As I work in the afternoon on committing to paper some of my morning's thoughts, I find myself just about to close on the knotty question of whether or not I believe in God. In fact I am about to type, 'I do not believe in God', when the sky goes bla...
What Waringa tried hard to avoid was looking at the pictures of the walls and windows of the church. Many of the pictures showed Jesus in the arms of the virgin Mary or on the cross. But others depicted the devil, with two cow-like horns and a tail l...
This is an extra letter in the middle of the month because I'm rather lonely tonight. It's awfully stormy; the snow is beating against my tower. All the lights are out on the campus, but I drank black coffee and I can't go to sleep. I had a supper pa...
That's just how white folks will do you. It wasn't merely the cruelty involved; I was learning that black people could be mean and then some. It was a particular brand of arrogance, an obtuseness in otherwise sane people that brought forth our bitter...
It occurred to me that my cheek was probably right over his tattoo. Without thinking, I lifted my face and tugged at the neckline of his T-shirt. This time, the stark black-and-gold mark wasn't hidden. No need for that spell anymore, I guess. Still, ...
I heard the water-fall rejoice Singing like a choir, I saw the sun flash out of it Azure and amber fire. The earth was like an open flower Enamelled and arrayed, The path I took to find its heart Fluttered with sun and shade. And while earth lured me...
Her eyes traveled down the black T-shirt he wore. Pfft, he might as well be naked. It clung to him like a second skin giving her a clear view of lean, hard muscles. She licked her lips. Gods, what it would feel like to be his T-shirt. She was positiv...
The goblins of the city may hold committees to divide a single potato, but the strong and the cruel still sit on the hill, and drink vodka, and wear black furs, and slurp borscht by the pail, like blood. Children may wear through their socks marching...
You could run, and I could stay to fend them off," the vampire offered. "For some reason, I feel amazingly refreshed." He swung an amused look at Declan that made him grind his teeth. "And it seems I'm quite handy against them."-- --Natalya tossed aw...
It is as if the soul of the continent is weeping. Why does it weep? It weeps for the bones of the buffalo. It weeps for magic that has been forgotten. It weeps for the decline of poets. It weeps for the black people who think like white people. It we...
Love is a hollow word which seems at home in song lyrics and greeting cards, until you fall in love and discover it’s disconcerting power. Depression means nothing more than the blues, commercially packaged angst, a hole in the ground; until you fi...
Come with me if you want to live.” Neva stared at the enormous hand the stranger extended her. Her gaze followed the black leather-clad arm up to the massive shoulders, the strong jaw, and the thick lock of wavy blonde hair hanging over his dark gl...
The glow dies down, and she's standing at the end of my bed--the one who's been following me around leaving feather messages. I take in the torn fishnets, plaid mini-kilt, shiny, riveted breastplate with leather straps at the sides and a worn Great T...
Shebna scraped the tablet clean and began drawing circles in the soft clay. "Suppose you had six figs and you ate two. How many would--" "Four." Hezekiah answered before Shebna finished, and the tutor's thick black eyebrows rose in surprise. "And sup...
[T]hough the darkness sometimes lifted just enough so I could construe my surroundings, familiar shapes solidifying like bedroom furniture at dawn, my relief was never more than temporary because somehow the full morning never came, things always wen...
Books and drafts mean something quite different for different thinkers. One collects in a book the lights he was able to steal and carry home swiftly out of the rays of some insight that suddenly dawned on him, while another thinker offers us nothing...
There is an old saying that goes 'Start by plucking a hair, end by killing a man'. It is also said, 'Two hands must meet to make a sound'. The atrocities that happened here weren't carried out by strangers - it was us, the people who'd once lived tog...
This core concept is so fundamental to her life that she even had a custom grand piano made where the keys aren’t black and white—they’re green and red. As a side note, do you think it’s a coincidence that Christmas’ colors are red and gree...
I had hardly ever seen Great Granny Webster at that time, and yet her feelings interested me. She was little more to me than the silhouette of a formidable old woman dressed in black who appeared occasionally at family gatherings and made us feel tha...
It was like this blackness that crept into the corners of my life until everything was grey and dirty. My insides felt burnt out, like if you cut me open, all you would find would be smoke. No heart. No bones. There was nothing left, just the anger. ...
Every friendship travels at sometime through the black valley of despair. This tests every aspect of your affection. You lose the attraction and the magic. Your sense of each other darkens and your presence is sore. If you can come through this time,...