Our favourite amusement during that winter was tobogganing. In places the shore of the lake rises abruptly from the water's edge. Down these steep slopes we used to coast. We would get on our toboggan, a boy would give us a shove, and off we went! Pl...
She is nine, beloved, as open-faced as the sky and as self-contained. I have watched her grow. As recently as three or four years ago, she had a young child's perfectly shallow receptiveness; she fitted into the world of time, it fitted into her, as ...
It was early evening twilight when we came around a corner… and there in the road was a red deer stag. He leapt up the bank beside the road and then paused, looking back over his shoulder as we passed. Like a scene in a dream I watched him as he wa...
It is pleasant to walk your dog beside a lake in winter in a tropical place because all of the black ducks waddle up the ryegrass bank and pluck the seed with their small gray beaks. There is nothing required of you but to watch them and wonder what ...
The shame and the downfall of a modern materialistic society is her inability to treasure, care for, admire, adore, cherish, value, revere, respect, uphold, uplift, protect, shield, defend, safeguard, treasure and love her children. I praise all the ...
Life often goes along in a stream. The details float by like a leaf on a river. The current is pushing and pulling the leaf, but we do not see it because we are standing on the banks of the river. There are moments when the leaf is caught up in littl...
If there is a place in heaven for Labrador Retrievers (and I trust there is or I won't go) it'll have to have a brook right smack in the middle - a brook with little thin shoals for wading and splashing; a brook with deep, still pools where they can ...
Annie Wilkes: The swearing, Paul. There, I said it. Paul Sheldon: The, uh, profanity bothers you? Annie Wilkes: It has no nobility. Paul Sheldon: These are slum kids, I was a slum kid. Everybody talks like that. Annie Wilkes: THEY DO NOT! What do you...
LaBoeuf: As I understand it, Chaney... or Chelmsford, as he called himshelf in Texas... shot the senator's dog. When the senator remonstrated, Chelmsford shot him as well. You could argue that the shooting of the dog was merely an instance of malum p...
[Frawley, Dino and a Vericom crew chief are looking up at another crew member examining the hacked junction box above the bank that was robbed] Vericom Crew Chief: They obviously knew how to work the box, but I like the way they zapped the bipper to ...
[Al is explaining to the bank president why he made the loan to Mr. Novak] Al Stephenson: You see, Mr. Milton, in the Army I've had to be with men when they were stripped of everything in the way of property except what they carried around with them ...
Taggart: What do you want me to do, sir? Hedley Lamarr: I want you to round up every vicious criminal and gunslinger in the west. Take this down. [Taggart looks for a pen and paper while Hedley talks] Hedley Lamarr: I want rustlers, cut throats, murd...
For the movement was without scruples; she rolled towards her goal unconcernedly and deposed the corpses of the drowned in the windings of her course. Her course had many twists and windings; such was the law of her being. And whosoever could not fol...
White heterosexual male characters need not disappear from narratives. They need not stop being central focus of some stories. They just need to stop taking most of the narrative space, and make more rooms to other types of protagonists: persons of c...
I think," said my neighbour, her chin high in the air (and still spiffed, I am glad to say) "that women who've never married and never had children have missed out on the central experiences of life. They are emotionally crippled." Now what am I supp...
He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look, and even doubted their existence. But when he saw them he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when...
An oncology ward is a battlefield, and there are definite hierarchies of command. The patients, they're the ones doing the tour of duty. The doctors breeze in and out like conquering heroes, but they need to read your child's chart to remember where ...
Pull yourself together, Detective. You're embarrassing yourself, and more imprtant, you're embarrassing me." "They're going to do it outside. In public." "So the fuck what?" "Public," Peabody said, head still between her knees. "You're being honored ...
We don't worship Satan, we worship ourselves using the metaphorical representation of the qualities of Satan. Satan is the name used by Judeo-Christians for that force of individuality and pride within us. But the force itself has been called by many...
No one can ever use his heart to listen or touch or feel or see or smell. It's just a lump of muscle pumping mechanically inside your ribs. It has no will and no ability to do anything but go on pumping until it gives up and withers away or is choked...
The central attitudes driving the Player are: Women were put on this earth to have sex with men—especially me. Women who want sex are too loose, and women who refuse sex are too uptight. (!) It’s not my fault that women find me irresistible. (Thi...
