When the love-led man had ceased from his labours Bathsheba came and looked him in the face. 'Gabriel, will you you stay on with me?' she said, smiling winningly, and not troubling to bring her lips quite together again at the end, because there was ...
I can't afford to gamble." His breath came out in a hiss, but he tightened his grip around her. "So we'll take it slow then," he said. "I won't push you beyond what you want, Sam. But fair warning: I will push you. When this happens it'll be on your ...
The air was motionless, carved, a block of warm copper fitting neatly around the earth, molded while soft to fit every house and every human being on the earth, and now hardened forever so that no man could move and no air ever came through. The eart...
Whether in private debate or in public, any attempt I made to explain how the Black Muslim movement came about, and how it has achieved such force, was met with a blankness that revealed the little connection that the liberals' attitudes have with th...
The two came to differ on many, if not most, issues. But the man who would single-handedly defy Hitler in 1940 against all odds bears a striking resemblance to the man who organized the first satyagraha campaign in South Africa.
I would have liked to catch hold of sleep at least once, just as I had been resolved to catch hold of death one day, to catch hold of the wings of the angel of sleep when it came for me, to grab it with two fingers like a butterfly after sneaking up ...
You're weird,' she said. 'You don't have any friends.' 'I didn't come here for friends,' said Bod truthfully. "i came here to learn.' Mo's nose twitched. "Do you know how weird that is?' she asked. "Nobody comes to school to learn. I mean, you come b...
Growing up loving the Bible made me apt to love other books. I don't love them in the same way I love the Bible, but a lesser love came easily. The splendor of sunlight does not take away
So the small things came into their own: small acts of helping others, if one could; small ways of making one's own life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter. Clever people might laugh at such simplicity, but, she asked herself, what w...
Sometimes, in the stillness of my room, my mom’s voice came to me, repeating things she’d said for months. Like, “My skin is melting off my face, isn’t it?” And, “My whole body feels dead from the crap they’re pouring into me. Do I look...
The thought of her gave me such a continual anguish that I could no more forget her than an aching tooth. It was involuntary, hopeless, compulsive. For years she had been the first thing I remembered when I woke up, the last thing that drifted throug...
The truth beyond the fetish's glimmering mirage is the relationship of laborer to product; it is the social account of how that object came to be. In this view every commodity, beneath the mantle of its pricetag, is a hieroglyph ripe for deciphering,...
After that [father's death] I never cried with any real conviction, nor expected much of anyone's God except indifference, nor loved deeply without fear that it would cost me dearly in pain. At the age of five I had become a skeptic and began to sens...
The blast that swept him came off New Hampshire snow-fields and ice-hung forests. It seemed to have traversed interminable leagues of frozen silence, filling them with the same cold roar and sharpening its edge against the same bitter black-and-white...
He’s been fighting a lot on the Midwest circuit, but Vegas is the big-time. If he ever wants to get anywhere, he has to fight here. And since we’re here, we thought we’d get married, since Vegas is so romantic.” Ivy could think of a dozen cit...
I am convinced that when Nietzsche came to Switzerland and went insane, it was not because of venereal disease, though he did have this disease. Rather, it was because he understood that insanity was the only philosophic answer if the infinite-person...
Royal summoned mourners. They came from the village, from the neighboring hills and, wailing like dogs at midnight, laid siege to the house. Old women beat their heads against the walls, moaning men prostrated themselves: it was the art of sorrow, an...
The guilt fell upon him like a hammer to a nail. He dropped onto his bed, grabbing the picture frame that sat next to it. I’m sorry were the words that repeatedly came out of his mouth. All he could think was, how could he do that to her? To the wo...
I love Sherlock Holmes. I've got all his books, leather-bound. What I thought was great about Sherlock Holmes was that not only was he a supersleuth, he was also a hard worker. Not only did he go out and solve the crimes, he came home and wrote it al...
It was snowing when I got off the bus at Flax Hill. Not quite regular snowfall, not exactly a blizzard. This is how it was: The snow came down heavily, settled for about a minute, then the wind moved it - more rolled it, really - onto another target....
Some stories consumed you, they made time stop, your worries float into the ether, and when it came to my reading habits I chose romance over any other genre. The appeal of the happy ever after, the winsome heroine being adored for who she was, and t...
