There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rush...
The look of experience suited him, especially because somewhere deep in those eyes, there still lurked a dangerous invitation to play. He had a quality of masculine confidence that was a thousand times more potent than mere handsomeness. Perfect good...
To Cassidy, the panopticon wasn't a metaphor. It was the greatest failing on everything she was, a prison she had built for herself out of an inability to appear anything less than perfect. And so she ghosted on, in relentless pursuit of escape, not ...
There is no holy life. There is no war between good and evil. There is no sin and no redemption. None of these things matter to the real you. But they all matter hugely to the false you, the one who believes in the separate self. You have tried to ta...
Any number of celebrities are dogged by "gay rumors" because we cannot quite place them into a given category. We act like placing these people in categories will have some impact on our lives, or that creating these categories is our responsibility,...
More troubling than this oddly timed debate about birth control is the vehemence with which women need to justify or explain why they take birth control—health reasons, to regulate periods, you know, as if there's anything wrong with taking birth c...
A brick could be used to stop time. I did it once at my uncle’s house, and I nearly wrecked the universe. He wanted to spank me, but decided not to, because he was afraid it would come off as pedophilia to all the viewers who were watching in mainl...
I got an A on the third quiz in American history, an A, dammit. Last time I got a B up from a C and my father said, "if you can get a C you can get a B, if you can get a B you can get an A."- I got an A and my father said, "grades don't mean anything...
When you were born, just a fresh babe, and I held you in my arms for the first time, I knew that we had to call you Bridie, after the blessed St. Brigid. I knew because the moment I set eyes on you, I saw you had holy fire in you, exactly like our ow...
Yaicha is named after a song by some group from the last century called the Pousette-Dart Band. Something about a girl, a candle in the falling rain shining amidst the pain. I kind of surprise myself when I can picture Yaicha as that candle. My fathe...
If this is my final moment,” she says, “then I can die happy.” “Is that why you’re saying all this? Because you think we’re going to die?” “I don’t know,” she admits. “Dammit, Summer.” He clings to her waist, grip desperate, e...
He smiles at her before ever opening his eyes. The innocence in his face ensnares. Wraps her heart in a cocoon. They did this to him. The Society. Constructed that smile with malicious expectations. Now she must rip it off his face. Because she doesn...
Even if we try to conform to ideals and strive for perfection, we will always be pulled back to our core identity because it’s the path of least resistance for our souls – an energy force that wants nothing more than for us to honor and accept wh...
... the proper self-knowledge and self-love of every created thing is ipso facto a participation in the knowledge and love of God. The entire universe moves by desire for the Highest Good simply because every part of it loves what God loves - namely,...
Ebola haunted Zaire because of corruption and political repression. The virus had no secret powers, nor was it unusually contagious. For centuries Ebola had lurked in the jungles of central Africa. Its emergence into human populations required the sp...
If a little kid ever asks you just why the sky is blue, you look him or her right in the eye and say, "It's because of quantum effects involving Rayleigh scattering combined with a lack of violet photon receptors in our retinae.
I felt Mr Willard had deserted me. I thought he must have planned it all along, but Buddy said No, his father simply couldn't stand the sight of sickness and especially his own son's sickness, because he thought all sickness was sickness of the will....
She, of all people, knew the sacred trust that word -- "librarian" -- implied. Because a librarian was supposed to to be a spiritual, intellectual mentor who kept your secrets and didn't give you a funny look when you checked out a book on the care a...
A blanket could be used to keep me single. Not that I need any help from anybody or anything to stay single. Actually, to stay single, I need the full cooperation of the entire female population, which is kind of impressive, because in conclusively a...
But I loved the library simply because it was a library. I love libraries. I like reading, but I love libraries. Being surrounded by books makes me feel safe, the way some people need trees or mountains around them to feel secure. Not me – nature�...
What a nuisance is the friend who must have this and that, whose likes and hates are infinite, with bitter and loud voiced complaint about the whole of circumstance? How pleasant are the truly great who, wanting nothing, are content with anything. Ac...
