Things aren't like this," he kept repeating. "It shouldn't be this way." As if he had access to some other plane of existence, some parallel, "right" universe, and had sensed that our time had somehow been put out of joint. Such was his vehemence tha...
Anita Johnston, Ph.D., author of Eating in the Light of the Moon, taught me to look in the mirror with curiosity rather than fear. So I may look at my reflection and think, ‘That’s interesting. I wonder why my body seems bigger today than it did ...
There, too, she would sit for hours gazing seawards. No tiniest speck of sail that crossed the waters could escape her watchful eyes, and as she watched she dreamed that some day one of these distant sails should bear down towards her, and one should...
Old Tom giggled, "Fooled ya, huh, Ma? We aimed to fool ya, and we done it. Jus' stood there like a hammered sheep. Wisht Grampa'd been here to see. Looked like somebody'd beat ya between the eyes with a sledge. Grampa would a whacked 'imself so hard ...
Her mind, shaped so long before my own, was for me the equivalent of what had been offered me by the behaviour of the girls of the little gang along the sea-shore. Mme de Guermantes offered me, tamed and subdued by good manners, by respect for intell...
Miss McClure...” he had been talking while her mind drifted off. She brought her gaze back to his face, trying to focus on the flinty stare and thin line of his lips. “Sorry, I was distracted. And can’t you call me Bryn?” “I’ll try, but g...
What’s your rank of choice?” Juliet started, nearly spilling her cup of lemonade. “Pardon?” Drake gestured to all the other men in the room. “Every rank from a duke down to a second son who became a vicar is available for your choosing. Any...
Harry Potter," he said very softly. His voice might have been part of the spitting fire. "The Boy Who Lived." None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting. Everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thoug...
An old walrus-faced waiter attended to me; he had the knack of pouring the coffee and the hot milk from two jugs, held high in the air, and I found this entrancing, as if he were a child's magician. One day he said to me - he had some English - "Why ...
The sun was up, the room already too warm. Light filtered in through the net curtains, hanging suspended in the air, sediment in a pond. My head felt like a sack of pulp. Still in my nightgown, damp from some fright I'd pushed aside like foliage, I p...
Unhappy memories are persistent. They're specific, and it's the details that refuse to leave us alone. Though a happy memory may stay with you just as long as one that makes you miserable, what you remember softens over time. What you recall is simpl...
Ben shook his head. Sitting down he asked, “So, you are Marty, right?” He got an incredulous look in response along with a cautious, “Yeah.” “You look way different dressed like that and without any make up on and stuff. Like a pretty guy a...
Contrary to Expectation. A wise man, the wonder of his age, taught his disciples from a seemingly inexhaustible store of wisdom. He attributed all his knowledge to a thick tome which was kept in a place of honour in his room. The sage would allow nob...
I take in his smooth cheeks, his rough chin and jaw, the developing wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. 'We fall in love with somebody who maybe seems like a bad match,' Tully says, 'and our friends run around saying 'What does he see in her?' What ...
For now," Amelie said. "Take her home. And -- " "Say nothing -- yes, yes, I heard you the first seven hundred times," Myrnin said, much too sharply. "I'm ancient. I'm not deaf. " Amelie's cold expression deepened, and her gray eyes took on an unpleas...
So Blue sat down on the path and faced Grayson, and told him all about his world. He told him about the humans, his mother and sister, and how they went away. He told him about the long nights alone in the kennel, and the sadness that seemed to come ...
Wisteria hangs over the eaves like clumps of ghostly grapes. Euphorbia's pale blooms billow like sea froth. Blood grass twists upward, knifing the air, while underground its roots go berserk, goosing everything in their path. A magnolia, impatient wi...
Something else emerges from this discussion about us as human individuals: we're not fixed, stable intellects riding along peering at the world through the lenses of our eyes like the pilots of people-shaped spacecraft. We are affected constantly by ...
Then, O King! the God, so saying, Stood, to Pritha's Son displaying All the splendour, wonder, dread Of His vast Almighty-head. Out of countless eyes beholding, Out of countless mouths commanding, Countless mystic forms enfolding In one Form: supreme...
His phone rang just as he set his evidence kit on the ground. He glanced at the display and took the call. "Hey, Mom." "I ran into Cindy Jenners at the store today." "No." "She's such a nice young woman." "Not interested." "Your sisters abandoned me....
Do you believe in 'fairy tales'?" I asked, looking up into Lissa's eyes. "What . . . What kind of fairy tales?" "The kind you aren't supposed to waste your life on." [...] The question was: How long did I have to figure out if the impossible was actu...
