The English language is the tongue now current in England and her colonies throughout the world and also throughout the greater part of the United States of America. It sprang from the German tongue spoken by the Teutons, who came over to Britain aft...
For many, what they see on television becomes more true than what they see with their eyes in the external world. But this is not so, for one must never forget that every television and has been edited. The viewer does not see the event. He sees in e...
MUSHAKABVU, I may be in a tough spot, but I am more worried about you. I have never experienced anything close to a sense of kinship with any of my clients, let alone those I have never met. However, the world you sent me to investigate has inspired ...
Mr. Gweta looked ten years younger than Professor Khupe had expected. His jet-black hair was trimmed so neatly that it would make a manicured golf course look scruffy. His face was exceptionally smooth, giving the impression that he had been born wit...
I love cats, they're great; intelligent, affectionate, lovable, and this one was particularly nice, so picking it up and giving it a few slaps and a bit of a rough time was galling, even though it was unfortunately necessary. See, if you're hiding in...
I couldn’t stop crying. This fact in and of itself alarmed me, because for so long, I hadn’t been able to cry. And now, here I was, weeping. It didn’t feel therapeutic. I know scientists promise that all the negative hormones are being released...
Go ahead. You're not going to walk in on anyone. I'm home alone." "The whole night?" Immediately, I realized it might not have been the smartest thing to say. "Dorothea will be coming soon." That was a lie. Dorothea was long gone. It was close to mid...
You can't hang around waiting for somebody else to pull your strings. Destiny's what you make of it. You have to face whatever life throws at you. And if it throws more than you'd like, more than you think you can handle? Well then you just have to f...
Images flashed through his mind. He saw Nico and his sister on a snowy mountain cliff in Maine, Percy Jackson protecting them from the manticore. Percy's sword gleamed in the dark. He'd been the first demigod Nico had ever seen in action. Later at Ca...
These short stories are vast structures existing mostly in the subconscious of our cultural history. They will live with the reader long after the words have been translated into ideas and dreams. That's because a good short story crosses the borders...
He was a prisoner to the calendar, he realised, as we all were. He thought in little boxes that were to be ticked off and filled with things to do. Almost every day he thought back to what he had been doing ten years ago, twenty years ago, further. H...
How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness. But without such ignorance, such carelessness, how could we live? If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to hap...
Rachel rolled her eyes as she let out a breath, "I've been to support groups. I've done the "my name is" thing." Rachel’s leg fell off the couch as she glared at Dr. Kean. "That's what triggered the attempts. I don't want to know that there are peo...
It would be autumn, and our fathers would be out threshing in the fields. We would walk through the mulberry groves, past the big loquat tree and the old lotus pond, where we used to catch tadpoles in the spring. Our dogs would come running up to us....
The first thing you need to know if you are a survivor is that parts of you have probably been trained to create a variety of symptoms and behaviours. Abusers actually train child parts to cut the body, to make other parts cut, to attempt suicide, to...
Outside the seasons passed: sun, snow, spring green, October storms . . . was this a vision of my future? When would the shunning hero come, to set the clock if my life in motion again? Would he come some morning, or in the night? In April or Decembe...
Being the bearer of bad news is a terrible thing; sometimes you don't know if you'll have the words, the delicacy,the strength. You think of the person on the other side: how you're about to bring their world crashing down with a single phone call an...
...So far I have restrained myself. For how much longer, I do not know. I have never known such happiness, shot through with such misery. Only four days have passed, they tell me. But that is not true. It has been decades since I saw you last. You wi...
An emptiness rules at its core, a rottenness, a silence when one of you retires to bed without saying good night, when you eat together without conversation, when the phone's passed wordlessly to the other. An emptiness when every night you lie in th...
From "Wetness and Water" How does a part of the world leave the world? How can wetness leave water? Do not try to put out a fire by throwing on more fire. Do not wash a wound with blood. No matter how fast you run, your shadow more than keeps up. Som...
I see, I see! From association Messala, in boyhood, was almost a Jew; had he remained here, he might have become a proselyte, so much do we all borrow from the influences that ripen our lives; but the years in Rome have been too much for him. I do no...