When I was young” … “Before I was twenty, I mean, I used to think that life was a thing that kept gaining impetus, it would get richer and deeper each year. You kept learning more, getting wiser, having more insight, going further into the trut...
I must thank you for it all. I might not have gone but for you, and so have missed the finest study I ever came across: a study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon. There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourl...
I need to be casual but not too casual. Dressy but not too dressy. I need him to think I just threw on the first thing I found and that I'm not taking this too seriously or overthinking it or even that I was thinking about it at all. Because I'm not....
The love between Uncle Dees and Roger was every bit as enduring as it had been immediate. They were never to be seen apart, man and dog, not since the moment of their introduction. Very quickly after their arrival in Amsterdam four years earlier, Rog...
It seemed like a mistake. And mistakes ought to be rectified, only this one couldn't be. Between the way things used to be and the way they were now was a void that couldn't be crossed. I had to find an explanation other than the real one, which was ...
I think most people are just trying to be happy, and that most of their actions, however misguided, are in line with that goal. Most people just want to feel they belong somewhere, want to be loved, and want to feel they're important to someone. If y...
And she imagined how things could be later. It was stupid, but the picture just appeared in her mind. Abel and Magnus shoveling snow together... in twenty years, in thirty. Magnus had grown old, his broad back still strong but bent from time, his hai...
Though he slay me, yet I will praise him," he began softly, his voice a little tremulous at first. "I will rise up in the morning with the dew and praise his name. He has given me a place to serve him, a name with which to be known. He has called me ...
Now, with regard to the people who have done things we call "terrorism," I'm confident they have been expressing their pain in many different ways for thirty years or more. Instead of our empathically receiving it when they expressed it in much gentl...
Another grave limitation of language is that it cannot, like music or gesture, do more than one thing at once. However the words in a great poet's phrase interinanimate one another and strike the mind as a quasi-instantaneous chord, yet, strictly spe...
The New Testament describes the characteristics of a "virtuous widow" who is qualified to receive help from believers. This woman's description seems to parallel the miraculous, poured-out life portrayed by the Proverbs 31 woman. She does not live fo...
I don’t want to be just your friend, Willow.” She took a step closer, her body pressing suggestively up against his. “Then what do you want to be, Re?” she asked in a husky whisper. Holding her stare, his eyes narrowed, begging to understand ...
I've a habit of placing a happy-face or a frowny-face on my calendar, depending on what kind of day I've had. Often I slap a droopy circle in the box, discouraged by the things I failed to accomplish and the unpleasant encounters endured. But the...
I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religio...
I write this in the moonlight, straining my ears to hear beyond the cold mechanical clock to the warm biological noises of the night, but my being is attuned only to one thing, the relentless rhythm of time. If I could only smash the clock and stop t...
Before I lost my father, I never understood the rituals surrounding funerals: the wake, the service itself, the reception afterward,the dinners prepared by well-meaning friends and delivered in plastic containers, even the popular habit of making pos...
Intelligent design theorists have learned a few lessons from the failures of their predecessors and have devised a more sophisticated strategy to compete head on with evolution. One of the main things they [intelligent design creationists] have learn...
Heaven, such as it is, is right here on earth. Behold: my revelation: I stand at the door in the morning, and lo, there is a newspaper, in sight like unto an emerald. And holy, holy, holy is the coffee, which was, and is, and is to come. And hark, I ...
Julia, is everything all right?” her father said in a raspy voice. “It’s three in the morning, m’ija.” “I’m sorry. I have to talk to you; it’s something very important. Papá, Mamá, I’ve made a decision, and I wanted to share it wi...
He opened the door for me with an impassive expression. Oh, but he couldn’t fool me. I knew very well that he gloated inside. He had the right to. I’d be gloating aloud if I were him. I slid into the plush black leather seat and ran my hands over...
What a grand revenge you have taken! I saw you innocent, and I deceived you. Four years after, you find me a Christian enthusiast; you then work upon me, perhaps to my complete perdition! But Tess, my coz, as I used to call you, this is only my way o...
