For despite his confidence, and his apparent maturity, I suspected that there was in him a deep and childish need to elevate, and idealize, the love object. This is not uncommon in artists. The very nature of their work, the long periods of isolation...
He is smitten on the brain, -he reads and writes verses! I caught him in the act! Fools might say he was inspired; but I know it is the first and worst symptom of lunacy. All other maniacs have lucid intervals; some are curable; but the madness of po...
When the wounded were screaming, you dreamed of sharing a little house somewhere, of an ordinary life, of a family line, connection. All around him, men were walking silently with their thoughts, reforming their lives, making resolutions. If I ever g...
Anything she might have said died in her throat at the sight of him. His black hair was disheveled, his morning stubble hypnotic, and the rakish way his shirt was undone at the throat and his tie hung in abandoned disarray beneath the collar, was jus...
She didn’t believe there was anything like perfect, fairytale love. Most people were flawed and prone to mistakes. She thought herself a romantic but treated love with the same practicality she did most things. They’d had fall-outs and misunderst...
Turning back to the crowd I say, “I am duty bound to make this plea, but I want to say, with all due respect to the governor here, that I doubt seriously that he will do — cannot do — anything. And for the reason that he is owned, lock, stock a...
It was the sunlight coming through the window that woke Alex up; mother nature's own alarm clock rudely snapped him back to consciousness. The white light poured in so arrogantly that it was too much for his eyes to handle. Squinting did not seem eno...
The intelligent poor individual was a much finer observer than the intelligent rich one. The poor individual looks around him at every step, listens suspiciously to every word he hears from the people he meets; thus, every step he takes presents a pr...
Mocho was a Spanish word that meant maimed or referred to something that had been lopped off like a stump. To call Homer el mocho was, essentially, to call him "Stumpy" or "the maimed one." It doesn't sound particularly flattering, but among Spanish ...
Sahara knew she should be worried about the fact that she’d been in bed with a man who’d caused that kind of damage with a momentary and, according to him, minor loss of telekinetic control during intimacy, but she felt her lips kick up at the co...
Kill me then,' panted Harry, who felt no fear at all, but only rage and contempt. 'Kill me like you killed him, you coward-' DON'T-' screamed Snape, and his face was suddenly demented, inhuman, as though he was in as much pain as the yelping, howling...
Look, why don't you go talk to Ron about all this?" Harry asked. "Well, I would, but he's always asleep when I go and see him!" said Lavender fretfully. "Is he?" said Harry, surprised, for he had found Ron perfectly alert every time he had been up to...
Well, we were always going to fail that one," said Ron gloomily as they ascended the marble staircase. He had just made Harry feel rather better by telling him how he told the examiner in detail about the ugly man with a wart on his nose in the cryst...
I feel I owe you another explanation Harry," said Dumbledore hesitantly. "You may, perhaps, wondered why I never chose you as a prefect? I must confess...that I rather thought...you had enough responsibility to be going on with." Harry looked up at h...
Hello, Harry" said George, beaming at him. "We thought we heard your dulcet tones." "You don't want to bottle up your anger like that, Harry, let it all out," said Fred, also beaming. "There might be a couple of people fifty miles away who didn't hea...
Where did you get the control sample?" A flash of dark heat raced through him and he knew himself well enough to identify it as a dose of pure jealousy. "From Tamsyn." A pause, as if she was debating whether to continue. "I know you'd react negativel...
I was impressed by the delicate weaving of the numbers. No matter how carefully you unraveled a thread, a single moment of inattention could leave you stranded, with no clue what to do next. In all his years of study, the Professor had managed to gli...
It's amazing what the sound of a voice you've been longing to hear can do to your heart. He spoke five words just now, but in the time it took him to speak those five words, my heart was shredded and minced, then placed back inside my chest with the ...
We too are called to withdraw at certain intervals into deeper silence and aloneness with God, together as a community as well as personally; to be alone with Him — not with our books, thoughts, and memories but completely stripped of everything �...
Goldilocks in the flesh. He zoned out for a second, lost in the smooth texture of her skin, so he had zero time to react when the bikini top flying through the air hit him in the chest.... She contemplated the ground for a second. "I'd like my top ba...
Charlie swallowed. He was gloriously sexy. The hottest man she'd ever seen with his sculpted chest and abs., narrow waist, long muscular legs dusted with dark brown hair. Her gaze roamed over every inch of him before settling on his erection. It was ...
