it was unmatched life experience that bestowed in her eyes the sultry gleam that separates women from girls. although she viewed her “life experience” like bruises on a peach, men of all ages still found ways to see past the indications of damage...
After a day on Mykines, I changed my mind about life not going on. A sort of life was going on, beating with a reasonalbe version of a pulse, but that life consisted for the most part of travelers like myself. There were maybe a dozen of us -- one th...
Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That's when I will be truly dead - when I exist in no one's memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some p...
You came up this gut-wrenching road yesterday by yourself?" Cassie exclaimed. "You deserve a good cuffing just for driving this goat path on your own." "It's not so bad once you get used to dodging the ruts." "You've got some nerve calling these cany...
To the sea, to the sea! The white gulls are crying, The wind is blowing, and the white foam is flying. West, west away, the round sun is falling, Grey ship, grey ship, do you hear them calling, The voices of my people that have gone before me? I will...
the rest of the guardians are all checking out the explosion," I realised. Pieces began coming together-including Lissa's lack of surprise over the commotion. "Oh no. You had Christian blow up ancient Moroi artifacts." "Of course not," said Eddie. He...
I've been wanting to do that for a very long time," I growled Victor smiled through the pain and the blood. "Of course you have. I used to think Belikov was the savage one, but it's really you, isn't it? You're the animal with no control, no higher r...
Wherever I go, I'll always see you. You'll always be with me. And there's no happy ending coming here, no way a story that started on a night that's burned into my heart will end the way I wish it could. You're really gone, no last words, and no matt...
I'm not saying it's what I would have wanted. But don't you see? We fuck up our lives again and again and it's always our children who pick up the bill. We move on to new relationships, always starting over, always thinking we've got another chance t...
Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it ta...
A certain critic -- for such men, I regret to say, do exist -- made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained 'all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.' He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who mad...
This stage in the life of the buzz is truly fabulous. It's not even a buzz anymore. It's a roar. The world opens up and everything's yours right there, right now. You've probably heard the expression -- All good things must come to an end. Well, this...
The images start to darken and she feels another hunger well up in her, this one having to do with another kind of desire. The desire to feed, to possess, and the aggressive thrill of a predator capturing and killing its prey as it tears into unspoil...
I cannot talk of the power of want, of how much desire can do. I don't think it can be measured. I think is forgotten too quickly or dismissed as being worth far less than the other feelings -love, hate, envy. But to something ... To wish for it so m...
Since man always remains free and since his freedom is always fragile, the kingdom of good will never be definitively established in this world. Anyone who promises the better world that is guaranteed to last forever is making a false promise; he is ...
And there was never a better time to delve for pleasure in language than the sixteenth century, when novelty blew through English like a spring breeze. Some twelve thousand words, a phenomenal number, entered the language between 1500 and 1650, about...
Scarcely has night arrived to undeceive, unfurling her wings of crepe (wings drained even of the glimmer just now dying in the tree-tops); scarcely has the last glint still dancing on the burnished metal heights of the tall towers ceased to fade, lik...
Okay, time to get serious. I let my smile fade slowly and lowered my pitch, as no human woman could have. “I’m not joking this time. If I see it, it’s mine, and you won’t get it back at the end of the school year.” I growled, deep and long,...
A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full or wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adul...
The public are a lot of jackasses. If you yell and scream and throw yourself about you'll always get a lot of damned fools to shout themselves silly. Just barnstorming, that's what you've been doing the last four nights. It was false from beginning t...
Is that you, Sergeant Angua?" said a voice in the gloom. A lantern was open, and lit the approaching face of Constable Visit. As he drew near, she could just make out the thick wad of pamphlets under his other arm. "Hello, Washpot," she said. "What's...