I watched her with the crab as she ignored all my admonitions that the poor crab just needed to be set free if he was to have any chance of surviving. And God showed up there on that beach to teach me a lesson. Nothing survives when it's being smothe...
Unoka went into an inner room and soon returned with a small wooden disc containing a kola nut, some alligator pepper and a lump of white chalk. "I have kola," he announced when he sat down, and passed the disc over to his guest. "Thank you. He who b...
I was never really certain why he scared the bejesus out of me. Nothing scared me growing up. I’ve been playing with dead people since the day I was born, so it’s good thing, yet the Big Bad scared me. Which brings me to the reason I called.” �...
My father was a Catholic, a coal miner in the Big Pit. My mother a Jew. A charwoman, when she could find the work. They didn’t fit in Wales. Nor in the U.K., either. They didn’t fit with each other all that well, for that matter. They fought ever...
Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of i...
Why does IPCA use them if they’re evil?” he asked, confused. “They aren’t evil. They aren’t even really immoral, per se. They’re amoral. They don’t operate on the same level that we do. For a faerie, the only thing that matters is what ...
My name is not Mara Dyer, but my lawyer told me I had to choose something. A pseudonym. A nom de plume, for all of us studying for the SATs. I know that having a fake name is strange, but trust me—it’s the most normal thing about my life right no...
Technos and clerics have much in common. Both take a world that can’t be fully understood and try to explain its fundamental properties. Clerics postulate beliefs that can never be proven; they demand you accept these postulates as your Faith, whic...
Oh, girl! He's got a big one,” the fortune teller exclaimed, her dark eyes briefly flickering up to Violet's face before returning back to the cards spread out in front of her. She paused for a moment as she studied them, her pointer finger tapping...
Rocket Fever Grips Nation's Teenagers' cheers on enthusiastic newsreel, reflecting the nation's sudden reversal in attitude following the successful launch of Explorer-I into Earth orbit. Rather than being strange and threatening, outer space looks s...
I feel that all knowledge should be in the free-trade zone. Your knowledge, my knowledge, everybody's knowledge should be made use of. I think people who refuse to use other people's knowledge are making a big mistake. Those who refuse to share their...
You know that euphemism, she’s expecting? It’s apt. The birth of a baby, so long as it’s healthy, is something to look forward to. It’s a good thing, a big, good, huge event. And from thereon in, every good things, too,” I added hurriedly, ...
I told her we were going to get married, and all she could talk about was frogs. She said there's these hills where it's hot and rains all the time, and in the rainforests there are these very tall trees and right in the top branches of the trees the...
That's the big picture, your happiness. And health. You should never care what a man thinks of you -- until he demonstrates to you that he cares about making you happy. If he isn't trying to make you happy, then send him back from "whence" he came be...
With such luck as this, he rode the beast in the jaunty way that she deserved, back north, seemingly back from Mexico, pulling up finally at an outlying bar-ex-saloon (they had covered the old adobe face with knotty pine, substituted big stone matade...
I smashed his hand as hard as I could with the Wiffle bat. "Ow!" he screamed. Carson was rubbing his red palm, inspecting it for damage. "That hurt," he shrieked. "You really hurt me." "Right back at you," I said. "Good-bye Carson." He frowned, massa...
'Tragedy admires man. Comedy feels a bit sorry for him.' We think we are kings or queens, masters of the universe or at least our own destiny. We forget that a foot may crush us, or that the wind may knock us down. We are not in control. We are subje...
Clary wasn't sure what she'd expected -exclamations of delight, perhaps a smattering of applause. Instead there was silence, broken only when Jace said, "Somehow, I thought it would be bigger." Clary looked at the Cup in her hand. It was the size, pe...
What Friedan gave to the world was, "the problem that has no name." She not only named it but dissected it. The advances of science, the development of labor-saving appliances, the development of the suburbs: all had come together to offer women in t...
I feel like I’m going to get in a fight one day about the validity of falling in love so fast. Not a heated one because why would I give a shit if some other person gets it or not? Right now, it’s no longer the big flooding rush like when I saw h...
I believe, if there is some sort of higher power, the universe is it. Whenever religious people ask me where the universe came from, I tell them that it has always been here, and was never created. The Big Bang theory is based on the fact that the un...
