The Mozart sonata Dad picked out begins to play. When we hear the first note, we open the sacks and the ladybugs escape through the opening, taking flight. It's as if someone has dumped rubies from heaven. Soon they will land on the plants in search ...
I had a dream about you. We got into an argument over the toilet seat. Down, up, down, up, down, up, we each thought we were right. Finally, being a natural diplomat, I suggested we compromise and leave the toilet seat halfway between down and up. Yo...
Let me say right here, if I haven't made it clear, that I have seen as many pale, naked old-man parts in the last twenty-four hours to bruise my delicate psyche for a lifetime, so don't be surprised if you someday find me wandering the moors at midni...
From the baking aisle to the post office line to the wrapping paper bin in the attic, women populate every dark corner of Christmas. Who got up at 4 a.m. to put the ham in the oven? A woman. . . . Who sent the Christmas card describing her eighteen-y...
Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it's some kind of "knack" or some kind of "affinity for machines" in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process...
Will's face turned grave. "Be careful with it, though. It's six hundred years old and the only copy of its kind. Losing or damaging it is punishable by death under the Law." Tessa thrust the book away from her as if it were on fire. "You can't be ser...
I've got plenty.” Isabelle smiled, kicking her feet up so that her anklets jingled like Christmas bells. "These, for instance. The left one is gold, which is poisonous to demons, and the right one is blessed iron, in case I run across any unfriendl...
I realized that with everything I did from that point onward, I would have to ask myself this question: "How would I feel if what I'm doing right now is written up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or if it is on tele...
I wanted to spend more time with her; she was constantly in my thoughts, and right now the only thing I wanted was to lean in and kiss her. Which was, of course, disastrous for the mission, but I couldn't help it. Somewhere between that day on the be...
Yesterday, here in the middle of the City, I saw a wolf turn into a Russian ex-gymnast and hand over a business card that read YOUR OWN PERSONAL TRANSHUMAN SECURITY WHORE! STERILIZED INNARDS! ACCEPTS ALL CREDIT CARDS to a large man who had trained at...
The next morning after finishing my interviews, I found myself with some time to kill before the bus arrived to return me to Whitby. The term "time to kill" suddenly sounded awfully harsh. Was "time to waste" better? No, "waste" is so un-Benedictine....
But what struck me was the book-madness of the place--books lay scattered across the unmade bed and the top of a battered-looking desk, books stood in knee-high piles on the floor, books were crammed sideways and right side up in a narrow bookcase th...
I had a dream about you. You looked so beautiful that I felt compelled to say something. So I said, “The fish taco wasn’t nearly as stinky as I imagined it’d be.” You looked at me with your gorgeous eyes and said, “Life isn’t all roses to...
Unless, of course, there's no such thing as chance;...in which case, we should either-optimistically-get up and cheer, because if everything is planned in advance, then we all have a meaning and are spared the terror of knowing ourselves to be random...
The selection process is simple. Hubby exhausts every ploy in his psychological arsenal to filter out the liars, fakes, and undesirables. (If only every husband were so devoted . . .) Me, I try to prove to that I’m not the stereotypical single male...
We can not, therefore, reserve as sacred anything that is not truth and yet we cannot turn from things of truth have inspired us in our everyday lives. We must merely embrace both hard and soft truths that must not be avoided. This does not mean we c...
I was getting away with something in my own way. But then I get here and saw you, brain-dead and with tubes coming out of every part of your body. And I realized I wasn't getting away with anything. Just like you didn't get away with anything. You we...
To see and feel one's beloved naked for the first time is one of life's pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include that truth of contact or be forever hollow. To make love to the one true person who des...
Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was w...
One night I dreamed of an angel: I walked into a huge, empty bar and saw him sitting in a corner with his elbows on the table and a cup of milky coffee in front of him. She’s the love of your life, he said, looking up at me, and the force of his ga...
Life is a feeling, not a thought. Thoughts come after life and feeling. Thoughts are outside life, but necessary for balance within our being. We exist in two worlds at the same time, but we are one presence in eternity. The mind distorts our true id...
