In school, it got so that Elijah learned to talk his way out of anything, gave great long speeches so that his words snaked themselves like vines around the nuns until they could no longer move, [...].
...and Jack, who felt like he was on the cusp of being able to read minds and thought it would be all right if Luce wrote him down for that. ("I sense that you're okay with that, am I right?" He made a gun out of his fingers and clicked his tongue.)
The moment my bare feet make contact with the wood floor, my breath catches in my throat. Blake swivels his body around to greet me. “Morning, roomie.” His voice is like a shot of caffeine that ignites my body. How does he do that?
Rollie Fingers called. He wants his fingers back. And his mustache. Too bad I sold them to 1969 to buy some free love. Wait, if it was free, why did I buy it? 1969 ripped me off!
You're absolved," I tell him. He brings his eyes back up to mine. There's no fucking way he knows what that word means. That's a word I dream someone will say to me. So I put it in his language. "You're free.
Judas sold his soul for thirty pieces of silver; Faust sold his for some extra years of youth; Marilyn Monroe deserted Jesus Christ for Arthur Miller.
Hey," I said softly and cupped his cheek. "Yeah?" “What about your dream?” His face went dimples. “I’m lookin’ at it, darlin’.” Oh. Crap. My heart felt near bursting. I was absolutely done for. This man owned me, body and soul, and ever...
I'm not broken,' he repeated. 'Although at the moment . . . ' This was what came of violating the sentimentality quota. Everything he kept bottled inside him came out. He shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. 'At the moment,' he muttered ...
I know logically that I can live without him, but loving him has become such an integral, necessary part of my life; I am not sure I could stop, even if we parted.
Musical myths speak with authority about our society, its fragility, its strengths, its desires, and its limits. Music becomes a wise version of the utopian messenger, pleasing us with his account of an ideal land but also warning us, in his tones, o...
Do you have protection?" "Sure do." Durbin flipped up his jacket to reveal the M9 in his shoulder holster. "You people can keep your superstitious mumbo-jumbo. I have all the protection I need.
...God was like the best musician in the world, because he put together all the sounds of nature and gave people like Jimi Hendrix his fingers and John Lennon his brain.
In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.
He swallowed. “Have you no modesty?” Never in his life had he encountered a female so quick to be naked. Of course, he’d never in his life encountered a female who should so utterly be naked at any chance.
A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and th...
Nor did he care about his childhood, for certainly I never heard him speak of it. I once questioned him about his early days and he would not answer. ‘What is the egg to the eagle?’ he asked me…
It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; ...
Christ," he said to the tiny reflection of himself that floated along the surface of his coffee, "You have become quite the maudlin sop, haven't you? Laughing softly, he rubbed a hand over his face. Step one on the road back to sanity, stop talking t...
Sitting in his old schoolroom on the sofa with little cushions on the arms and looking into Natasha's wildly eager eyes, Rostov was carried back into that world of home and childhood which had no meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the grea...
The world as first seen by the child becomes his lifelong standard of excellent, mindless of the fact he is admiring the ruins of his parents.
During this journey it was as if he again thought over his whole life and reached the same old comforting and hopeless conclusion: that there was no need for him to start anything, that he had to live out his life without doing evil, without anxiety,...
