I am beginning to be sorry that I ever undertook to write this book. Not that it bores me; I have nothing else to do; indeed, it is a welcome distraction from eternity. But the book is tedious, it smells of the tomb, it has a rigor mortis about it; a...
All Julie has to do is explain to her friends that she's using it to individually seal each item that she throws out." "Then they'd think she was a geek," I said. "She will thank me later," Monk said. "Why would she thank you for being considered a g...
And here, finally here in this place, in these circumstances, I will really have to kill him. And Snow will win. Hot, bitter hatred courses through me. Snow has won too much already today. It's a long shot, it's suicide maybe, but I do the only thing...
People don't tend to employ me. I'm the wrong personality type. Or rather, people do tend to employ me for a short time and then they sack me. A film broker once told me, as she terminated my contract, that I have a misleading sort of face. "You're p...
For twenty-one years, I have been paralyzed by the fear of what this society will do with me if they ever were to know of the thoughts that I continually push away. For more than two decades, I have made a choice to be straight. After all, it’s as ...
2 NOTES “You broke your other appointment, didn’t you?” “I did not! I told you on the phone—these people canceled at the last minute—” “Oh, Geo dear, come off it! You know, I sometimes think, about you, whenever you do something reall...
As many as thirty or as few as ten years later, lying exhausted and still, eyes open in the dark long after the three suns of Rakhat had set, no longer bleeding, past the vomiting, enough beyond the shock to think again, it would occur to Emilio Sand...
Renunciation isn't a moral imperative or a form of self-denial. It's simply cooperation with the way things are: for moments do pass away, one after the other. Resisting this natural unfolding doesn't change it; resistance only makes it painful. So w...
No one can ever use his heart to listen or touch or feel or see or smell. It's just a lump of muscle pumping mechanically inside your ribs. It has no will and no ability to do anything but go on pumping until it gives up and withers away or is choked...
Suddenly, I was stopped by a quiet song . . Somebody stood, swaying slowly on the road, In the darkest shadow by a puddle, And low above it a small tree grew . . It might’ve been a wild cherry tree . . He kept singing, watching the puddle fill . . ...
I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him g...
Everyone was always hungry. The poorer you were, the hungrier you were, and with the hunger came weakness and irritability. It became difficult to think clearly and you needed to think clearly to work out how to survive the next day, how to get food....
There are as many sorrows as there are people who feel them and there are no rules... It is solitary... Grief is such a lonely thing. There is no-one in it with you - others may grieve for the same soul, but they do not grieve exactly for what you al...
I have nothing to offer you," he finally said in a guttural voice. "Nothing." Win's lips had turned dry. She moistened them, and tried to speak through a thrill of anxious trembling. "You have yourself," she whispered. "You don't know me. You think y...
Max, you can change your mind.” His voice was like autumn leaves dropping lightly onto the ground. “I don’t know how.” Then my throat felt tight, and I rubbed my fists against my eyes. I dropped my face onto my arms, crossed over my knees. Th...
He pondered that a little while and then he asked, do Black people have to pay for their doctors, too? Because that's what TV programs had said. I smiled a little at this and told him it's not only Black people who have to pay for doctors and medical...
It seems to me, that you people spend a great deal of time talking about honour, but strip away the high sounding words and you are no different from any other race. Family? Has Priam not killed wayward sons? When a king dies do his sons not go to wa...
But the lies which Odette ordinarily told were less innocent, and served to prevent discoveries which might have involved her in the most terrible difficulties with one or another of her friends. And so, when she lied, smitten with fear, feeling hers...
Conversation between a princess and an outlaw: "If I stand for fairy-tale balls and dragon bait--dragon bait--what do you stand for?" "Me? I stand for uncertainty, insecurity, bad taste, fun, and things that go boom in the night." "Franky, it seems t...
Unless followed by the world 'education', has now lost this meaning [seeking knowledge or doing something for its own sake -- i.e. 'freely' with no exterior motive]. For that loss, so damanging to the whole of our cultural outlook, we must thank thos...
Sitting on the train I watch the scenery speeding by, notice a cobweb in the top corner of the window, undulating with a gentle breeze I can’t feel. I lean back in my seat and take my book out of the carrier bag. Turning it over in my hand, it feel...
