Post-adolescent Expert Syndrome The tendency of young people around the age of eighteen, males especially, to become altruistic experts on everything, a state of mind required by nature to ensure warriors who are willing to die with pleasure on the b...
Supposing there is no life everlasting. Think what it means if death is really the end of all things. They've given up all for nothing. They've been cheated. They're dupes." Waddington reflected for a little while. "I wonder if it matters what they h...
At the top of the slope on the perimeter of the site, overlooking six lanes of motorway, is a diner frequented by lorry drivers who have either just unloaded or or are waiting to pick up their cargo. Anyone nursing a disappointment with domestic life...
...as of this moment there's the police department way, the federal law enforcement way, the military way... and my way. If you want me to function at my best then you're going to have to accept that I'm going to have to make up some of my own rules....
Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again for ever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the perm...
I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the ...
It was strange how in that moment of tragedy, it had seemed so unreal, like an old-fashioned movie reel playing on a screen for my eyes only. The pain and broken heart were blocked off for a little while, leaving me numb with disbelief. Shock is what...
My mother picked me up in her arms, touching my checks comforting my distress. I stared into her eyes and held her hair in my small hands, for the first time realizing what a moment in time meant. I touched her cheek and then looked away, knowing thi...
I’ve always wondered about people who live in their cars. I’ll bet for them ordering a pizza is kind of tricky. Should they have it delivered, or should they pick it up?
It’s scary to be a woman on a blind date. For all she knows the man she is meeting up with could be a rapist, a murderer, or, God forbid, a politician.
There is no hard and fast line that can be drawn that says: Up to here there was no love; from here on there is now love. Love is a gradual thing, it may take a moment, a month, or a year to come on, and in each two its gradations are different. With...
People said things to me like "They're just animals. They're here for our use." I had a visceral reaction to that phrase, maybe because I was told countless times during my growing-up years that I was "just like an animal." I had suffered much of my ...
People always ask me "Son what does it take To reach out and touch your dreams?" To them I always say Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Is it a fire that burns you up inside? How bad do you want it? How bad do you need it? Are you eating, sleeping, dr...
That’s when I notice Cheryl and Mickey cuddled up on the couch. She’s leaning on his shoulder, his arm around her, her leg across his lap. Cheryl throws glances at Kerry that say, “Look at me!” while Kerry shoots a “You go, girl!” smirk r...
A citizen at his home in Rockford, Illinois, or Boulder, Colorado, could read a newspaper, listen to a radio, or watch the round-the-clock coverage on television, but he had no way of connecting with those who shared his views. Nor was there a quick,...
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 know. I know I’ve been a jerk, and I don’t have a good excuse. But touching you and loving you, and knowing you were planning to leave me, made me crazy. After we made love the second time, I began to think maybe you’d decide to stay with me....
Technos and clerics have much in common. Both take a world that can’t be fully understood and try to explain its fundamental properties. Clerics postulate beliefs that can never be proven; they demand you accept these postulates as your Faith, whic...
Many people experience the travesty of regret in their end days; the realization that nothing held them back, that nothing was in their way, that there is no one to blame, only themselves. Don't just sit by waiting for your life to happen, make it ha...
It's the story of my life. You see, the quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead. Now, as you look through this document you'll see that I've underlined all the major decisions I ever ...
I thought you were good. That some part of you was good.” In a blink of an eye, Balthazar stood right in front of her. Arianne yelped. He took her wrist and brought the tip of the knife to the center of his chest. With his other hand, he tilted her...
