I stepped inside and stopped, blinking in astonishment. From the exterior I'd expected a charming little book and curio shop with the inner dimensions of a university Starbucks. What I got was a cavernous interior that housed a display of books that ...
Summer was over in twenty minutes that day. Finished. At four o'clock in the afternoon the roses were quiet on their stems, full-blown, fulfilled; the water in the pool was warm; the leaves on the trees quiet, too, and green. The cat lay with his bel...
And I didn't think you believed in god or a heaven.' 'Having been here thirty-four days,' I tell him, 'I've changed my mind, Sydney.' 'Why's that then?' he smiles. 'Well, if there's a hell like this place, then there has to be heaven somewhere.
I had two cups of coffee, put Eric's jeans in the washer, read a romance for awhile, and studied my brand-new Word of the Day calendar, a Christmas gift from Arlene. My first word of the New Year was 'exsanguinate.' This was probably not a good omen.
A few days after we came home from the hospital, I sent a letter to a friend, including a photo of my son and some first impressions of fatherhood. He responded, simply, 'Everything is possible again.' It was the perfect thing to write because that w...
Death never mattered at those times - in the early days I even used to pray for it: the shattering annihilation that would prevent for ever the getting up, the putting on of clothes, the wathchign her torch trail across to the opposite side of the co...
We’re not a people worth saving, plain and simple. We’re completely beyond that—both the undead and the few still living. Yeah, 'living.' Some life, huh? But it’s the only life we could ever possibly live if we want to stay alive another day....
In my experience, desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love for a gender. I have fallen for individuals. I know this is hard for people to do, but I don’t understand why it’s so hard, when it’s so obvious.
Anyone who met him today would say, *Soldier. Fighter.* They would want him on their team. As a mother she was willing to engage in pride over fear and to admit the possibility that his sacrifice was hers, too. His sacrifice was something she had b...
I had made it somewhere special, and I'd gotten there all on my own. Nobody had given it to me. Nobody had told me to do it. I'd climbed and climbed and climbed, and this was my reward. To watch over the world, and to be alone with myself. That, I fo...
Perhaps it’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be. She thought of that, worried about it for a few days, and then wrote a column using that as a premise, to show that politicians who toadied to the Russians in orde...
For the first time in my life I understood the meaning of the word 'never'. And it's really awful. You say the word a hundred times a day but you don't really know what you're saying until you're faced with a real 'never again'.
The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where yo...
It's hard to believe. Where does the times go?' Betty sighs. 'I've always hated that phrase. It makes it would like time went on a holiday, and is expected back any day now. Time flies is another one I hate. Apparently, time does quite a bit of trave...
Sometimes life is very mean: a person can spend days, weeks, months and years without feeling new. Then, when a door opens - a positive avalanche pours in. One moment, you have nothing, the next, you have more than you can cope with.
The most valuable tasks you can do each day are often the hardest and most complex. But the payoff and rewards for completing these tasks efficiently can be tremendous.
I observed that plants not only have a faculty to correct bad air in six to ten days, by growing in it...but that they perform this important office in a complete manner in a few hours; that this wonderful operation is by no means owing to the vegeta...
The world is exploding in emerald, sage, and lusty chartreuse - neon green with so much yellow in it. It is an explosive green that, if one could watch it moment by moment throughout the day, would grow in every dimension.
We mourn the blossoms of May because they are to whither; but we know that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of that solemn circle which never stops---which teaches us in our height of hope, ever to be sober, and in ...
God, He didn't write the scripts for the puny little players down here. We wrote them ourselves-with each day we lived, each word we spoke, each thought we etched on our brains. And Momma had written her script, too. And a sorry one it was.
In those days," continued Ishvar, "it seemed to me that that was all one could expect in life. A harsh road strewn with sharp stones and, if you were lucky, a little grain." "And later?" "Later I discovered there were different types of roads. And a ...
