It drew me like a moth. I thought, This is a man powerful enough to let me protect him and strong enough to take me. I thought, with you, maybe sometimes I could let ...
At the end of the night they all seemed so happy. Maybe it was just because they hadn't seen each other in a while, but as they all gathered around hugging, kissing, and well-wishing each other, I found myself feeling for the first time in my life li...
For most of us, the most common and unfortunate side effect of skin problems is isolation. We don't want to be seen the way we look. You can hide a lot of physical flaws, but not acne. It's right there, on the first thing people notice about us - our...
A five-hour flight works out to three days and nights on land, by rail, from sea to shining sea. You can chalk off the hours on the back of the seat ahead. But seventy-some hours will not seem so long to you if you tell yourself first: This is where ...
Here commences a new dominion acquired with a title by divine right. Ships are sent with the first opportunity; the natives driven out or destroyed; their princes tortured to discover their gold; a free license given to all acts of inhumanity and ...
I saw it in his eyes, first—the beginning of the end, the beginning of things to come. The blackest night, they cut into me, paralyzing my trembling body. Not even the gods could sense my fear now, for the celebration of the monsters who’d claime...
I keep a pen clipped inside the right pocket of my jeans in case I’m ever attacked by a man wielding a sword. I remember another comment Zelda said about me: “He thinks he’s a writer. He couldn’t write the alphabet, even if you spotted him...
The first key to leadership was self-control, particularly the mastery of pride, which was something more difficult, he explained, to subdue than a wild lion and anger, which was more difficult to defeat than the greatest wrestler. He warned them tha...
What kind of woman is still able to trust people after everything she's been through? If she'd been Vin, she would have stabbed him in the back at the first opportunity, and that would have probably been the right thing to do. Yet, this girl just con...
Since the 1980s, therapists have reported encountering clients or patients who had experienced extreme abuses featuring physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual, and cognitive aspects, along with a premeditated structure of torture-enforced lessons. Th...
God makes Himself felt in the heart of each person. He also respects the culture of all people...God is open to all people. He calls everyone. He moves everyone to seek Him and to discover Him through creation.
We begin to forgive by to forgive . . . by deciding, not by feeling. Our feelings don't lead us to forgive. Most times, our feelings lead us the other way. That's why a person has to decide to forgive first. Our feelings always follow along behind ou...
The Holy Spirit did not go into such detail about the Pharisees in the New Testament just so we could understand a group unique to the first century. Pharisaism is a poisonous weed that grows in every garden of orthodox religion. Pharisaism is every ...
Here's something else to think about: calling when you say you're going to is the very first brick in the house you are building of love and trust. If he can't lay this one stupid brick down, you ain't never gonna have a house baby, and it's cold out...
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place....
First, I’d like to point out that I didn’t use ‘one of mine.’ You refused to let me pay for my ice cream cone with a good ol’ fashioned credit card, and you forced your pretend money on me. Secondly, I can’t take any currency seriously th...
They have left the first stage of romance—the rhapsody of us. Where everything is you-me or me-you or a giddily tentative we. Now him and her are asserting themselves, each given a private, pensive depth. Within the rhapsody of us, Elijah could thi...
When I first accepted my own death, the world was intantly changed. It was a completely new sensation. It took something like this to finally open my eyes. Before, I had simply shut myself off so that I could not see, could not hear. What had I been ...
Tell me about yourself, Miss Russel." I started to give him the obligatory response, first the demurral and then the reluctant flat autobiography, but some slight air of polite inattention in his manner stopped me. Instead, I found myself grinning at...
