We've got to simplify, pull back all these layers of supposed complexity , and get down to the essentials. If we want people to engage with government, we should use the same tools that are getting them engages with companies and institutions in priv...
She turned back to Jace. "Do you have to be so-," she began, but stopped when she saw his face. It looked stripped down, oddly vulnerable. "Unpleasant?" he finishes for her. "Only at days when my adoptive mother tosses me out of the house with instru...
Well I'm not kissing the mundane," said Jace. "I'd rather stay down here and rot." "Forever?" said Simon. "Forever is an awfully long time." Jace raised his eyebrows, "I knew it," he said, "you want to kiss me, don't you?" Simon threw his hands up in...
You have something on your neck," he observed. Alec's hand flew to his throat. "What?" "Looks like a bite mark," said Jace. "What have you been doing all day, anyway?" "Nothing." Beet red, his hand still clamped to his neck, Alec started down the cor...
The reflection was that of a putrefying corpse. By some trick of the light, her face seemed sallow and slipping, the patches of darkness giving the appearance of skin sloughing off in small pockets. I’d almost forgotten the knife in my panic; the w...
When you make love you're using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don't give a damn for anything. They can't bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and ...
There was a direct intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful ins...
The most important thing you can do in a relationship is sit down and talk to each other, not with the TV on, or at the cinema, or over a meal, but just you and the other person where you can truly be heard and truly listen to each other
Don't see me as a girl. See me as a buddy of yours or something." He cast his eyes downward and didn't look back up to my face. I looked down and groaned. Such a guy. "My buddies don't have boobs, as far as I know." "Because you felt them up to be su...
I am noticing a big difference in the way the hospital workers are looking at me as I approach Jess’s room. The look of sincere sympathy that used to be on their faces when they made eye contact with me is gone. It has been replaced by shear helple...
As the episode of Scandal ended, I sat up in my bed and thought, I have to read it again. It was driving me crazy, so I got out of bed and skipped down stairs of my comfy loft on the east side of Paradise Hills. Once downstairs I slipped the letter o...
The Bible says that each person is a sinner and everyone is wicked in the sight of God. God cannot allow sin into Heaven, so we must get rid of our sin somehow. If we don’t, then we have no hope of Heaven.” Jesus is the only one who can take our ...
Well, look who's on my front porch," he said, speaking Empire with this odd hissing accent. "A murderer and a cross-dressing pirate." I looked down at my clothes, ripped and shredded and covered in mud and sand and dried blood. I'd forgotten I was dr...
One of the most inefficient utopias I have ever seen was that of a humble Zapatista village in the mountains of Southeastern Mexico. I kid you not, the entire village sits down and takes days to make a single decision! Everyone gets a chance to hear ...
Ok," he says. "First lesson." Noah broadens his stance, taking his place firmly on the embassy side of the threshold. "in the United States," he says. Then, with both feet, he leaps on to the sidewalk. "Out of the United States." Quickly, he jumps ba...
In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itse...
Heat radiated off Henry's face. Salty snot ran down his upper lip. A majestic fart propelled him to the top of Section 12, just at the springing of the stadium's curve. He slapped the sign as if high-fiving a teamate. It gave back a game shudder. He ...
He sidestepped down the alley and into another one connected to a small garage, where a raccoon with matching black eyes just like his own halted in mid-step next to a trash can. They stared at each other, not moving or making a sound. 'There there, ...
Imagine someone sitting alone in a room without television, radio, computer or phone and with the door closed and the blinds down. This person must be a dangerous lunatic or a prisoner sentenced to solitary confinement. If a free agent, then a panty-...
To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of th...
I suggested she write down her thoughts" He said, "and, well, my daughter is a very thorough woman." "I can see that" Waxillium said. "I suggest that you never ask her to pass the milk" Wayne added under his breath, so only Waxillium could hear "She ...
