I liked the way he cradled my cheeks in his hands as we kissed. He pressed his body closer to mine. I moved backward until my butt touched something cold. He’d backed me into the cooler. The thought repulsed me for a second and I tried to shove him...
Ranger cradled my face in his hands, using his thumbs to wipe the tears from my eyes. "The ceremony is over. Can you make it back to the car?" I nodded. "I'm okay now. Am I red and blotchy from crying?" "Yes," Ranger said, brushing a kiss across my f...
My hopes were all dead --- struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never re...
Life for both sexes--and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement--is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for c...
I don't want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I'd rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges and where elves don't come swooping out to snatch children from their ...
There has never been upon the earth a generation of free men and women. It is not yet time to write a creed. Wait until the chains are broken—until dungeons are not regarded as temples. Wait until solemnity is not mistaken for wisdom—until mental...
Jaz caught himself a Myngelle.” “I’m surprised Anadyr let you out into the Plains by yourselves,” smiled Corianna, “and you had best return that egg. The Merfolk will not be happy with you.” “Oh....! They’ll have forgotten about all t...
I watched her with the crab as she ignored all my admonitions that the poor crab just needed to be set free if he was to have any chance of surviving. And God showed up there on that beach to teach me a lesson. Nothing survives when it's being smothe...
There are as many Africas as there are books about Africa -- and as many books about it as you could read in a leisurely lifetime. Whoever writes a new one can afford a certain complacency in the knowledge that his is a new picture agreeing with no o...
I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claim...
The Labour party on the whole has not been a very effective opposition since the election, partly because it spent months and months electing its new leader. I think the Labour party should, for one thing, stress much more that for most people in the...
And Castle nodded sagely. 'So this is a picture of the meaninglessness of it all! I couldn't agree more.' 'Do you agree?' I asked. 'A minute ago you said something about Jesus.' 'Who?' said Castle. 'Jesus Christ?' 'Oh,' said Castle. ' .' He shrugged....
On the seventh day God rested in the darkness of the tomb; Having finished on the sixth day all his work of joy and doom. Now the Word had fallen silent, and the water had run dry, The bread had all been scattered, and the light had left the sky. The...
Khalid?” It was dark now, and she couldn't see his face, but she knew he was right there, an inch or two from their last kiss. “What was that look? Earlier, after we'd finished?” There was a long silence in the dark before Khalid finally spoke....
When we set about accounting for a Napoleon or a Shakespeare or a Raphael or a Wagner or an Edison or other extraordinary person, we understand that the measure of his talent will not explain the whole result, nor even the largest part of it; no, it ...
I have been speaking to you all of your life. In the gurgle of a tide pool, I breathed myself into you. I drew you down from the trees and I lifted you onto your feet. I freed your hands to become your tools so that you would cradle me in my old age,...
Malphas surveyed the women's bodies with utter disgust and sorrow until he realized Tabitha was still alive. He knelt by her side and cradled her head tenderly. "Tabby... I'm so sorry" Grimacing she opened her eyes as she labored to breathe. She laug...
The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin...
He seriously thought that there is less harm in killing a man than producing a child: in the first case you are relieving someone of life, not his whole life but a half or a quarter or a hundredth part of that existence that is going to finish, that ...
When he lifted his head, she clung to his shoulders, both of them breathing hard. He cradled her cheek in one palm. “I’m not asking you to believe now. I know it’s too soon for that, after…well, after everything. If you can believe just for t...
She once told me of a night that fumed with escapes and was filled with bedsides reeking of ecstasy; she told me the stars cast not judgments, but blessings, knowing full well the disastrous outcomes of the deeds they cradled with the strings of thei...
