The human eye has to be one of the cruelest tricks nature ever pulled. We can see a tiny, cone-shaped area of light right in front of our faces, restricted to a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. We can’t see around walls, we can’t...
It was always the same for her when she arrived to meet the body. After she unbuckled her seat belt, after she pulled a stick pen from the rubber band on the sun visor, after her long fingers brushed her hip to feel the comfort of her service piece, ...
I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team. I dropped out of college, sidestepped the army with a 4-F on the grounds of mental...
What you need is a chick from Camden,' Van Patten says, after recovering from McDermott's statement. Oh great,' I say. 'Some chick who thinks it's okay to fuck her brother.' Yeah, but they think AIDS is a new band from England,' Price points out. Whe...
Frank Costello: I'm going to have my associate search you. Billy Costigan: No, no one's fucking searching me. Searching me for what? Frank Costello: Contra-fucking-band. Take your shoes off. [French slams Costigan into a chair] Mr. French: Shoes. Fra...
[Enid takes Rebecca to a "party" at Seymour's place, which is really just a gathering of nerdy record collectors] Jerome, the Angry Guy - Record Collector: Some records I will pay serious money for, provided they're a sincere V-plus. Other than that,...
Oberon: You know, Marlene and Gossie's the ones running the game on you, Ray. They sliced up the pie the first night you played. Thirty-five percent off the top. Plus Gossie's double scale as leader. Ray Charles: Leader. If anyone's leadin' the band ...
Doyle: You know what, by God? Linda: What? Doyle: I know what I oughta do tonight. Linda: Please don't. Doyle: Mmm-hmm. I'm gonna call up Morris and have him get the band together. We're gonna have a party. Party our asses off. I'd love to show them ...
[first lines] Narrator: 1879 - the Civil War is over, and the resulting economic explosion spurs the great migration west. Farmers, ranchers, prospectors, killers, and thieves seek their fortune. Cattle growers turn cow towns into armed camps, with m...
I'll go with you," Alec said, looking at Isabelle and Simon with suspicious eyes. "If you must," said Isabelle with exaggerated indifference. "I should warn you we'll be making out in the dark. Big, sloppy make-outage." Simon looked startled. "We are...
Women intrinsically understand human dynamics, and that makes them unstoppable. Unfortunately, the average man is less adroit at fostering such rivalries, which is why most men remain average; males are better at hating things that can't hate them ba...
Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain't. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himsel...
And in it all, the sensation of shaking my fists at the sky, shaking my fists high up to the sky, because that is what we do when someone dies too early, too beautiful, too undervalued by the world, or sometimes just at all -- we shake our fists at t...
I dodged behind Mac for cover and refused to take the bait. I glanced at my nonexistent watch. 'Oops, look at the time. Guess I have to be going now. Let's not do this again sometime, okay?' Before I could move, Pritkin was there, jamming the medalli...
Our lives are made up of choices. Big ones, small ones, strung together by the thin air of good intentions; a line of dominoes, ready to fall. Which shirt to wear on a cold winter's morning, what crappy junk food to eat for lunch. It starts out so in...
Until you've got your mouth full of cocaine, you don't know what kissing is. One kiss goes on from phase to phase like one of those novels by Balzac and Zola and Romain Rolland and D. H. Lawrence and those chaps. And you never get tire. You're on fou...
Alicia's sweet friend, Cassie, who never thought of anyone as being a stranger, rushed up to Halloran and kneed him in the groin. The big bad dragon shifter cried out, clutched his crotch, and fell to his knees. Cassie grabbed Alicia's arm and ran wi...
Will we ever see his like again? It is doubtful. But at least for a brief moment in time we were lucky to have him as one of our own: an English lionheart who was the terror of the continent, who earned the love and respect of everyone who had the pr...
The artificial primacy of defense among our national priorities is a constant unearned windfall for some, but it's privation for the rest of America; it steals from what we could be and can do. In Econ 101, they teach that the big-picture fight over ...
She felt a feathery touch on her back and turn to see the man of her pleasures standing with her in the shower. Lost in her own thoughts, he’d managed to sneak in unheard. She looked at him now. His naked body glistened as the water rolled down his...
Sometimes the clouds weren't weightless. Sometimes their bellies got dark and full. It was life. It happened. It didn't mean it wasn't scary, or that I wasn't still afraid, but now I knew that as long as I was standing under it with Braden beside me ...
