They sat on the outcropping of stone and at bread and fruit. Kasta watched the long grass moving around them. The wind pushed it, attacked it, struck it in one place than another. It rose and fell again. It flowed, like water. "Is this what the sea i...
On the second and the third night there was again a ball -- this time in mid-ocean, during a furious storm sweeping over the ocean, which roared like a funeral mass and rolled up mountainous seas fringed with mourning silvery foam. The Devil, who fro...
Now that I think about it, maybe he is a werewolf. I can picture him lunging over the moors in hot pursuit of his prey, and I'm certain that he wouldn't think twice about eating an innocent bystander. I'll watch him closely at the next full moon. He'...
Pausing on the threshold, he looked in, conscious not so much of the few familiar sticks of furniture - the trucklebed, the worn strip of Brussels carpet, the chipped blue-banded ewer and basin, the framed illuminated texts on the walls - as of a per...
The German officers said any soldier caught stealing food from our gardens would be shot. One poor soldier was caught stealing a potato. He was chased by his own people and climbed up a tree to hide. But they found him and shot him down out of the tr...
However, my next-door neighbors had an entirely different manner of eating. When I’d go over there for dinner, it was buffet style, only a truly global sampling. Beluga caviar from Iran, with each individual egg handpicked with as much consideratio...
War, not peace, produces virtue. War, not peace, purges vice. War, and preparation for war, call forth all that is noble and honorable in a man. It unites him with his brothers and binds them in selfless love, eradicating in the crucible of necessity...
If a man like that is killed, there is always another to take his place. That is not the important thing. But to act so that no man dares to strike you because he knows you speak the truth, to act so that you can no longer be arrested because you are...
What's that?" he snarled, staring at the envelope Harry was still clutching in his hand. "If it's another form for me to sign, you've got another -" "It's not," said Harry cheerfully. "It's a letter from my godfather." "Godfather?" sputtered Uncle Ve...
Bleeding from the ear. That was on the list for not applying pressure. But what did that mean? I couldn't remember. Couldn't think. "Is he okay?" "You dropped a two-hundred pound log on his head!" I screamed at Nathan. The air shuddered around us; th...
From the Diary of the Duchess of Roxburghe I vow, I cannot seem to walk past a window without seeing my great-nephew carrying Miss Balfour somewhere. All great romantic poems have such scenes where the hero, in a fit of passion, sweeps the heroine of...
I just wish moments weren’t so fleeting!' Isaac called to the man on the roof, 'They pass so quickly!' 'Fleeting?!' responded the tilling man, 'Moments? They pass quickly?! . . . Why, once a man is finished growing, he still has twenty years of you...
All varieties of the producers' policy are advocated on the ground of their alleged ability to raise the party members' standard of living. Protectionism and economic self-sufficiency, labor union pressure and compulsion, labor legislation, minimum w...
As the Protestants celebrate a goal, they're egged on by the team captain, a long-haired Italian called Lorenzo Amoruso, who has the look of a 1980s male model. Flailing his arms, he urges them to sing their anti-Catholic songs louder. The irony is o...
Aunt Petunia burst into tears. Hestia Jones gave her an approving look that changed to outrage as Aunt Petunia ran forward and embraced Dudley rather than Harry. 'S-so sweet, Dudders...' she sobbed into his massive chest. 'S-such a lovely b-boy...s-s...
It was a hideous ancient thing that stood on tiger feet in the middle of the floor. Like a showpiece. And he did enjoy showing it. He would bring his friends upstairs to the master bathroom so that they could admire the monstrosity while he told them...
I tilted my chin up a fraction. "You can't f-force me to stay here." I'd only agreed to come this far because I didn't want to stand out in the downpour, for one, and I had high hopes of finding a phone, for two. "That sounded more like a question th...
For my own part, my constant prayer is that I may know the worst of my case, whatever the knowledge may cost me. I know that an accurate estimate of my own heart can never be otherwise than lowering to my self-esteem; but God forbid that I should be ...
Raymond continued circling me, and I looked back at him. “Anyway, I know Lilith hates your guts, and she would have killed you yesterday if you hadn’t managed to escape.” He stopped and stepped closer, I didn’t back away. His gaze traveled th...
An admirable line of Pablo Neruda’s, “My creatures are born of a long denial,” seems to me the best definition of writing as a kind of exorcism, casting off invading creatures by projecting them into universal existence, keeping them on the oth...
A brick could have been used as a father figure in place of my dad when I was growing up, because a brick may be dumb, but at least it isn’t dumb and interfering in its absence. By not being a part of my life, my dad became a big part of my life, b...
