Fantastic literature has been especially prominent in times of unrest, when the older values have been overthrown to make way for the new; it has often accompanied or predicted change, and served to shake up rational Complacency, challenging reason a...
If a man like that is killed, there is always another to take his place. That is not the important thing. But to act so that no man dares to strike you because he knows you speak the truth, to act so that you can no longer be arrested because you are...
In November, when our nation remembers her fallen soldiers and honours the lost youth of my generation, the Prime Minister, government leaders and the hollow men of business affix paper poppies to their lapels and afford the dead of war two minutes' ...
I don't know where to start," one [writing student] will wail. Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O' Connor said that anyone who has survived childho...
Papa, why are you selling our goats? I like these goats." "A week ago the price was five hundred, now it's four hundred. I'm sorry, but we can't wait for it go any lower." Mankhalala and the others were tied by their front legs with a long rope. When...
You're right, Ruth. You did screw up my career. You screwed it up good. Best thing you ever did, matter of fact. But you know something? It's okay. Because if it was between the church and you, there was no contest. Even with al the ups and downs and...
I know I grew up in the time when a young man in a baggy suit and slicked-down hair stood spraddle-legged in the crossroads of history and talked hot and mean about the colored, giving my poor and desperate people a reason to feel superior to somebod...
After he died, there was a deep calm to his face; he seemed a kind of unfathomable, still well which opened on and down beneath the suddenly smooth surface of his skin…The heat in him lasted a long time. I loved that heat. I don’t know how long I...
He gave a hard smile and the oxygen in my lungs evaporated. “We both know I’m not a gentleman.” “Yeah. Okay, let me out. I’m tired.” “There’s something else,” he said, and I groaned. “What now?” “This.” He stepped closer to ...
The house cleared, I shut myself in, fastened the bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded—not to weep, not to mourn, I was yet too calm for that, but—mechanically to take off the wedding dress, and replace it by the stuff gown I had worn yest...
The man walked past me and stopped, observing the blood running down my neck. "Your injury. Let us tend to it." He looked out through the open doorway and silently gestured to someone out there. "Our world," he said, "is far more advanced than yours....
Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn't even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. She picked out a nice dry Cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie dow...
I know what's wrong with me - I could never stand still for death! Which you've got to do by a certain age, or be ridiculous - you've got to stand there nobly and serene, and let death run his tape on your arms and around your belly and up your crotc...
Analysis goes a step farther still, and assures us that those impressions of the individual mind to which, for each one of us, experience dwindles down, are in perpetual flight; that each of them is limited by time, and that as time is infinitely div...
Jelly beans! Millions and billions of purples and yellows and greens and licorice and grape and raspberry and mint and round and smooth and crunchy outside and soft-mealy inside and sugary and bouncing jouncing tumbling clittering clattering skitteri...
At some point, we have each said through our tears, "I'm suffering for a love that's not worth it." We suffer because we feel we are giving more than we receive. We suffer because we feel we are giving more than we receive. We suffer because our love...
Time seemed to stand still as they remained embraced, him holding his body weight on his elbows as he looked down at her and grinned. “Now that’s a vacation.” She laughed and then his grin fell and he shook his head. “Like a couple of horny t...
Why would they lie to us?” “Because deep down, we're all afraid of having peace. Because deep down we know we're all poisoned. We're more afraid of ourselves than we are of others. In that thinking, we deny ourselves the very power that we could ...
DON PEDRO Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick. BEATRICE Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one: marry, once before he won it of me with false dice, therefore your ...
Not entirely fair?" His voice became that of the inferno: a rushing, booming howl of icy evil that flew around the great cavern, as swift and cold as the Wendigo on skates. "I am Satan, also called Lucifer the Light Bearer..." Cabal winced. What was ...
Adin looked up at Donte, who was then in the middle of taking a sip of his wine. He took in Donte’s demonically beautiful face, long and angular, with its hooded eyes and high cheekbones, its wine-darkened lips. He watched as Donte savored it, imag...