I gave her a look. “Rachel.” “Grace, you have to admit this is pretty weird. Say it. You disappearing from the hospital and Olivia is — and Sam suddenly shows up with you and, well, the freaky hallucinogenic mushrooms are looking more and mor...
Playdate. (n) A Date arranged by adults in which young children are brought together, usually at the home of one of them, for the premeditated purpose of “playing”. A feature of contemporary American upscale suburban life in which “neighborhood...
Lisa was thinking, as she climbed the apparently unending staircase, the she had taken pretty long odds. She had not hesitated to buck the Tiger, Life. Simon Iff had warned her that she was acting on impulse. But--on the top of that--he had merely ur...
The hallway led me to the stairway of a million steps. My leg screamed in protest. I sighed and started climbing. I just had to keep from limping. Limping showed weakness, and I didn’t need any enterprising, career-motivated shapeshifters trying to...
There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling. Every summit seems an exaggerati...
We only came close to dying six or seven times, which I thought was pretty good. Once, I lost my grip and found myself dangling by one hand from a ledge fifty feet above the rocky surf. But I found another handhold and kept climbing. A minute later A...
Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of t...
The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a...
My wife and I said good-bye the next morning in a little sheltered place among the lumber on the wharf; she was one of your women who never like to do their crying before folks. She climbed on the pile of lumber and sat down, a little flushed and qui...
The girl looks out the window, watching the gentle, familiar blue sky fade into darkness. The stars come out, slowly at first and then all together, diamond-bright, each one a new world to discover. But no matter how long the girl looks, she feels no...
I’m not into danger, either.” “Aw, Chess. You so into it you ain’t climb out with a rope. Why else you do your job, live down here, buy from Bump?” “It’s just—I mean—I just do, is all.” Her cheeks burned. She shouldn’t have let ...
You should climb around inside my brain, Dan. It's like this dark room surrounded by quicksand." "I know what you mean," her brother said quietly. "I hate being in my brain sometimes. I have to get out." "What do you do?" Amy asked. Dan shrugged "I g...
Sometimes we scratch, claw and climb so hard to conquer a mountain that, once achieved, we cling to its summit much too long and it ultimately instigates our fall. As we dangle by our fingertips we grasp and claw at what’s no more; with a fear of f...
The children mingled with the adults, and spoke and were spoken to. Children in these families, at the end of the nineteenth century, were different from children before or after. They were neither dolls nor miniature adults. They were not hidden awa...
The summit is believed to be the object of the climb. But its true object—the joy of living—is not in the peak itself, but in the adversities encountered on the way up. There are valleys, cliffs, streams, precipices, and slides, and as he walks t...
You looked strange climbing in the tree like that." Tiger Lily pulled her braids between her fingers, her sudden self-consciousness feeling foreign and strange to her. "I didn't do it to look nice," she said. "But you do care." Tiger Lily studied the...
Reluctantly, I pulled out my necklace and showed it to them. Samuel frowned. The little figure was stylized; I suppose he couldn't tell what it was at first. "A dog?" asked Zee, staring at my necklace. "A lamb," I said defensively, tucking it safely ...
The great gain was that I very soon became able to understand a great deal without (even mentally) translating it; I was beginning to think in Greek. That is the great Rubicon to cross in learning any language. Those in whom only the Greek word lives...
Boys [should be] inured from childhood to trifling risks and slight dangers of every possible description, such as tumbling into ponds and off of trees, etc., in order to strengthen their nervous system... They ought to practice leaping off heights i...
This obsession is a curious thing. Sometimes wonder about the merits of devoting so much of myself to a singular climbing objective. Much of the time it beats me down, leaves me hanging my head in despair. But then there are the moments that bring me...
