We're each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion trying to emerge into something solid, something real. We've got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there's an awful lot of gray to work with. No one can...
The wind has shifted to the East. A storm isn't far off. I can smell the moisture in the air, a fetid, living thing. Isolated drops fall, licking at my hands, my face, my dress. The quests squawk in surprise, turn their palms up to the sky as if ques...
I closed my eyes, adding dark to dark, and the wanting unfurled like the sails of a phantom ship. This could be my universe. This nowhere world, circumscribed by skin and breath, where nothing mattered but two bodies moving together. The past and the...
Like the medieval cartographers of Europe, who felt one would fall into endless space at the edges of the oceans of their maps, we fear the presumed nothingness of no-self. Fortunately, there have been many spiritual circumnavigators who have returne...
Just to be heading away from the sea, to be immersed in a beautiful landscape again, to hear the sound of crows, was such a welcome change, and all to be seen so very appealing, a land of peace and plenty, every field perfectly cultivated, hillsides ...
To every Armageddonist, every earth lover must keep saying with all the sincerity and affection we can muster, “May God make this world as beautiful to you as it has been to me.
You don't get to say goodbye. Not now, maybe not ever. That's the beauty of this arrangement. I make all the decisions and you're left to wander around in the dark, waiting, anticipating and fearing my next move. Only when I'm done using you and I’...
Time passes, day by day. The greatness of this country lies in the inexorable journey it has taken through time. Time is like an enormous pot, into which all ugliness and beauty are thrown, all happiness and grief, all life and all death. Cycle follo...
But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhappiness he had suffered was no more than part of a decoration which was elaborate and beautiful; he told himself strenuously that he must accept with ga...
But I want her, I must have her, I shall die if I do not get her - false, proud, black-hearted daughter of a dog that she is! I cannot sleep and my food has no savor and my eyes are darkened because of her beauty. I must have the barbarian queen.
She'd been in labor for nineteen hours; I completely understood why she wanted to pass the buck. 'You are so beautiful,' her husband crooned, holding up her shoulders. 'You are so full of shit,' Lila snarled, but as a contraction settled over her lik...
They had studied law, information technology and art history as part of their beauty treatment, they had let Norwegian taxpayers finance years at university just so that they could end up as overqualified, stay-at-home playthings and sit here exchang...
"Tell me, sir, what is a butterfly?" "It's what you are meant to become. It flies with beautiful wings and joins the earth to heaven. It drinks only nectar from the flowers and carries the seeds of love from one flower to another. Without butterfl...
You have beautiful hair"... and she reached out to touch it, her bejeweled fingers gently caressing my head. A tear slipped down my cheek. I knew how the lepers felt when Jesus touched them and made them whole again.
...[W]hen I told my dad why I was calling, he just said, 'Honey, you're so beautiful it doesn't matter what you wear.' I wondered how many dads in America were, at that very moment, giving their daughters the same useless advice mine was giving me.
You can’t think of anything? Anything you might need a man for?” Berry blinked slowly, then gave him a wide smile. “Are you talking about sex? Because if you are, there are plenty of products on the market today that claim to be just as good as...
You talk weird.” She whispered as she stared up at the white ceiling. “Its part of my barely there practically nonexistent charm, but just like genital herpes, I grow on ya, kid and I’ll getcha in the end.” Sienna replied with a smirk, althou...
He’d do what was best for her. He’d take her to safety and send her back home to a bright future…with a more honorable man than him. The stick broke in his hand, and he muttered an oath. All he wanted was for Amelia to be safe and happy, dammit...
Hey, Ethan." "Yeah?" "Remember the Twinkie on the bus? The one I gave you in second grade, the day we met?" "The one you found on the floor and gave me without telling me? Nice." He grinned and shot the ball. "It never really fell on the floor. I mad...
History was a bitch sometimes. You couldn’t change where you were from. But still, you didn’t have to stay there. You didn’t have to stay stuck in the past, like the ladies in the DAR, or the Gatlin Historical Society, or the Sisters. And you d...
The stuffs you're good at and the stuffs you're bad at are just different parts of the same thing. Same goes for people you love and the people you don't. And the people who love you and the people who don't. The only thing that mattered was that you...
