If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility ...
Most locals knew who Della Lee was. She waitressed at a greasy spoon called Eat and Run, which was tucked far enough outside the town limits that the ski-crowd tourists didn’t see it. She haunted bars at night. She was probably in her late thirties...
When I was a boy, I went to war searching for glory. I didn't find it. I came here, thinking I'd find glory if I built a ranching empire or a thriving town. Instead I discovered that I didn't even know what glory was, not until you smiled at me for t...
Let’s go to town,” Jo said. “Take me to eat dinner at the hotel.” I sucked in a breath and stared at her for a minute. Here she sat, her hair still wet although neatly braided, wearing an old Kiss sweatshirt, the one with the red mouth and to...
Standing before this building, I learn something about fear. I learn that it is not the idle fantasies of someone who maybe wants something important to happen to him, even if the important thing is horrible. It is not the disgust of seeing a dead st...
Mark, trying his best to distance himself from the cruel and pathetic 21st century, hadn’t listened to the news reports, not even when the dark green jeeps and helicopters showed up in town, men dressed in identical uniforms, just like in school, a...
High School: Oh, man. This is where boys and girls go from tweens to teens and become complicated and cruel. Girls play sick mind games; boys try to pull each other's penises off and throw them in the bushes. If you can, buy the most expensive jeans ...
Some three or four years before this Dr. Sloper had moved his household gods up town, as they say in New York. He had been living ever since his marriage in an edifice of red brick, with granite copings and an enormous fanlight over the door, standin...
I carry my adornments on my soul. I do not dress up like a popinjay; But inwardly, I keep my daintiness. I do not bear with me, by any chance, An insult not yet washed away- a conscience Yellow with unpurged bile- an honor frayed To rags, a set of sc...
When I was a senior in high school, I was playing in this local band in our town, and I really wanted to be a musician for a living, and it didn’t look like that was going to happen with my band. So, I enrolled in college and stuff. My senior year ...
The Howeitat spread out along the cliffs to return the peasants' fire. This manner of going displeased Auda, the old lion, who raged that a mercenary village folk should dare to resist their secular masters, the Abu Tayi. So he jerked his halter, can...
Magnus remembered a town in Peru whose Quechua name meant “quiet place.” He recalled even more vividly being obscenely drunk and unhappy over his heartbreak of that time, and the maudlin thoughts that had recurred to him over the years, like an u...
[Dola comes thundering into Pazu's town on her automobile where her boys are brawling with the citizens] Dola: Full speed ahead! [to Louis and Henri in the distance] Dola: Hey, boys! Louis: Wha - ? Hey, it's Mom! Louis, Henri: [Dola drives up to Lou...
[subtitled version] Lucas: What are you saying? Have you got something to tell me? Agnes: Stop it, Lucas. Lucas: You want to tell me something? Theo: Relax, Lucas. Lucas: The whole town is listening. Tell me! What do you want to say? Agnes: Stop it, ...
Virginia Woolf: I'm dying in this town. Leonard Woolf: If you were thinking clearly, Virginia, you would recall it was London that brought you low. Virginia Woolf: If I were thinking clearly? If I were thinking clearly? Leonard Woolf: We brought you ...
Big Joe: According to this map, we got a river to cross before we get into this town of yours. Kelly: Yeah, well there's a bridge right here, six miles out. Big Joe: There was a bridge. The Air Corps knocked every bridge out of that river months ago....
Headmaster: [Bible reading] Yay, and placed they the bits in little pots. Now two boys have been found rubbing linseed oil into the school cormorant. Now some of you may feel that the cormorant does not play an important part in the life of the schoo...
Annie Wilkes: The swearing, Paul. There, I said it. Paul Sheldon: The, uh, profanity bothers you? Annie Wilkes: It has no nobility. Paul Sheldon: These are slum kids, I was a slum kid. Everybody talks like that. Annie Wilkes: THEY DO NOT! What do you...
Ransom Stoddard: Marshal, I was wrong the other day. But I was reading up on territorial law, and there it is, right there. Now, I'll draw up the complaint, take care of all the legal details - but you *do* have jurisdiction. Says so right there. So ...
[Frank Drebin walks through town] Frank: [narrating] The attempt on Nordberg's life left me shaken and disturbed, and all the questions kept coming up over and over again, like bubbles in a case of club soda. Who was this character in the hospital? A...
Homer: Listen, I'm sorry about what's going on around here, but it isn't my fault! What do you want from me anyway? John: You better watch yourself, Homer. Homer: If I go on to win at Indianapolis, I can go to college, maybe even get a job at Cape Ca...
