You were talking about the wind," the Fillyjonk said suddenly. "A wind that carries off your washing. But I'm speaking about cyclones. Typhoons, Gaffsie dear. Tornadoes, whirlwinds, sandstorms... Flood waves that carry houses away... But most of all ...
But if Hugh dies first, would I ever be able to stop saying, "we" and say "I"? I doubt it. I do not think that death can take away the fact that Hugh and I are "we" and "us," a new creature born of the time of our marriage vows, which has grown along...
When he heard laughter, before he could think or feel anything, his heart would already be beating like he’d sprinted twenty yards. As the beating slowly normalized he’d think of how his heart, unlike him, was safely contained, away from the worl...
It was as if God himself saw that my intention was to make my outer self match my inner fabulosity and didn't think the world could handle such an explosion of amazingness. So instead of letting me get to the gym where I would have transformed myself...
He’s as tense as I am, maybe even more so, but it’s so hard to reconcile that with the serenity of weightlessness. His faux-blond hair is floating out away from his head. He’s wearing a worn, much-mended, and too-large shirt his friend in town ...
Whatever else she’d been on the verge of saying lodged in her throat as if her mind had suddenly registered what he'd meant. A solitary tear crested and trailed unchecked down her cheek. Oh, hell. At that moment, he'd give his life to take away the...
Like Semmering Academy, the Grove School was a Gothic pile of bricks run by 1950s-era chalk drones, which maintained its cultural viability by perpetuating a weirdly seductive anxiety throughout its community. Mary herself was a victim of the seducti...
In decades from now, I’m sure they’ll say we Joes were all noble, every one of us grimy but patriotic cherubs. Because we won a war. Back home they already do think it, thanks to the publicity teams, the ads, correspondents, censors. I’m not bu...
We must overturn so many idols, the idol of self first of all, so that we can be humble, and only from our humility can learn to be redeemers, can learn to work together in the way the world really needs. Liberation that raises a cry against others i...
We like to stress the commonness of heroes. Essences seem undemocratic. We feel oppressed by the call to greatness. We regard an interest in glory or perfection as a sign of mental unhealthiness, and have decided that high achievers, who are called o...
When we truly fear God, our fear of other things and other people begins to wane. Big fears make little fears go away. We can spend our days worrying about a host of daily challenges, but let the word cancer be mentioned in the same sentence with our...
All the black leather she needs is the E-Z boy recliner where her love is parked with one of his hands wrapped around a remote, the other, a bottle of beer. She's right. It's kinky. The way he doesn't look away from the TV, as her head bobs in his la...
Anyhow, even though I might go out on a date with a boy, emotionally I just wouldn't be able to concentrate. I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string. I'd be thinking a...
It's a shame you left without a word, you know. She was just beginning to trust you before that. Before you got angry. Before you ran off. Just like every other man in her life. Lusting after her, full of sweet words, then just walking away. Leaving ...
It was so quiet, I could hear my own breathing, loud in my ears. Outside, the ocean was crashing, waves hitting sand, then pulling back to sea. I thought of everything being washed away, again and again. We make such messes in this life, both acciden...
The faery lady looked at Hettie curiously from beneath her wig. "You know..." she said, very softly. "All I wanted was that you would be my friend. That isn't very much to ask, is it? Doesn't everyone in the Smoke Lands have a friend? Doesn't everyon...
In short, Daniel was once again a member of a family. Viewed from without they were a strange enough family: a rattling, hunchbacked old woman, a spoiled senile cocker spaniel, and a eunuch with a punctured career (for though Rey didn’t live with t...
Think about it: virtually every atrocity in the history of humankind was enabled by a populace that turned away from a reality that seemed too painful to face, while virtually every revolution for peace and justice has been made possibly by a group o...
I think maybe bad things seem worse when people are alone. When they can turn that bad thought over and over in their head, polishing it like a stone, until it shines dark and black. Maybe the key to making things better is being with other people. L...
As I took up life as a minister, I tried to understand why so many people resisted and rejected God, I soon realized that perhaps that main reason was affliction and suffering. ...But at the same time, I learned that just as many people find God thro...
Rhythm becoming thought, thought becoming memory; memory, which tends to shuck itself, to peel away. You get older, look back through a child's tunnel vision, and realize you never knew the whole that tied the details together. You were just along fo...
