The faith in an afterlife, however much our reason ridicules it, very modestly extends our faith that each moment of our consciousness will be followed by another - that a coherent matrix has been prepared for this precious self of ours. The guarante...
Unbeknownst to me, from the beginning of freshman year Rob and Oswaldo had been drawn away from Yale via their friends on the dining hall and custodial staffs, outward into the city of New Haven. Rob considered these excursions a much-needed dose of ...
Hence the uneasiness which they arouse in those who, for whatever reason, wish to keep us wholly imprisoned in the immediate conflict. That perhaps is why people are so ready with the charge of "escape." I never fully understood it till my friend Pro...
I was just thoughts, just air. There was nothingness all around me. Was this what it was like to be dead? When you died, did you still sense everything going on around you, only it was happening so far away that you didn't care about it? You were flo...
For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would come over her, If he were with me now what would he say? --some days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, ...
I throw my arms around her without even thinking first, the way I used to with Daddy when he came home from a trip. "Thank you," I say into her waist. Her clothes smell so good. I feel her hand resting on my head, and for that second I feel like noth...
I cannot tell you what it is that guides us in this life; but for me, I fell toward the Chairman just as a stone must fall toward the earth. When I cut my lip and met Mr. Tanaka, when my mother died and I was cruelly sold, it was all like a stream th...
It feels as though Tony's a ghost, a wisp of someone I once loved, or never loved at all and thought was someone else. I don't feel anything, not even when he fucks me. I wonder if he knows. I wonder if he believes I still want him. I always tell mys...
He kissed you! He f@*#king kissed you right in front of me," Wharick growled through his clenched teeth. Kathel looked up from the ground where he was now leaning up on his elbows, far too pleased with his performance and having a look of mischief on...
La vie est atroce ; nous savons cela. Mais précisément parce que j’attends peu de choses de la condition humaine, les périodes de bonheur, les progrès partiels, les efforts de recommencement, et de continuité me semblent autant de prodiges qui...
but is it not heartening to know that so many are willing to fight for the good? Think of that young librarian, Sophie, who made certain you escaped. Think of S.Q., who risked my brother’s wrath to make me more comfortable. Think of Captain Noland,...
I train jiu jitsu because I love jiu jitsu. But I also train knowing that my practice in this art will allow me better practice in any art. If you have learned one thing, you have learned all things, because you have learned how to learn. I can think...
The discipline gave me a sense of achievement. Not least, fasting is a test of willpower and, whenever I felt my willpower weakening, I would tell myself that I could eat as much as I wanted after sunset. But then the strange thing was that after fas...
When you accept Islam, you don’t cease to be the person you were before in your identity and culture,’ he told me. ‘The only thing that Islam does is make you stronger in your identity in terms of actualising your personality, and in understand...
You know, you’ve set a really bad precedent for first dates,” I said. “How is anyone ever going to top this?” I turned to him for the first time. He was watching me, not the scenery. “I brought you here because I wanted to see the look on y...
Have you lost your mind? He will kill you all, all of you! Abel Casey, you have no idea what you're up against." She growled. Parker slapped handcuffs around her writs. I leaned in and whispered. "They've no idea what they're up against. I'm one big ...
Recently, a lot of Americans have swapped the awkward phrase 'same-sex marriage' for the term 'marriage equality'. This phrase is ordinarily implied to mean that same-sex couples will have the rights different-sexed couples do. But it could also mean...
Some women get erased a little at a time, some all at once. Some reappear. Every woman who appears wrestles with the forces that would have her disappear. She struggles with the forces that would tell her story for her, or write her out of the story,...
I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcoti...
The sound of her breathing reminded me, as it so often did, of how vulnerable she was. And how vulnerable we were because of how much we loved her. The fear - that something could happen to her at any moment, something I'd be helpless to stop - had b...
If I cause a collapse when I try to get off, I'd like you to be out of harm's way first." They both felt the ground shift beneath them. "My lord," Catherine asked, her eyes wide, "do you think this has anything to do with the Ramsay curse?" "Actually...
