Trevor cupped his hands around it, felt Zach's heartbeat throbbing between his palms. The skin of the shaft was textured, slightly rippled beneath the surface. The head was as smooth as satin, as rose petals. Trevor rubbed his thumb across it, squeez...
For he had never heard anything like it--did not know such music existed in the world--and it was hard to believe that a man he knew could play it with his own two hands. There were parts of it like birdsong, and parts like rolling thunder and hard r...
Have you heard the joke about the chemist, physicist and economist who get wrecked on a desert isle, with a huge supply of canned baked beans as their only food? The chemist says that he can start a fire using the neighbouring palm trees, and calcula...
Take your clothes off." "What?" "You heard me." Evelyn forced her mouth shut. She looked around the room, buying time. The faded brown curtains hung limply over the windows, not quite touching, and the afternoon light filtered through the gaps, its b...
So why don’t Americans cheat? Because they think that their system is legitimate. People accept authority when they see that it treats everyone equally, when it is possible to speak up and be heard, and when there are rules in place that assure you...
The smell of the sea, of kelp and fish and bitter moving water, rose stronger in my nostrils. It flooded my consciousness like an ancestral memory. The swells rose sluggishly and fell away, casting up dismal gleams between the boards of the pier. And...
Manlius ... took care in his invitations, actively sought to exclude from his circle crude and vulgar men like Caius Valerius. But they were all around; it was Manlius who lived in a dream world, and his bubble of civility was becoming smaller and sm...
I am inclined to trust you. You shouldn’t be like that with another man, not ever; but I can’t help it. I felt it strongly from the instant I heard your voice; and though I thought momentarily that it would falter, it didn’t. It’s still here....
We fluff them and fold them and nudge them and enhance them and bind them and break them and embellish them beyond measure; then, as we drive them up to the college interviews that they’ve heard since birth are the gateway to the lives they were de...
Until-as often happened during those first months travel, whenever I would feel such happiness-my guilt alarm went off. I heard my ex-husband's voice speaking disdainfully in my ear: So this is what you gave up everything for? This is why you gutted ...
I haven't heard anything new that I've liked on the show. A lot of the bands we play with are just bad, especially those alternative rock bands. They can do it in the studio but they can't play live... I see the audience applauding while they're play...
Lula," I said, "do you ever think about getting married?" I guess I do. Doesn't everybody?" You have to let your husband kiss you once you're married. And you have to kiss him back." " she said. Yes." I nodded, as if I knew everything there was to kn...
I did not say anything. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had re...
Time — how it expands to fill the spaces you create; how it makes meagre experiences seem never-ending. Whenever he heard people talk about the ravages of time, about how it robbed and deprived, Justin always smiled; because for him, time was an ac...
What’s the worst possible thing you can call a woman? Don’t hold back, now. You’re probably thinking of words like slut, whore, bitch, cunt (I told you not to hold back!), skank. Okay, now, what are the worst things you can call a guy? Fag, gir...
I went in - after making every possible noise in the kitchen, short of pushing over the stove - but I don't believe they heard a sound. They were sitting at either end of the couch, looking at each other as if some question had been asked, or was in ...
I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone cry, thinking I myself was weeping, and I felt my face and it was dry. Then I looked at the window and thought: Why, yes, it's just the rain, the rain, always the rain, and tu...
As an inmate of a concentration camp, Corrie Ten Boom heard a commotion, and saw a short distance away a prison guard mercilessly beating a female prisoner. “What can we do for these people?” Corrie whispered. “Show them that love is greater,�...
One morning, as he sat at his desk, he heard the sound of a horse's hooves on the path outside his house. He stepped out on to the verandah. There, on a tall grey horse, sat Morgane. 'I've come to have my picture painted,' she said. She took off her ...
What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself do...
I'm sure you've heard people talk about their Heart's Desire—well that's a load of rot. Hearts are idiots. They're big and squishy and full of daft dreams. They flounce off to write poetry and moon at folk who aren't worth the mooning. Bones are th...
