They walked to school, talking about how much they were longing for the summer holidays. "Oh, I am planning things," said Jamie. "Great, great things. I could join a band." "You gave up the guitar after two lessons." "Well," he said, "I could be a ba...
You’re all alone. No one wants you anymore. How long did you think we would all stay? You’ve killed each and every person who ever loved you. Even your children won’t want you. They will see what you have done. You must be the first ward in his...
There is so much beauty in the world that I wonder how we get around to marshalling so much hatred within ourselves. I hope, one day, you will feel the same way seeing this sight of the heavens that I see, that mu forefathers and their forefathers ha...
When I noticed other people, I wondered what it was like to be alive. They did not know, could not know, how I felt inside. My shell still passed for normal. I felt like I should scream for help, someone should help, but I knew that the time for scre...
When you do the math and examine how much energy is produced per atomic union, you find that fusing anything to iron’s twenty-six protons costs energy. That means post-ferric fusion* does an energy-hungry star no good. Iron is the final peal of a s...
The description of Huck’s father grabbed my full attention, and I glanced up at the book in my teacher’s hand as if to double check. My eyes bulged reflexively. Huck’s father was an abusive drunk just like mine. The boy was hopeful that a corps...
In the days when I was ambitious I worked out a very pretty little plan for conquering the whole earth and rearranging things as they ought to be; and when, in the end, everything became so good it almost began to be boring, then I was going to stuff...
That's what I love about people. They have dreams and grand ambitions, and they start building towards them, even though they know they won't live to see them finished. That's how the pyramids were built. And the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages. ...
Then you remember the dream,” Mencheres stated. “That bodes ill.” The fear of that made my reply snappy. “Hey, Walks Like An Egyptian, how about for once you drop the formal stuff and talk like you live in the twenty-first century?” T...
I, myself, searched for Sham-bha-la for eleven years. I am perhaps a little wiser than I was, but it may be I am only lazy and afraid. At any rate, it seems to me a waste of energy to try to learn what is beyond my understanding. I don't even underst...
Hell if I know. I’m twenty-six, single, just signed a year lease on an apartment…” She touched her eyebrows with her fingertips. “Damn, why did I move back here?” “Sorry.” I grimaced. “The job market isn’t as bad as it was. I’d gi...
And along with indifference to space, there was an even more complete indifference to time. "There seems to be plenty of it", was all I would answer when the investigator asked me to say what I felt about time. Plenty of it, but exactly how much was ...
Realizing its fundamental importance in understanding spectral lines, in atomic physics and in the theory of how light and electrons interact, quantum electrodynamics, Pauli and Heisenberg were determined to derive it from quantum theory rather than ...
How miserably hypocritical, you might say, but no sooner am I offered a chance to flee Hell than I yearn to stay. Few families hold their relations as closely as do prisons. Few marriages sustain the high level of passion that exists between criminal...
That's why I bake. To fill fairies with goodness." And it was true, she realized. She didn't run the kitchen just to boss other fairies around. She didn't give orders just to make herself feel important. Well, at least she wouldn't anymore. No. The d...
And the kids?" "Quincy, nothing. All she wants to do is look for Saturn's rings and bring home every creature from the pound. Nelson, though, he's..." She looked at Nicholas. "He's like you. Gifted, but ignorant." Nicholas bristled, "I'm not ignorant...
After Nicholas hung up the phone, he watched his mother carry buckets and garden tools across the couch grass toward a bed that would, come spring, be brightly ablaze as tropical coral with colorful arctotis, impatiens, and petunias. Katherine dug wi...
I do not fear that "future generations will not read novels," etc. It is probably a complete misunderstanding to conceive of serious art in categories of production, market, readers, supply and demand(...)art is not the fabrication of stories for rea...
I have cried even when the laugh did choke me. But no more think that I am all sorry when I cry, for the laugh he come just the same. Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, ‘May I come in?’ is not true laughter. No!...
Sometimes the hardest goodbyes are the ones never said, the ones that always just hang there in the back of the mind like a dark cloud. There's so much to say but no one to say it to because the person you want most to hear it is already gone. That's...
Although love could grow in times of peace, it tempered in battle. Daddy told me once - when I'd said something about how perfect his relationship with Mom was - that I should have seen the first five years of their marriage, that they'd fought like ...
