Damn! - I'd rather walk into something of my own accord than to be frogmarched into it." "So it says here in the file. James Mowry, twenty-six, restless and pigheaded. Can be trusted to do anything at all - provided the alternative is worse." "You so...
For a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and—by some sad, strange irony—it does not bind us children to our parents. For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much ...
I think it's neat you do what you want. Not enough chicks do that, if you ask me--just tell society and their expectations to go fuck themselves. If more women did that, we'd be better off.
People always did like to talk, didn't they? That's why I call myself a witch now: the Wicked Witch of the West, if you want the full glory of it. As long as people are going to call you a lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates y...
The words 'bad timing' came to be ghosts haunting our every move in Birmingham. Yet people who used this argument were ignorant of the background of our planning...they did not realize that it was ridiculous to speak of timing when the clock of histo...
It was not like everyone had said. Not like being needed, or needing; not desperate; it did not whisper that I'd come to harm. I didn't lose my head. No, I was not going to leap from a great height and flap my wings. It was in fact the opposite of fl...
I had a dream about you, you were trying to tell me a pipe had burst but, I did not want to be around you because I thought your feet smelt terrible. When I realized that the smell was mold you were already so hurt you no longer had any interest in s...
I had a dream about you. You wondered if there were any more honest men left in the world, and so did I, because I worked for the government, and if there were any honest men left in the world then it was my job to find them and kill them. After I ro...
and I said, 'That is why you don't climb mountains, Gwen.' But now I wonder. You aren't afraid of heights." "No", she said. "Not particularly." "Only missteps." She paused midstroke. Did he mean to imply this had been a misstep? "I was afraid," she s...
Novels were not arguments; a story worked, or it didn't, on its own merits. What did it matter if a detail was real or imagined? What mattered was that the detail seemed real, and that it was absolutely the best detail for the circumstance. That wasn...
She asserted that the best fictional detail was a chosen detail, not a remembered one - for fictional truth was not only the truth of observation, which was the truth of mere journalism. The best fictional detail was the detail that should have defin...
I tried to visualize my jealousy as a yellowy-brown cloud boiling around inside me, then going out through my nose like smoke and turning into a stone and falling down into the ground. That did work a little. But in my visualization a plant covered w...
Did your mom ever tell you, ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything’? She was right–and talking nicely also applies when you’re talking to yourself, even inside your head. (339)
Fantasy? That's for the Fire Birds. Fantasy, even when it takes science-fictional forms, which it often does, is dangerous. It is escapist. It is daydreaming. It has nothing to do with the world and the world's problems. So said the snobs who did not...
Those who did know Jesus - those who followed him into Jerusalem as its king and helped him cleanse the Temple in God's name, who were there when he was arrested and who watched him die a lonely death - played a surprisingly small role in defining th...
Despite two millennia of Christian apologetics, the fact is that belief in a dying and rising messiah simply did not exist in Judaism. In the entirety of the Hebrew Bible there is not a single passage of scripture or prophecy about the promised messi...
She was telling me that I had a life of disappointment before me if I continued to love him as I did. A love that is too strong can turn poisonous and bring great unhappiness. And then, what is the remedy? Can you unlearn your heart's desire? Can you...
Did you follow me here?" "Something like that." I let out a frustrated groan. "Can't anyone just talk to me straight? Why is everyone avoiding my damn questions tonight?" Bishop's brows went up. "Okay, fine. Yes, I followed you here. Better?" "Yes. S...
He had a bleeding cut on his leg and he smelled like shit. Her nose wrinkled. "Step in something?" she asked innocently. "That I did not mind." He took a menacing step toward her. "What I mind was being hit by a cab, then landing on the lap of a nake...
One foot in front of the other, more aimless than direct, Bradford left the waiting room for the outside world. Called for a taxi and then dialed Munroe again, desperate for her voice, for one ray of light in the darkness, afraid of what he might say...
I had a dream about you. You sold canned laughter, and I sold fresh laughter, straight out of my throat. You sold more of it, but nobody really liked your product. Plus, the people who bought your cans weren’t the kind of people to recycle, so most...
