You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin – to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours – closer than you yourself keep it. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We...
He walked over to Isaac and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Dude, pillows don’t break. Try something that breaks.” Isaac reached for a basketball trophy from the shelf above the bed and then held it over his head as if waiting for permission. �...
Everybody has a ‘gripping stranger’ in their lives, Andy, a stranger who unwittingly possesses a bizarre hold over you. Maybe it’s the kid in cut-offs who mows your lawn or the woman wearing White Shoulders who stamps your book at the library�...
It was one of those decisions that shouldn't have been so easy to get so wrong. Go on your own or take the half wasted waif. She was wearing denim hotpants with a pink vest top, and was hanging off his arm, more for stability than closeness, so he pr...
Staying relaxed was helping him cope with the drug induced juddering vision that could be best described as being like a Hitchcockian visual effect operated by a hyperactive squirrel that shook the whole universe closer and farther away. If you went ...
Charlie slowly crumpled to the floor, Allison soon joining him. “Dinner is served!” Stanley trumpeted, as he reached into the steaming mass of offal and fished around for the teens’ livers. “Aha!” he crowed, as he lifted one liver in each h...
If there is one thing I'd learned about hospitals, it's that they aren't interested in healing you. They are interested in stabilizing you, and then everyone is supposed to move on. They go to stabilize some more people, and you go off to do whatever...
YANNI “JOHNNY” BACOLAS: I would always tell him, “Layne [Staley], why don’t you take off, go to some deserted island, hire the best counselors, and just kick this shit? Go for six months if you have to.” And his rebuttal was, “Johnny, I h...
One morning, as he sat at his desk, he heard the sound of a horse's hooves on the path outside his house. He stepped out on to the verandah. There, on a tall grey horse, sat Morgane. 'I've come to have my picture painted,' she said. She took off her ...
Twelve thousand years ago, everybody on earth was a hunter-gatherer; now almost all of us are farmers or else are fed by farmers. The spread of farming from those few sites of origin usually did not occur as a result of the hunter-gatherers' elsewher...
I wish I’d known those words on the day I watched those German troops land, plane-load after plane-load of them—and come off ships down in the harbor! All I could think of was damn them, damn them, over and over. If I could have thought the words...
To save space and money, Thor and my mom work in the same office, which is basically like a converted closet, only smaller. In keeping with the frugal and Puritanical mindset, they even share the same chair. It’s a wooden chair with its back cut of...
I'm sure you've heard people talk about their Heart's Desire—well that's a load of rot. Hearts are idiots. They're big and squishy and full of daft dreams. They flounce off to write poetry and moon at folk who aren't worth the mooning. Bones are th...
The opportunity was too perfect to miss. Harry crept silently around behind Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, bent down, and scooped a large handful of mud out of the path. 'We were just talking about your friend Hagrid,' Malfoy said to Ron. 'Just trying to...
I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded Dwarves. Hobbits have no beards. There i...
Listen up, Mount High-Hair," Gustav barked. "Say what you want about me, but lay off the rest of the team. I've been through a lot of stuff with these people. Nobody can tell me that Fancy Dancer and Lady Slick-Pants aren't heroes. Captain Gloom-Cape...
At that moment, Harry fully understood for the first time why people said Dumbledore was the only wizard Voldemort had ever feared. The look upon Dumbledore's face as he stared down at the unconscious form of Mad-Eye moody was more terrible than Harr...
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphood was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think a...
...Don't be surprised, and I say it darkly, do not be surprised if you lose your Luke in this cause; perhaps Mrs. Dudley has not yet had her own mid morning snack, and she is perfectly capable of a filet de Luke á la meuniére, or perhaps dieppoise,...
Be as pissed off as you want to be. Don’t hold back because you think it’s unladylike or some such nonsense. We shouldn’t be shamed out of our anger. We should be using it. Using it to make change in our own lives, and using it to make change i...
It is now recognised that dissociation is a way of forgetting, for a time. The mind siphons off the bad memories into a separate part, and reclaiming those hidden-away memories us a complex process. So, when the memories resurface it does not feel as...
