His dark blond hair was short and neatly trimmed around his ears. The blond highlighted it just enough to make one think it'd been kissed by the sun, but I knew better. Stopping a few feet away, he watched me. I squirmed under his perusal. "So, are w...
Think of the glory. Think of your reputation. Think how great it'll look on your next resume." On my cenotaph, you mean. Nobody will be able to collect enough of my scattered atoms to bury. You going to cover my funeral expenses, son?" Splendidly. Ba...
I didn't want to be in hell, even for a moment. I sure as hell wasn't going there just to spit in the face of the Prince of Darkness, whoever he might be! On the contrary, if I was a damned thing, then let the son of a bitch come for me! Let him tell...
We appealed to the conscience of the world. The world has no conscience. We have no one but ourselves." The fight. The struggle. The historic destiny. The return of the people. The cause: life therefore having a meaning and shape that eludes the rest...
Sometimes you imagine that everything could have been different for you, that if only you had gone right one day when you chose to go left, you would be living a life you could never have anticipated. But at other times you think there was no other w...
Nightmares did come true. Because, after her second night of major loving with the man of her dreams, the absolute last person she ever wanted to see was her mother. Yet there she was, her small, hefty frame trundling up the stairs to Maira’s front...
It was Sunday, and Mumma had gone next door with Lena and the little ones. Under the pepper tree in the yard Pa was sorting, counting, the empty bottles he would sell back: the bottles going clink clink as Pa stuck them in the sack. The fowls were fl...
It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a s...
Speaking of luck, Isabelle Lightwood is a total babe. Actually, she's better than a babe: She's a hero. She came all the way here to tell the world you were hers. You're telling me she doesn't know another hero when she sees one? You're going to figu...
When we see the greatness of God in even our very darkest moments, then we can be free. “Even the crappiest crap we go through glorifies God,” Amber likes to say, in her Amber way. “God makes beauty from ashes, and the devil hates when He does ...
I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you,and that you will work with these stories from your life--not someone else's life--water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst int...
She, herself, had only been in love once and it ended worse than a train wreck would, and she hated herself for what she had become because of it. Because of her ex-boyfriend, she didn’t trust easily, she didn’t date as much anymore, and she foun...
We're very near a certain point where money doesn't mean anything... They say: How much money is this going to cost? This is really a totally meaningless concept. Money determines less and less our reality. Money is not constant factor, it's simply a...
Jem made the little Scottish noise again, and Brianna looked sideways at him. "Are you doing that on purpose?" He looked up at her, surprised. "Doing what?" "Never mind. When you are fifteen, I'm locking you in the cellar." "What? Why?" he demanded i...
As a young man just beginning to publish some short fiction in the t&a magazines, I was fairly optimistic about my chances of getting published; I knew that I had some game, as the basketball players say these days, and I also felt that time was on m...
All I said was that I thought it was a judgement from God that Blyth had first lost his leg and then had the replacement become the instrument of his downfall. All because of the rabbits. Eric, who was going through a religious phase at the time whic...
..."I might be entertaining the idea of tamping down my nihilism. Just a bit. Not because life is not meaningless—I think that’s inarguable. It’s just that the constant awareness of its pointlessness is exhausting. I wouldn’t mind being obliv...
I remember thinking about how mothers were prepared to run into burning buildings to save their children's lives. I thought I should be able to go through a bit more suffering, a bit more inconvenience to give my children life. It made me feel noble....
We all know how it says it’s going to end, Dreamer, but no one knows for sure. That’s up to you, and your friends. It is the Four who shall decide whether or not it comes true, not a bunch of words written on a piece of paper. Not even,” he tur...
Suddenly, I was just sure he was going to kiss me. He was there, I could feel his breath, the ground solid beneath us. But then something crossed his face, a thought, a hesitation, and he shifted slightly. Not now. Not yet. It was something I'd done ...
Science enhances the moral value of life, because it furthers a love of truth and reverence—love of truth displaying itself in the constant endeavor to arrive at a more exact knowledge of the world of mind and matter around us, and reverence, becau...
