Frank treated customers with the contempt Rosy had only seen before at airport passport control. Even then, she’d never heard an immigration official refer to anybody as baldy. “Hey, baldy,” Frank had said and whistled to call a customer back a...
It was her last breakfast with Bapi, her last morning in Greece. In her frenetic bliss that kept her up till dawn, she’d scripted a whole conversation in Greek for her and Bapi to have as their grand finale of the summer. Now she looked at him cont...
I read of a Buddhist teacher who developed Alzheimer's. He had retired from teaching because his memory was unreliable, but he made one exception for a reunion of his former students. When he walked onto the stage, he forgot everything, even where he...
Karma has been a pop culture term for ages. But really, what the heck is it? Karma is not an inviolate engine of cosmic punishment. Rather, it is a neutral sequence of acts, results, and consequences. Receiving misfortune does not necessarily indicat...
You wake up on a winter morning and pull up the shade, and what lay there the evening before is no longer there--the sodden gray yard, the dog droppings, the tire tracks in the frozen mud, the broken lawn chair you forgot to take in last fall. All th...
If ever you have had a romantic, uncalculating friendship, - a boundless worship and belief in some hero of your soul, - if ever you have so loved, that all cold prudence, all selfish worldly considerations have gone down like drift-wood before a riv...
Sometimes people carried anger around for years, in a secret box inside their bodies, and it grew tighter like a hardening knot. The problem with it getting tighter and smaller was that the people did, too, hiding it. Liyana had seen this happen even...
Hapi?" I asked. "Why, yes, I am happy!" Hapi beamed. "I'm always happy because I'm Hapi! Are you happy?" Zia frowned up at the giant. "Does he have to be so big?" The god laughed. Immediately he shrank down to human size, though the crazy cheerful lo...
As a boy, Ogion like all boys had thought it would be a very pleasant game to take by art-magic whatever shape one liked, man or beast, tree or cloud, and so to play at a thousand beings. But as a wizard he had learned the price of the game, which is...
Raoul Duke: I want you to understand that this man at the wheel is my attorney. He's not just some dingbat I found on the strip, man. He's a foreigner. I think he's probably Samoan. But that doesn't matter, though, does it? Are you prejudiced? Hitchh...
Tagalong: Gee, you're beautiful. Sis: Are you going to marry Robin Hood? Tagalong: Mama says that you and Robin Hood are sweethearts. Marian: Well you see, that was several years ago before I left for London. Toby: Did he ever kiss you? Marian: Well ...
[first lines] Evey Hammond: [voiceover] Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot... But what of the man? I know his name was Guy Fawkes and I know, ...
David Van Patten: They don't have a good bathroom to do coke in. Craig McDermott: Are you sure that's Paul Allen over there? Timothy Bryce: Yes. McDufus, I am. Craig McDermott: He's handling the Fisher account. Timothy Bryce: Lucky bastard. Craig McD...
Hermes smiled. "I knew a boy once ... oh, younger than you by far. A mere baby, really." , George said. Martha snapped. Hermes ignored them. "One night, when this boy's mother wasn't watching, he sneaked out of their cave and stole some cattle that b...
Then one morning she’d begun to feel her sorrow easing, like something jagged that had cut into her so long it had finally dulled its edges, worn itself down. That same day Rachel couldn’t remember which side her father had parted his hair on, an...
Did I tell you what happened at the play? We were at the back of the theatre, standing there in the dark, when all of a sudden I feel one of 'em tug at my sleeve, whispers, "Trudy look!" I said, "Yeah, goosebumps. You definitely got goosebumps. You l...
Ay, that I had not done a thousand more. Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think, Few come within the compass of my curse,— Wherein I did not some notorious ill, As kill a man, or else devise his death, Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it, ...
Isn't it weird," I said, "the way you remember things, when someone's gone?" What do you mean?" I ate another piece of waffle. "When my dad first died, all I could think about was that day. It's taken me so long to be able to think back to before tha...
William groaned. It was Vimes. Worse, he was smiling, in a humourless predatory way. "Ah, Mr de Worde," he said, stepping inside. "There are several thousand dogs stampeding through the city at the moment. This is an interesting fact, isn't it?" He l...
So, I believe that what you are looking for, really looking for, is that one person who is capable of recognizing you no matter what. You know, that one person who is going to be able to see past what everybody else sees and even past what you yourse...
Old Bilbo: The first they heard was a noise like a hurricane coming down from the North. The pines on the mountain creaked and cracked in the hot, dry wind. It was a fire-drake from the North. Smaug had come! Such wanton death was dealt that day, for...
