No, not of course at all—it is really all hocus-pocus. The days lengthen in the winter-time, and when the longest comes, the twenty-first of June, the beginning of summer, they begin to go downhill again, toward winter. You call that ‘of course�...
Neither spoke, but lat silently listening to the ticking of the clock. A stair creaked, and a squeaky mouse scurried noisily through the wall. The darkness was oppressive, and after lying for some time screwing up his courage, he took the box of matc...
One should let one's nails grow for a fortnight. O, how sweet it is to drag brutally from his bed a child with no hair on his upper lip and with wide open eyes, make as if to touch his forehead gently with one's hand and run one's fingers through his...
What am I to God? Nothing, a murky shadow. My passage on this earth is too rapid to leave any traces; it counts for nothing in space or in time. God really doesn't pay any attention to us, so even if he exists, it's as if he didn't. My form of atheis...
I had heard my brothers and sisters use curse words but had never dared use one myself in front of anyone. But I had practiced alone in my room lots of times, trying out different cadences and into nations: 'Fuck, fuck, fuck you, fucknut. Shit, shits...
This is beautiful," I said, ignoring the shop window to trace the gleaming stone walls fronting another boutique. "You know what's funny?" Jacob asked. He didn't wait for my answer. "You can see beauty in everything, except for yourself." *** I swall...
Marxist Man could not have come upon the earth at a more illogical time. In an age when technological advances have finally made it feasible to adequately feed, clothe and house the entire human race, Marxist Man stands as a military threat to this p...
People with family histories of alcoholism tend to have lower levels of endorphins- the endogenous morphine that is responsible for many of our pleasure responses- than do people genetically disinclined to alcoholism. Alcohol will slightly raise the ...
Y-naga: "That's the thing... It's like trying to find a guy who's a kid at heart but still a responsible adult, so he can be counted on when I find myself in a pinch, somebody who's a little wild at times but normally lets me have my way even when I'...
The campus, an academy of trees, under which some hand, the wind's I guess, had scattered the pale light of thousands of spring beauties, petals stained with pink veins; secret, blooming for themselves. We sat among them. Your long fingers, thin body...
By the time I got to the phone and dialed John's number, I was out of breath with excitement. "You are not going to believe this," I blurted out. "What's the matter?" Hr sounded concerned. "Are you sitting down?" "Yeah, sure, Pattie. What's wrong?" G...
So often, children are punished for being human. Children are not allowed to have grumpy moods, bad days, disrespectful tones, or bad attitudes, yet we adults have them all the time! We think if we don't nip it in the bud, it will escalate and we wil...
Nick stands up and offers his hand to me. I have no idea what he wants, but what the hell, I take his hand anyway, and he pulls me up on my feet then presses against me for a slow dance and it's like we're in a dream where he's Christopher Plummer an...
But it doesn't happen that way, I keep telling myself knowingly and sadly. Only in our fraternity pledges and masonic inductions, our cowboy movies and magazine stories, not in our real-life lives. For, the seventeenth-century humanist to the contrar...
We have not advanced very far in our spiritual lives if we have not encountered the basic paradox of freedom, to the effect that we are most free when we are bound. But not just any way of being bound will suffice; what matters is the character of ou...
If Laura was so prolific with poems, and in truth she was, then what was the problem with Megan’s request? Couldn’t Laura, with a little doing, keep stringing together line after line of words and construct, in time, a novel? It seemed logical, b...
Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that eighteen years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn...
Plunged up to the ears in work, good friend!" thought Oblomov as he watched him depart. "Yes, and blind and deaf and dumb to everything else in the world! Yet by going into society and, at the same time, busying yourself about your affairs you will y...
Nineteenth-century preacher Henry Ward Beecher's last words were "Now comes the mystery." The poet Dylan Thomas, who liked a good drink at least as much as Alaska, said, "I've had eighteen straight whiskeys. I do believe that's a record," before dyin...
I faced people from all walks of business who fully disregarded design (though they were completely influenced by it). I also met fine artists who drowned in their own work and the dense creative universe in their minds. Then I met designers. And ins...
I’ve been thinking about what this would be like, too. Ever since that night I almost kissed you on the beach back in June. Say you’re right. Say I can have any woman I want. The woman I want is you. Because you’re perky and fun. Because you’...
