The sensation that seized me that morning―the twentieth of May―as I sat on my velvet cushion beside the Pope and stared down at the man standing beside my husband, was swift, irrevocable, and violent, like a dagger plunged into the heart. I tremb...
Never did he once consider directing his hatred toward the hunters. Such an emotion would have destroyed him ... His subconscious knew what his min did not guess-that hating them would have consumed him, burned him up like a piece of soft coal, leavi...
One thing I've always wondered—why did you enter that bikini contest when you were a teenager?” Her face flushed with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. “How far back did you trace me?” “Far enough.” A pause. “You didn't answer my qu...
The ones who did it can always rationalize their actions and even forget what they did. They can turn away from things they don't want to see. But the surviving victims can never forget. They can’t turn away. Their memories are passed on from paren...
It’s one thing to protect yourself,” Dad yelled at me during our very next lunch. “That I get. Have I ever told you not to defend yourself? No. But did you have to permanently maim him? I spent all that money on that on that fancy school for gi...
It's a damn shame that when I finally fall in love that it had to be after I died." He dropped his head and shut his eyes. Oh, mylanta. Did he just say what I think he did? He looked back up at me, taking my breath. "What are we gonna do?" I knew wha...
Jesus is a descendant of David, the beloved of God. Jesus is the only begotten Son of God who was born into this world and died and rose again. Saint John calls him the Word and the Light. When he died, he did so as atonement for our sins, and when h...
But my gloom did not lessen. I knew that I'd had a bad dream, and I stood in the dark trying to recollect it. The second I closed my eyes, I was with the dead. They did things words cannot express. They spoke madness. ("Hanka")
People said it because other people said it. They did not know why it was being said and heard everywhere. They did not give or ask for reasons. 'Reason,' Dr. Pritchett had told them, 'is the most naive of all superstitions.' 'The source of public op...
Dagny," he said, looking at the city as it moved past their taxi window, "think of the first man who thought of making a steel girder. He knew what he saw, what he thought and what he wanted. He did not say, 'It seems to me,' and he did not take orde...
The crash did not cause the Depression: that was part of a far broader malaise. What it did was expose the weaknesses that underpinned the confidence and optimism of the 1920s - poor distribution of income, a weak banking structure and insufficient r...
That was one of the inherent flaws of faith. Belief without knowing. But worse yet: belief without action. It could be good in its own right. Beautiful, even, when embraced, but that had to be measured. Checked. Too many surrendered themselves to it....
But the truth is that there is no more conscious inconsistency between the humility of a Christian and the rapacity of a Christian than there is between the humility of a lover and the rapacity of a lover. The truth is that there are no things for wh...
I've loved him my whole life, and somewhere along the way, that love didn't change but grew. It grew to fill the parts of me that I did not have when I was a child. It grew with every new longing of my body and desire until there was not a piece of m...
Inspiration comes from your writing. Thoughts meander subliminally through our subconscious, at night when we sleep the brain is working. In the act of writing, phrases come out and you think: wow, did I write this? Did I have that insight? Sometimes...
At last he said, "Did you come out of the big mountains?" Gitano shook his head slowly. "No, I walked down the Salinas Valley." The afternoon thought would not let Joey go. "Did you ever go into the big mountains back there?" The old dark eyes grew f...
You want me to lie for you?" Aidan asked, watching them. " in me, the way you did in my mama." Aidan wheezed and sputtered. What did she know 'bout him and Miz Garnett? "Please." She sounded like a young gal and a grown woman too. " in me." "That's t...
I supposed you've already kissed him? Don't deny it, that guilty look is a complete giveaway. Did you like it?" "Felicity!" "Well?" "Yes." Ainsley laughed. "Yes, I did." "Was it a good kiss? The kind of kiss to give you confidence that your Mr. Drumm...
Abraham had eight sons--not one. All eight sons bring something to the table. Abraham loved all of his sons. He was a good father who made sure all his sons were literate, of good character and shared a common ideology with their father, Abraham. Abr...
I love you." He stabbed a thumb at his chest as he glared at her. Of course he did. Lucien had never hidden the fact. But the love of a friend, while comforting, was not enough anymore. It did not soothe the restless discomfort that pushed against he...
What a laugh, though. To think that one human being could ever really know another. You could get used to each other, get so habituated that you could speak their words right along with them, but you never know why other people said what they said or...