Maybe in a way all living things are like flickering flames in a precarious night, always on the verge of being extinguished. Whether we kindle slowly but steadily, or go out in a brilliant burst of light and color, is our choice. Perhaps the most im...
The aftermath of bearing shackles is an exquisite devastation, fraught with the ravages of survival. Even though one is no longer held captive—be that from a person, a government, or one’s inner self—the scars are deeply engraved into one’s p...
This is your life – not your parents’, teachers’ or significant other’s. If you ever find yourself on a path that just doesn’t feel safe anymore, you have every right to stop the car, get out – change your shoes and start walking.
I ruin everything. I think that a bullet must have passed through my heart when I was very young, causing me to bleed out slowly, over things and people and every white surface that I’d ever come across.
You mean something like ‘truth or dare’? I haven’t played that in a long time.” She didn’t think he would ever get himself entangled in a game like that, but it was addictive, a compromising icebreaker featuring all the strategy of Poker, m...
Sure, Nico had mixed emotions about the camp. He’d felt rejected there, out of place, unwanted and unloved … but now that it was on the verge of destruction, he realized how much it meant to him. This was the last place Bianca and he had shared a...
Oh. Momma told me not to tell you that your bed squeaks. But I think you know, 'cause I could hear it this morning. Jake dropped his fork. Tor, for the first time Jake had ever seen, turned scarlet. Maureen looked at them both and sighed. Christmas i...
But how will I know who my Soulmate is?” Brida felt that this was one of the most important questions she had ever asked in her life. By taking risks’ she said to Brida. ‘ By risking failure, disappointment, disillusion, but never ceasing in yo...
Fun... human nature... does no one any harm... Regular as clockwork the old excuses came back into the alert, sad and dissatisfied brain--nothing ever matched the deep excitement of the regular desire. Men always failed you when it came to the act. S...
Have you ever been to Paris before?" I asked Kylian. "No, though from what I've seen, I'm sure it's worth a trip. And even with what little I saw I think it's quite fitting for you to be the Patroness of Paris. You're like Paris and Paris is like you...
The Bible is still the only dirty book I've ever read, at least in its current incarnation as a weapon of the homophobes. Bible scholarship keeps trying to catch up, proving that all the hatred of gay is just stupid translation, though the snake-oil ...
I would not trade any of these features for anybody else’s. I wouldn’t trade the small thin-lipped mouth that makes me resemble my nephew. I wouldn’t even trade the acne scar on my right cheek, because that recurring zit spent more time with me...
Inscribed on it was a verse from the Quatrains of Omar Khayyam, the eleventh-century Persian mystic. Reading the words aloud I prepared for a most amazing journey: The sages who have compassed sea and land, Their secret to search out and understand, ...
She’s really not my kind of girl — most of them have tattoos or nose rings — but there’s something about her smile. She smiles like she’s in love with whoever she’s looking at. She smiled at me a few months ago. I’ve been trying to get ...
We know there are colours in the spectrum untranslatable to our eyes; sounds beyond the range of our hearing; sensations beyond the tolerance of taste or touch. What else is there that we might be missing? Could it be that we, ourselves, only ever re...
The problem with living forever, of course, is you have to live forever before you know you're immortal...or invincible. Even the gods, in this way, must always remain uncertain. Time trumps immortality just as uncertainty trumps omniscience, for a k...
I was stupid when I started: the epitome of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. It was like, 'I get to live in L.A. and drive around in limos? Really?' I didn't realize I was owned. The more money gets pumped into you, the more you become a marionette. It ...
My mom was always keen I stayed in school and got good grades, and she was always keen for me to do medicine. I used to go to drama classes when I was younger, and she would always take me. But when I got to an age when I decided it was what I wanted...
When I was younger, I felt it essential to see every movie ever made. Now I feel as though I've got to read every book, see every art show, watch every play and opera and concert and so on. It does not end, and of course there is truth in the old cli...
Some people have the innate ability to cheat artfully during dating, interview... Once they're in, they completely change and become different that they leave you wonder whether you have ever met them before.
Has it ever struck you as odd that humans are the only creatures on the planet who wear clothes? Everything else, from aardvarks to zebras, is running around in its birthday suit, blissfully unclear of the concept of underpants. Why don't people do t...
