So that's it. That's the big secret. I tried to kill myself on New Year's eve. Just like Sadie did last night. Only she really did it. I don't know all the detatils, just the basics. She took a bunch of pills. I don't know what they were or where she...
Then one woman looked directly at her husband. "Is our place gone?" "I'm afraid so, girl," he said. "There isn't much left up there. But we're alive. We're all lucky to be alive. We'd have been dead if we'd stayed up above." "Oh, what a mercy we didn...
My hair would continue to gray, and then one day, it would fall out entirely, and then, on a day meaninglessly close to the present one, meaninglessly like the present one, I would disappear from the earth. And all these emotions, all these yearnings...
Sometimes I try to erase myself. And then, if I've done a good job, I'm erased. I'm nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl. And I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I'm not outside my world anymore, an...
In fiction, I searched for my favorite authors, women I have trusted to reassure me than not all teenage guys are total ditwads, that the archetype of the noble cute hero who devotes himself to the girl he loves has not gone the way of the rotary pho...
We were never lovers, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however. I regret the conversations we never had, the time we did not spend together. I regret that I never told him that he made me happy, when I was in his company. The world wa...
Just like that. Gone forever. They will not grow old together. They will never live on a beach by the sea, their hair turned white, dancing in a living room to Billie Holiday or Nat Cole. They will not enter a New York club at midnight and show the p...
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having b...
Lucy rubbed her back, a feeling of panic tightening her chest. She was the last person to give love advice. She hadn’t done anything but pine for Jem since he’d gone, and done nothing but pine for him since he’d returned. She hadn’t taken her...
No one likes sarcasm, Miss Cain. I’ve merely delayed my exit to promise you something. You took my straight razor, li’l darlin’. That I view as an unforgivable offense. So when the time comes, when you have served your purpose, I swear to you I...
My own father had always said the measure of a man wasn't how many times or how hard he got knocked down, but how fast he got back up. I made a pledge to myself that I would get up and emerge from this debacle better for having gone through it. I wou...
I don’t believe in ghosts and neither should you, Kingsley.” ”Why not? I’ve been in love with a ghost for thirty years.” Kingsley strolled over to the armchair and sat on the ottoman between the other man’s knees. Soren narrowed his eyes ...
No. Take the heart first. Then you don't feel the cold so much. The pain so much. With the heart gone, there's no reason to stay your hand. Your eyes can look on death and not tremble. It's the heart that betrays us, makes us weep, makes us bury our ...
In God's scheme what is a few billion years here and there. Perhaps there have come and gone a dozen human civilizations in the past billion years that we know nothing about. And after this civilization we are living in destroys itself, it will all s...
Every spring I hear the thrush singing in the glowing woods he is only passing through. His voice is deep, then he lifts it until it seems to fall from the sky. I am thrilled. I am grateful. Then, by the end of morning, he's gone, nothing but silence...
Desire for a person is not the same thing as having that unique appreciation and need for them, nor is affection. Desire waxes and wanes, and affection can be felt without long-standing commitment. But 'You matter to me' means that the long haul is a...
As he stood there, the audience was forgotten. The past, with all its mistakes and suffering, its doubt and sin, came before him for an instant, then vanished, and his heart leaped for joy, because he knew that it was gone forever. And the future, ma...
The hardest lesson is Clare’s solitude. Sometimes I come home and Clare seems kind of irritated; I’ve interrupted some train of thought, broken into the dreary silence of her day. Sometimes I see an expression on Clare’s face that is like a clo...
Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year...
But then he saw it, then he saw what he had known he was seeing and could not accept. There in the night, amid the mist, upon the flat of the plains, the shimmer of light from Allear was not right. The grasses were too flat, the mists curled awkwardl...
Every time they saw him, they recognized him and knew him and expected things of him. And every time he came up blank. It was like watching someone digging where they knew they'd buried something precious, digging and digging and realizing that whate...
