Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time, with a gift of tears; Grief, with a glass that ran; Pleasure, with pain for leaven; Summer, with flowers that fell; Remembrance, fallen from heaven, And madness risen from hell; Stre...
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, A luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the...
When Juliet came flying down the hallway, Stella didn't recognize her friend. Juliet hadn't bothered with makeup; she was wearing a nightgown underneath her raincoat and had on plastic flip-flops. This was the way loved walked in, barely dressed, con...
C.J. had once believed that he understood who he was, what he was about, what he was capable of. But when the moment came to act upon these convictions, he discovered that his knowledge of self was faulty. Had his lack of killer instinct been a momen...
A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them.... His eyes darkened, and the crowded, flaring streets became blurred to his eyes. When the cab ...
He didn't mince words. “Anyone that wants to live, get in.” His voice was deep and powerful, matching the promise his body made. He was confident and self-assured, the kind of man you wanted in your corner when the monsters came knocking. With hi...
I couldn't tear my eyes away from the blood. As odd as it sounds, I felt irritated. I'd just cleaned that glass when I first came in on my shift today. Knowing Jim, he'd make me clean them again before I could go home. After he chewed me out, of cour...
A priest is a functionary of a social sort. The society worships certain deities in a certain way, and the priest becomes ordained as a functionary to carry out that ritual. The deity to whom he is devoted is a deity that was there before he came alo...
Then an experience that perhaps no good man can ever have in our world came over him-a torrent of perfectly unmixed and lawful hatred. The energy of hating, never before felt without some guilt, without some dim knowledge that he was failing to disti...
Our one employee came warily out of the back. He was always skittish with me, and if Lizzy wasn't around, h made a point of keeping his distance. I think he was expecting me to make a pass at him. He was seventeen, had stringy black hair,bad skin, an...
Getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds," I added. Radar tapped a locker twice with his fist to show his approval, and then came back with another. "Ben, getting you a date to prom is s...
God is always waiting for us to come to Him, so we can be set free from anything that keeps us from becoming more like Him. To the children of Israel in bondage in Egypt, God said He saw their oppression, heard their cry, and knew their sorrows, so H...
...the very greatest satire, I came to think -- the kind that lives forever -- ultimately grew out of a debunking attitude toward the self. To see the world mock-heroically was necessarily to engage in a sort of preliminary self-burlesque. You couldn...
Elizabeth was so sweet this afternoon trying to show P.B. his sitting room. He became absorbed in some jungle prints along the passage and would not come. The corners of her mouth went down after the third attempt & putting both hands on his shoulder...
You are equipped with strong bodies and educated minds. Add to these an unshakable faith in a divine providence and you have the tools by which you may build a successful life. Make each day your masterpiece and live so nobly that you may witness hon...
He came face-to-face with the rude paradox fame had dealt him: The secret of his extraordinary art had been his ability to observe human interaction anonymously, thereby gaining insight into the emotions on display in ordinary life--it was his abilit...
She came very close, and looking into my eyes, she said, “My Jenny,” and then she bent her head and kissed me—here, on the left-hand corner of my mouth. And nobody knows better than I that I couldn’t have felt anything, because Tamsin was a g...
Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the artificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmoniously above the willow. May came too soon, and suddenly ...
Once inside I stripped off my clothes and showered. Refreshed, I pick up my phone and type. ME: I want you. Come over now if you feel the same way. I held my breath as a I waited for a response but after several minutes none came. Maybe he wasn't goi...
While lunch and conversation lasted roughly an hour, not at all a lot of time, I came away feeling like I’d known Zach for years. It was as if we’d grown up together and we’d been best friends since high school, which is ridiculous because in h...
...with a rush of feeling he felt that this must be happiness. As soon as the thought came to him, he fought it back, blaming the whiskey. The very idea was as dangerous as presumptive speech: happiness could not be sought or worried into being, or e...
