On Good Friday last year the SS found some pretext to punish 60 priests with an hour on "the tree." That is the mildest camp punishment. They tie a man's hands together behind his back, palms facing out and fingers pointing backward. Then they turn h...
Perhaps I shouldn't call it shit. That's a bit crude. I don't really despise Christianity or even the Roman Church, and certainly not the incontrovertible glory of the Middle Ages. What I do despise is the contemporary inclination to flop to the knee...
On moonlight nights the long, straight street and dirty white walls, nowhere darkened by the shadow of a tree, their peace untroubled by footsteps or a dog's bark, glimmered in the pale recession. The silent city was no more than an assemblage of hug...
The Princess attitude to food isn’t about obsessively scraping the oil off your salad, saying no to crème brûlée and taking a little snack bag of spinach everywhere you go. I truly believe it’s more important to consciously choose what you’r...
This is what I think about when I shovel compost into a wheelbarrow, and when I fill the long flower boxes, then press into rows the limp roots of red impatiens— the instant hand of Death always ready to burst forth from the sleeve of his voluminou...
The reason for which Picasso was compelled to resort to signs and allegories should now be clear enough: his utter political helplessness in the face of a historical situation which he set out to record; his titanic effort to confront a particular hi...
Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted. It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear, But rather an image you see though yo...
He murmured her name, tenderly taking her face in his hands. “I love you,” he said, his voice low and fervent. “I love you with everything I am, everything I’ve been, and everything I hope to be.” “I love you with my past, and I love you ...
It was that evening, when my mother abdicated her authority, that marked the beginning, along with the slow death of my grandmother, of the decline of my will and of my health. Everything had been decided at the moment when, unable to bear the idea o...
Soon I find myself squatting on the floor. I am still striking my face; not with my fists this time, but with wide-open hands. I am slapping myself. The sounds I make when my palms meet my cheeks are like an unrelenting round of applause. I am clappi...
It's kind of weird," she told Qi. "Gilly doesn't run up and kiss people. She doesn't dance. Se's usually so quiet. I mean, it's cool as hell, but for Gilly, it's weird." "Part of it is Maggie," Qi said. "She has a talent for making people fall in lov...
I thought it could be something, I mean, eventually." Harrison finally looks at us. "My life I thought-but I mean... it's nothing." "Don't cry" Grace says. "You have a lot of time." "No, I don't." "Yeah, you do." "No.-" "Yeah! Yeah, you do. It's okay...
Where are you hiding my love? Each day without you will never come again. Even today you missed a sunset on the ocean, A silver shadow on yellow rocks I saved for you, A squirrel that ran across the road, A duck diving for dinner. My God! There may b...
He stopped walking when we reached his truck, looked from the ground to my lips and then he took a step closer to me, pushing me until my back was up against the cold wet truck. He reached up and cupped my face. "I'm done trying to stay away," he sig...
What's the matter?" asked the teacher, seeing her bewildered face. "Why—why," said Elizabeth Ann, "I don't know what I am at all. If I'm second-grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and third-grade spelling, what grade am I?" The teacher laugh...
We clear the harbor and the wind catches her sails and my beautiful ship leans over ever so gracefully, and her elegant bow cuts cleanly into the increasing chop of the waves. I take a deep breath and my chest expands and my heart starts thumping so ...
As soon as Rin left the bus, Makoto's hands started shaking. Something that had been stretched to breaking inside him had suddenly snapped, and his hands were shaking so hard that he couldn't do anything to stop it. Before long, it circulated through...
God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop...
So you got rid of your astonishment that someone could write so much more dynamically than you. You stopped cherishing your aloneness and poetic differentness to your delicately flat little bosom. You said: she's to good to forget. How about making h...
Mark, trying his best to distance himself from the cruel and pathetic 21st century, hadn’t listened to the news reports, not even when the dark green jeeps and helicopters showed up in town, men dressed in identical uniforms, just like in school, a...
For the church, the many abuses of human life, liberty, and dignity are a heartfelt suffering. The church, entrusted with the earth’s glory, believes that in each person is the Creator’s image and that everyone who tramples it offends God. As hol...
