Hatred is like a long, dark shadow. Not even the person it falls upon knows where it comes from, in most cases. It is like a two-edged sword. When you cut the other person, you cut yourself. The more violently you hack at the other person, the more v...
Mr. Herriton, don’t – please, Mr. Herriton – a dentist. His father’s a dentist.” Philip gave a cry of personal disgust and pain. He shuddered all over, and edged away from his companion. A dentist! A dentist at Monteriano. A dentist in fair...
I used to listen to the monks repeating the Lord's Prayer; I wondered how they could continue to pray without misgiving to their heavenly father to give them their daily bread. Do children beseech their earthly father to give them sustenance? They ex...
Americans may say they love our accents (I have been accused of sounding 'like Princess Di') but the more thoughtful ones resent and rather dislike us as a nation and people, as friends of mine have found out by being on the edge of conversations whe...
Poetry is the wailing of a broken heart―the etched sorrows of despairing souls. These artful words are an exclamation in rare colors expressed noiselessly on parchment. Poetry is the unheard cry of a budding flower, wilting. It is a humble, ...
A demon seduced an angel in the middle of the night and they gave the stars a glimpse. There was nothing casual about it, it was tender skin and battle scars breathless passion under storm clouds a rapid river stream mirroring the moon light. Until o...
He opened his mouth. The words were there. He was about to say them when a jolt of terror went through him, the terror of someone who, wandering in a mist, pauses only to realise that they have stopped inches from the edge of a gaping abyss. The way ...
I wanted a drink. There were a hundred reasons why a man will want a drink, but I wanted one now for the most elementary reason of all. I didn't want to feel what I was feeling, and a voice within was telling me that I needed a drink, that I couldn't...
When they reached their ship, Ed gazed out at the bay. It was black. The sky was black, but the bay was even blacker. It was a slick, oily blackness that glowed and reflected the moonlight like a black jewel. Ed saw the tiny specks of light around th...
When Kafka allows a friend to understand that he writes because otherwise he would go mad, he knows that writing is madness already, his madness, a kind of vigilence, unrelated to any wakefulness save sleep's: insomnia. Madness against madness, then....
There is this certain rawness of soul that puts the polished ones on edge. Some of us just step out and the sunlight illuminates our bones, nerves, veins, cells! And that's just it, we're just like that! Then the others are tinted, polished, honed an...
The rights paradigm, which, as I interpret it, morally requires the abolition of animal exploitation and requires veganism as a matter of fundamental justice, is radically different from the welfarist paradigm, which, in theory focuses on reducing su...
I dream dark dreams. I dream of a figure moving through the forest, of children flying from his path, of young women crying at his coming. I dream of snow and ice, of bare branches and moon-cast shadows. I dream of dancers floating in the air, steppi...
No, what numbed these fields, peopled with bad dreams was not the oppressive grip of a plague but rather an ailing retreat, a sort of sad widowhood. Man had started to subdue these vacant expanses, then had grown weary of eating into it, and now even...
Casares: Stay by my side as my light grows dim /as my blood slows down and my nerves shatter with stabbing pain / as my heart grows weak / and the wheels of my being turn slowly / Stay by my side /as my fragile body is racked by pain /which verges on...
[to his generals, observing the English Channel] Field Marshal Erwin Rommel: Just look at it, gentlemen. How calm... how peaceful it is. A strip of water between England and the continent... between the Allies and us. But beyond that peaceful horizon...
Denethor: Can you sing, Master Hobbit? Pippin: Well... yes. At least, well enough for my own people. But we have no songs for great halls and... evil times. Denethor: And why should your songs be unfit for my hall? Come, sing me a song. [pause] Pippi...
Scar: [after forcing Simba to the edge of a cliff while a fire burns below] Now this looks familiar. Where have I seen this before? Hm, let me think. Oh, yes, I remember! This is just the way your father looked before he died. [He claws Simba's paws ...
Deep Throat: [angry tone] You let Haldeman slip away. Bob Woodward: Yes. Deep Throat: You've done worse than let Haldeman slip away: you've got people feeling sorry for him. I didn't think that was possible. In a conspiracy like this, you build from ...
A Book I Can Put Down I’m halfway through and I’ve gotten used to the way it wants to be read. This writer wants to spoon it up, wants to watch me swallow it. This writer makes a point of good deeds, clean living, god and country, when what I wan...
My first jailbreak began when a coarse-toothed mechanic’s file crashed through the window of the Deeper Harbour Police Station at two in the morning. The file bounced three or four times before clattering to a halt among a scatter of shattered glas...
