Sometimes when dogs greeted a returning soldier, they'd go over the edge. They would have to take a few moments to run crazily in circles around the human, or around a room or a yard. I'd have to take a break from watching, so my brain had a chance t...
The use of fashions in thought is to distract men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is in the least danger, and fix its approval on the virtue that is nearest the vice which w...
I let out a laugh that sounded more like the yip of a startled poodle. "Superp-powers? I wish. My powers aren't winning me a slot on the Cartoon Network anytime soon... except as a comic relief. Ghost Whisperer Junior. Or Ghost Screamer, more like it...
Veeva squirmed up and down the length of me, vibrating like a coin operated motel bed. When she stopped kissing my mouth, I said, "It sounds so great, Veeva. Just you and me with our brand new plastic surgery noses, running for our lives, hating each...
Why can’t I do it?” [Isabel] asked…. “Do what?” “Just forget about everything. Just go somewhere and get smashed and pretend like there are no problems or consequences. I know why. Because there are still problems and consequences. And go...
Flight from God always leads downward. It culminates not in the vivacious life we imagined but in what amounts only to stagnant sleep. It's why so many people seem to exist without ever really living. In fact, they really living; they're only going t...
Celeste grabbed his arm. “You see, you are running away from the truth. Why won’t you talk about it?” “Take your hands off me. Now.” She had gone too far. She knew it would be insane to push him further, but she knew with certainty that was...
But the pain, the tearing blackness, the white heat of his uncontrollable fury, the terror that made him run from himself, the sweats and the shakes, and the dull ache in his head, they were all too real. ~~~~ She kissed him to stop the words babblin...
Everyone has a past. I have mine, you have yours, and we have ours. No matter what it takes, I will prove to you that our past, no matter how hurtful, didn't ruin the future we could have. Only we can either make that happen or run from it. It's our ...
Also, Willie, I dig telling the truth. Words can be twisted but a photo never lies. Sutton laughs. What’s funny? Photographer says. Nothing. Except—that’s pure horseshit kid. I can’t think of anything that lies more than a photo. In fact ever...
You can, for just a moment, fuse grief like a bone, but the memory of the ability to bend lingers inside, like an itch running in the blood, just beneath the skin: relief is always only temporary. Grief, we understood, would now hijack a part of our ...
Whether people need nature or not, it was clear that nature needed people. But perhaps nature needs us like a hostage needs her captors: nature needs us not to annihilate her, not to run her over, not to cover her with cement, not to chop her down. W...
Sometimes when you have a wild dream [massive vision]people intend to run away from you but is not that they hate you or jealous of you. Simply they can't see what you see, they can't hear what you hear and they don't know what you know. The best thi...
Aaron was beside himself grabbing his keys and running out of his office leaving everyone staring at him. He heard Becca call his name but he didn't have the time, Nia needed him and he had to go now! He felt like he was suffocating as he started the...
I'm sitting in the bleachers, watching longingly as all the boys and umbumped girls in my Personal Health and Fitness class play Muggle Quidditch. I don't even like the game very much, I think it's silly, but I so miss physical activity that I'd be t...
Lacking a clear formula for making decisions, we get reactive and fall back on familiar, comfortable ways to decide what to do. Pinballing through our day like a confused character in a B-horror movie, we end up running up the stairs instead of out t...
In the dry places, men begin to dream, wrote Wright Morris, who grew up north of here, in Nebraska. Where rivers run sand, something in man begins to flow. I thought I knew exactly what he meant. The sandy beds of dry creeks unfurl evocatively into t...
The fish is my friend too...I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars. Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon, he thought. The moon runs away. But imagine if a man e...
Sometimes there are things we don't understand even about ourselves. Sometimes we run out of the time to keep trying to unravel them, and we have to sit back and content ourselves with a shrug. But I think there are some things that we'd never unders...
I had learned that a dexterous, opposable thumb stood among the hallmarks of human success. We had maintained, even exaggerated, this important flexibility of our primate forebears, while most mammals had sacrificed it in specializing their digits. C...
Once upon a time, the Reindeer took a running leap and jumped over the Northern Lights. But he jumped too low, and the long fur of his beautiful flowing tail got singed by the rainbow fires of the aurora. To this day the reindeer has no tail to speak...
