Devin rubbed his hands over his face. "Jesus, Jason. I didn't want—" "No, I know," Jason said, looking up again. "I know you didn't. I wasn't supposed to hear that. I get it. But let me just ask you to do one thing for me. Okay? One thing." "What?"...
The beautiful unruliness of literature is what makes it so much fun to wander through: you read Jane Austen and you say, oh, that is IT. And then you turn around and read Sterne, and you say, Man, that is IT. And then you wander across a century or s...
So what do you do when you are stuck? The first thing I do when I am stuck is pray. But I’m not talking about a quick, Help me Lord, Sunday’s a comin’ prayer. When I get stuck I get up from my desk to head for my closet. Literally. If I‘m at ...
Shall I tell her? Shall I be a kind and merciful narrator and take our girl aside? Shall I touch her new, red heart and make her understand that she is no longer one of the tribe of heartless children, nor even the owner of the wild and infant heart ...
You're doing it again and it really annoys me. In fact, I will have to kill you now because I have a lot of untamed energy because of the Sex God. I'm going to have to give you a bit of a duffing up." And I shoved her. She said, "Don't be silly and c...
We hurt one another. We go through life dressing up in new clothes and covering up our true motives. We meet up lightly, we drink rosé wine, and then we give each other pain. We don't want to! What we want to do, what one really wants to do is put o...
I ask the impossible: love me forever. Love me when all desire is gone. Love me with the single mindedness of a monk. When the world in its entirety, and all that you hold sacred advise you against it: love me still more. When rage fills you and has ...
I heard him sweeping with the broom, and then he suddenly stopped. I had obviously got his attention, and he was looking. I thought. I liked the sound of that silence. Do you know what I mean? Have you heard that silence yourself? I love that silence...
Amy: I even made a new friend. I have a friend and the absurd thing is an operating system. Charles left her behind but she's totally amazing. She's... She's so smart. She doesn't just see things is black or white. She sees things in this whole gray ...
Verbal: Where's your head, Agent Kujan? Where do you think the pressure's coming from? Keyser Soze - or whatever you want to call him - he knows where I am right now. He's got the front burner under your ass to let me go so he can scoop me up ten min...
The hatred I feel for him, for the phantom girl, for everything, is so real and immediate that it chokes me. Gale is mine. I am his. Anything else is unthinkable. Why did it take him being whipped within an inch of his life to see it? Because I’m s...
If Jem dies, I cannot be with Tessa,” said Will. “Because it will be as if I were waiting for him to die, or took some joy in his death, if it let me have her. And I will not be that person. I will not profit from his death. So he must live.” H...
You telling me God love you, and you ain't never done nothing for him? I mean, not go to church, sing in the choir, feed the preacher and all like that? But if God love me, Celie, I don't have to do all that. Unless I want to. There's a lot of other ...
Always too eager for the future, we Pick up bad habits of expectancy. Something is always approaching; every day we say, Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear, Sparkling armada of promises draw near. How slow they are! And how much time they waste, R...
As a fact, we cannot give suffering precedence in either our individual or collective lives. We have to , and those who give precedence to suffering will be left behind. They fetter us with their sniveling. We have someplace to go and must believe we...
Isn't there a flaw in the logic of that phrase - speak truth to power? It assumes that power doesn't know the truth. But power knows the truth just as well, if not better, than the powerless know the truth. Enron knows what it's doing. We don't have ...
Would you like me to grovel with gratitude for bringing me here, High Lord?" "Ah. The Suriel told you nothing important, did it?" That smile of his sparked something bold in my chest. "He also said that you liked being brushed, and if I'm a clever gi...
Last night, Good Friday night, at the bottom of the escalator at King’s X tube, a weasel-faced man in uniform was sweeping up rubbish with a wide broom, drink cartons, cigarette packets with all the dust and filthy scraps of the day which he pushed...
A beam or pillar can be used to batter down a city wall, but it is no good for stopping up a little hole - this refers to a difference in function. Thoroughbreds like Qiji and Hualiu could gallop a thousand li in one day, but when it came to catching...
Smokers always waxed poetic about the ritual of it, how a large part of the satisfaction was packing the box and pulling the foil wrapper and plucking an aromatic stick. They claimed they loved the lighting, the ashing, the feeling of being able to h...
We got a call from across the street that a black woman had broken into this house.” “And you were going to arrest her without even knocking on the door?” “We had to secure her first. Um. Are you okay, ma’am?” “Of course I am. Don’t y...
