Many years later when I began training as a plastic surgeon, I understood something that I had not that day in the kitchen arguing for Thalia to leave Tinos for the boarding school. I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it didn'...
The first one to bed always lit the candle, and the last one turned out the lamp....The tradition had seen them through quite a bit by now, and Rebecca had come to love the candlelight, not only because it meant that Mike loved to see her just the wa...
When I began writing The Night Bookmobile, it was a story about a woman's secret life as a reader. As I worked it also became a story about the claims that books place on their readers, the imbalance between our inner and outer lives, a cautionary ta...
At Gabriel College there was a very holy object on the high altar of the Oratory, covered with a black velvet cloth... At the height of the invocation the Intercessor lifted the cloth to reveal in the dimness a glass dome inside which there was somet...
And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived h...
The Boy’s head was spinning. Raul was real, and quite possibly not kindly disposed to him, as Marama’s potential heir and jail-breaker. The sailors worshiped Marama, who controlled the tides and commanded them through dreams? The Geolwe collected...
The Prince found Buttercup waiting unhappily outside his chamber doors. It's my letter,' she began. 'I cannot make it right.' Come in, come in,' the Prince said gently. 'Maybe we can help you.' She sat down in the same chair as before. 'All right, I'...
Kiernan told me-" Tears I hadn't even felt coming on suddenly began streaming down my cheeks. I had to swallow a sob before I could continue. "He told me he was sorry for-for loving me. He was s-sorry because," a deep breath helped me regain some of ...
As he took possession of it, he was overcome by a sense of something like sacred awe. He carefully spread his horse blanket on the ground as if dressing an altar and lay down on it. He felt blessedly wonderful. He was lying a hundred and fifty feet b...
Um. Charles thinks that his wolf has chosen me as his mate." "In less than one full day?" It did sound dumb when he said it that way. "Yes." she couldn't keep the uncertainty of her her voice, though, and it bothered Charles. He rolled to his feet an...
As a teenager, I began to question the Great Christian Sorting System. My gay friends in high school were kind and funny and loved me, so I suspected that my church had placed them in the wrong category... Injustices in the world needed to be address...
I know. I know I’ve been a jerk, and I don’t have a good excuse. But touching you and loving you, and knowing you were planning to leave me, made me crazy. After we made love the second time, I began to think maybe you’d decide to stay with me....
Certainly sand was not suitable for life. Yet, was a stationary condition absolutely indispensable for existence? Didn't unpleasant competition arise precisely because one tried to cling to a fixed position? If one were to give up a fixed position an...
I devised a test. I turned off the TV and instantly the snoring stopped. She began to move. When I felt her eyes about to open, I turned the TV back on and back to sleep she went. Then I'd turn it off and on - sometimes for millisecond - and she neve...
Her eyes began to shimmer with tears. “You . . . you love me?” His heart seemed permanently lodged in his throat. “More than life. God only knows why you love me, because I sure as hell don’t, but I know why I love you. You’re my beacon in ...
He hadn't developed into the accomplished running quarterback many had predicted he would become over the course of the season. But he had come to personify this team. He was raw and untested when the season began, but he played his two best games in...
Some three or four years before this Dr. Sloper had moved his household gods up town, as they say in New York. He had been living ever since his marriage in an edifice of red brick, with granite copings and an enormous fanlight over the door, standin...
What follows is the sum and substance of a remarkable year in a great artist’s life— Alexander Wainwright. He was at the pinnacle of his career when his art took a strange turn and I began to fear he had become possessed by some devil. But I was ...
I recognized the handwriting, and my heart gave a skip; when I opened it I got a turn, for it began, 'To my beloved Hector,' and I thought, by God she's cheating on me, and has sent me the wrong letter by mistake. But in the second line was a referen...
The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair. I do not especially the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on...
I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from ...
