I drift off for a while. I don't know how long, but when I open my eyes, the Oscars are still on and Alex tells me that Sid has gone and this makes me a little sad. Whatever the four of us had is over. He is my daughter's boyfriend now, and I am a fa...
William slapped him on the shoulder, sending Sex into rapturous convulsions. “Before we do this, I’ve got one question for you. And you can’t lie. This is too important.” A bit sick to his stomach at what such a debaucher could want to know, ...
Pedersen was always wooing her. Sometimes he was gracious and kind, but at other times when his failure wearied him he would be cruel and sardonic, with a suggestive tongue whose vice would have scourged her were it not that Marie was impervious, or ...
A shadow passes over her face, but she shakes it off fast as she leans forward, her bright-blue hair swinging over her shoulder and clashing with her pumpkin-orange shirt. “You think you’re the only one who wants to bring back someone they love? ...
Over the years of being stuck in this shit hole called life, I had debated religion and church, souls and freewill, heaven and hell. I had come to a few conclusions. Mankind was too self-serving to understand what He had wanted from them. It wasn’t...
That was the coolest thing ever.” Eena smiled at the fact that she’d been lucky enough to touch the wings of a real crioness. “That was highly unusual. I can’t believe they came right up to us—to you.” “They were hungry, I’m sure.” ...
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught - in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and a...
Katja kneeled in the Parisian streets, shaking and weak from the pain in her head and heart. It had come a second ago—a vague vision from another decade, nearly forgotten by its sender and screaming with emotional turmoil. And only moments after sh...
t smells in. Let the smell of hot tarmac in the summer remind you of a meal you ate the first time you landed in a hot place, when the ground smelled like it was melting. Let the smell of salt remind you of a paper basket of fried clams you ate once,...
For the anarch, little has changed; flags have meaning for him, but not sense. I have seen them in the air and on the ground like leaves in May and November; and I have done so as a contemporary and not just as a historian. The May Day celebration wi...
Heisenberg and Bohr and Einstein strike me as being like gifted retriever dogs. Off they go, not just for an afternoon, but for ten years; they come back exhausted and triumphant and drop at your feet... a vole. It's a remarkable thing in its way, a ...
Will had been taken aback in his confrontation with Arisaka to discover that his name- Chocho- meant "Butterfly"... He was puzzled to know why they had selected it. His friends, of course, delighted in helping him guess the reason. 'I assume it's bec...
He made a commitment, Eena.” “And you believe this ,” she spoke the word detestably, “is more important than true love?” “Yes.” “No,” she stubbornly disagreed. “Yes,” Ian insisted as he put his finger to her lips, preventing her...
There are young men and women up and down the land who happily (or unhappily) tell anyone who will listen that they don’t have an academic turn of mind, or that they aren’t lucky enough to have been blessed with a good memory, and yet can recite ...
I see in the fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and cl...
He took his hands off the oars and pulled in the mooring rope. If I make a couple of loops, he thought, I can strap the axe on to my back. He had a mental picture of what could happen to a man who plunged into the cauldron below a waterfall with a sh...
A rap at the back door made her jump, and she peered through the window for a long time before she eased open the door a crack. She left the security chain on. 'What do you want, Richard?' Richard Morrell's police cruiser was parked in the drive. He ...
John [the father] kept saying, "You have a penis. That means you’re a boy." One day, Shannon noticed that her son had been in the bathroom an awfully long time and pushed the door open. "He had a pair of my best, sharpest sewing scissors poised, re...
Zac dangled his legs off the edge of the building, hanging onto every word I said as though I were some old time bard telling an epic war tale. I tried to be as detailed as possible, and I knew that I was doing a good job when he'd lean back and shut...
O'Shaughnessy is hitting Denholt on the side of his head with his free arm, great, walloping, pile-driver blows. The two of them stagger together, like partners in a crazy dance. Glass is breaking all around them. Gray smoke from the six shots, pink-...
The car drives through, stops while the man closes and fastens the prickly gate behind it. The bell shuts off; the stillness is deafening by contrast. The car goes on until the outline of a house suddenly uptilts the searching headlight-beams, log-bu...
