(John) Adams acknowledged that he had made himself obnoxious to many of his colleagues, who regarded him as a one-man bonfire of the vanities. This never troubled Adams, who in his more contrarian moods claimed that his unpopularity provided clinchin...
Billy took off his tri-focals and his coat and his necktie and his shoes, and he closed the venetian blinds and then the drapes, and he lay down on the outside of the coverlet. But sleep would not come. Tears came instead. They seeped. [...] He close...
When the filly, the maiden, the boy and the warrior are ready to take up their Destinies, each will know it. The filly will become a mare, the maiden a woman, the boy a man. The Warrior, however, will pick up a stick and walk from his mother, his peo...
Running to join them, he felt overwhelming joy. It was as if he were coming home from a lashing winter storm to the warmth of his living room. The sky seemed brilliantly blue and clear, although he knew it was overcast. If he didn't move his legs fas...
Emeth came walking forward into the open strip of grass between the bonfire and the Stable. His eyes were shining, his face was solemn, his hand was on his sword-hilt, and he carried his head high. Jill felt like crying when she looked at his face. A...
I wish I could wrap up the glitter star-green of this moment and hand it to you like an angel gift. Give you the heat lightning flying in jagged silence over the distant mountains. And the smell of September prairie grass and the even fainter scent o...
While all the universe and my family are still sleeping, I will walk among the red and blue twinkle-lights of the living room, to sit and gaze upon the pretty white angel atop the tree and say silent prayers, remembering what was good in the world an...
Take off my clothes and there becomes a man. Take off my skin and there becomes my bones. Break all my bones and there becomes my heart. Smash my heart and there becomes my soul. And that you cannot take. And what is my soul?...It is everything that ...
Summer, dropping so easily a delicious everything upon your skin and lips. Like a never-ending kiss—taunting, deep, and luscious. The sun. The heat. The thousand echoes of a timelessness before time, when every day seems longer than the next and no...
Make doing your best a habit, and you’ll never know not doing your best. If you build roads, then build them Roman—make them last two thousand years. Dig ditches as if you were taking them to the state fair to win another blue ribbon for best dit...
It's a fool who thinks that having a kid is a right, which is the biggest crock of fishheads I’ve ever heard. You have a responsibility, not only to a person but also to a spirit because that’s what a child is. A pissing, crying, yawning, gigglin...
Sheriff Fox was running his fingers through his thin hair. In a few short years, he’d look bald as a peeled apple. The Snoop sisters and their sidekick, the town’s bag lady no less, had traipsed into his office without knocking first. His admin (...
It took Pueblo a few seconds to take in his surroundings. The first thing he realised was that he felt bruised all over; the second was that his clothes were waterlogged, even more than before, from the quicksand; and the third, was that he had lande...
With no sums to keep his conscience at bay, the black book loomed large, creeping into his line of sight. He scanned the room for something else to do. The harness still needed work. And he'd been meaning to fix that rickety shelf since last month. T...
David’s mouth dripped open slowly. He stood with his heels dug into my carpet, a dashed hope, a broken dream. No amount of money could top the priceless look that gathered on his face like an unmade bed. His eyebrows crumpled and furrowed like dish...
God loves his creatures, and he loves each one the more, the more it shares his own goodness, which is the first and primary object of his love. Therefore he wants the desires of his rational creatures to be fulfilled because they share most perfectl...
God in His mercy had sent messengers to convey His message, to different peoples, in different times. Each prophet came with guidance and miracles that were relevant for his time, and for his people, but the message was the same: That there is only o...
When anyone is going wrong, it is a mistake to warn him not to go further. It is also a mistake to leave him alone. The proper course is to call his attention to something better, and frame our conversation in such a way that he becomes wholly absorb...
Peter Quill: [about Gamora] She betrayed Ronan, he's coming for her. That's when you... [draws his finger across his throat in a cutthroat gesture] Drax the Destroyer: ...Why would I want to put my finger on his throat? Peter Quill: No, that's the sy...
His body was tubby but his arms apparently couldn’t understand that, for they were long and scrawny. From his brow to an inch below his eyes, his nose turned up; from there on, down. His short upper lip slanted sharply toward his tonsils, which had...
Travis Sanchez rubbed a hand over his head as he stepped into an elevator at the Red Stone Security building. His Mohawk was gone and he wore his hair in a buzz cut these days. It was probably his military background, but he always came back to this ...
