Where are we going?” Desandra asked. “We’re going to Blue Ribbon Stables,” I said. “It’s the closest place to rent a horse. “Why?” Desandra asked. “Because I can’t keep up with you on foot,” I said. “And she runs like a rhino....
I want to tell the rebels that I am alive. That I'm right here in District Eight, where the Capitol has just bombed a hospital full of unarmed men, women and children. There will be no survivors." The shock I've been feeling begins to give way to fur...
When did my house turn into a hangout for every grossly overpaid, terminally pampered professional football player in northern Illinois?" "We like it here," Jason said. "It reminds us of home." "Plus, no women around." Leandro Collins, the Bears' fir...
Christ want to point this out and to warn His followers that in the world everyone should live as though he were alone and should consider His Word and preaching as the very greatest thing on earth, thinking this way to himself: “I see my neighbor ...
Long after our cities are condemned and deserted, our city parks will stand as a testament of the serenity of our weekends to distant trespassers. As we wait in the bushes to embrace their heavy garments, the trespassers may think, cuddling themselve...
So...Now that we got that over with, let's get back to love at first sight, Evan said. Not infatuation at first sight...Love. With a capital L, he clarified. Love? Heeb asked, playfully pretending not to know the concept. Yeah. The real thing. The co...
But she knew it would never happen. She had no intention of visiting him there. Even if she were open to the idea, as Mom and Dad both hoped she would be, the mathematics of it seemed utterly impossible to her. What was she supposed to do, spend Chri...
You told me men don’t do this.” “Do what?” She walked around the counter, speaking animatedly. “Two years ago. We were at Firelight, having drinks. Cade and I had split up and you said that men don’t mope around after a breakup. You said ...
The survivor movements were also challenging the notion of a dysfunctional family as the cause and culture of abuse, rather than being one of the many places where abuse nested. This notion, which in the 1990s and early 1980s was the dominant underst...
It may seem to you that your life is over now. Your future without the person you love is no future at all. Death is a head-on collision with your plans. But everything in life--the gold fillings of your teeth, the cotton of your sheets, the air you ...
So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time. But when the pollen again gilded the sun and sifted down on the world she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn't know exactly. Her breath was gusty ...
She’s contemplative; I can feel the air around her thick with her thoughts. “No,” she says at last, “I want to believe you’re being sincere but I know you’re not. So I say no, because even if I allow myself to fantasize a little about our...
I have these secret pangs of shame about being single, like I wasn't good enough to get a husband. Rita reminded me of something I'd told her once, about the five rules of the world as arrived at by this Catholic priest named Tom Weston. The first ru...
You want to …?” His other eye popped open as I started to slide down his body, intent on exploring that part of him which had given me so much pleasure. He grabbed me before I was able to move four inches. I looked up, worried that I had done som...
That kiss you gave me was the hottest kiss i've ever had. I pulled away because i was afraid i wouldn't be able to stop myself from ripping off your clothes. And that didn't seem like the right way to end a first date. I didn't want you to think that...
The industrial and technological revolutions have made our lives simpler, in terms of what is physically required of us on a daily basis, but they have also made it possible for us to do a whole lot less than we ought to be doing, and we suffer for i...
I think Dr. Willis McNelly at the California State University at Fullerton put it best when he said that the true protagonist of an sf story or novel is an idea and not a person. If it is *good* sf the idea is new, it is stimulating, and, probably mo...
Maybe its like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And then things happen - these people leave us, or don’t love us, or don’t get us, or we don’t get them, and we lose and fail and h...
They were all fitting into place, the jig-saw pieces. The odd strained shapes that I had tried to piece together with my fumbling fingers and they had never fitted. Frank's odd manner when I spoke about Rebecca. Beatrice and her rather diffident nega...
Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every time I have set out to translate the boo...
William groaned. It was Vimes. Worse, he was smiling, in a humourless predatory way. "Ah, Mr de Worde," he said, stepping inside. "There are several thousand dogs stampeding through the city at the moment. This is an interesting fact, isn't it?" He l...
