Orlando had a Pinto, a car that hadn't been in existence for thirty-plus years. He still hadn't figured out why a strong, strapping werewolf would want one. Orlando said it was because he'd customized it. Painted pink with purple stripes, the younger...
A woman's voice answered, "Hello?" Walter cried back at her, "Hello, oh Lord, hello!" "This is a recording," recited the woman's voice. "Miss Helen Arasumian is not home. Will you leave a message on the wire spool so she may call you when she returns...
Because I liked you better Than suits a man to say, It irked you, and I promised I'd throw the thought away. To put the world between us We parted stiff and dry: 'Farewell,' said you, 'forget me.' 'Fare well, I will,' said I. If e'er, where clover wh...
He found, using fifty stones to keep track, that he could easily remember the names of all fifty states, and he knew the capitols of a lot of them. He knew his times tables all the way up to twelves, and he knew when they'd signed the Declaration of ...
Richard put away the Narnia books, convinced, sadly, that they were an allegory; that an author (whom he had trusted) had been attempting to slip something past him. He had had the same disgust with the Professor Challenger stories, when the bull-nec...
Veeva should count her blessings. Three years ago it was cocaine and a year ago it was crack and lemme tell you, that stuff you got to have. You do anything for that high." He laughed again, savoring his memories. "Where do you think the furniture we...
His words thrummed in, deep, imprinting themselves on her very deepest, deepest, deep bits. “I believe I am your destiny. You are mine, as I am yours. We shall be one. So one that your air will be mine, your scent mine, your blood will fill my vein...
Suppose, however, that God did give this law to the Jews, and did tell them that whenever a man preached a heresy, or proposed to worship any other God that they should kill him; and suppose that afterward this same God took upon himself flesh, and c...
How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another's heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known? Even if the world's ...
Or [take] the old cripple worried about choking on his vitamins or tripping if he tries to hobble over that wide crack in the sidewalk. He won’t be bound by mere experience - he renounces it all together as something confusing; the very moment it o...
Percy glanced over. He saw the fallen giant and seemed to understand what was happening. He yelled something that was lost in the wind, probably: Go! Then he slammed Riptide into the ice at his feet. The entire glacier shuddered. Ghosts fell to their...
The crisis creates situations which are dangerous in the short run, since the various strata of the population are not all capable of orienting themselves equally swiftly, or of reorganizing with the same rhythm. The traditional ruling class, which h...
Vampires do breathe, by the way, but their chests don't move like humans'. Have you ever lain in the arms of your sweetheart and tried to match your breathing to his, or hers? You do it automatically. Your brain only gets involved if your body is hav...
Besides," said Suriyawong. "This was not a rescue operation." "What was it, target practice? Chinese skeet?" "An offer of transportation to an invited guest of the Hegemon," said Suriyawong. "And the loan of a knife." Achilles held up the bloody thin...
Today that legend is inscribed on the stones that were used to build the walls of the school, and as the water falls out of the sky and over those stones, the words of the legend are carried down from the mountains and into the fields and gardens and...
I. At Tea THE kettle descants in a cosy drone, And the young wife looks in her husband's face, And then in her guest's, and shows in her own Her sense that she fills an envied place; And the visiting lady is all abloom, And says there was never so sw...
When I say "The good man gave his good dog a good meal," I use "good" analogically, for there is at the same time a similarity and a difference between a good man, a good dog, and a good meal. All three are desirable, but a good man is wise and moral...
When it repudiates a past paradigm, a scientific community simultaneously renounces, as a fit subject for professional scrutiny, most of the books and articles in which that paradigm had been embodied. Scientific education makes use of no equivalent ...
She told him ... how her heart had fairly skipped a beat when she'd seen him standing in the middle of the road dressed as a true Highland warrior. "If I hadna been in love wi' you already, I'd have fallen in love wi' you then." He grinned, his whisk...
You all right?" he said again. I didn't love him, I was far away from him, it was as though I was seeing him through a smeared window or glossy paper; he didn't belong here. But he existed, he deserved to be alive. I was wishing I could tell him how ...
Since man always remains free and since his freedom is always fragile, the kingdom of good will never be definitively established in this world. Anyone who promises the better world that is guaranteed to last forever is making a false promise; he is ...