One thing, though," Qhuinn murmured. "What?" The voice that came out his throat was unlike anything he'd ever heard from himself before. "If any guy breaks your heart or treats you like shit, I will bust him apart with my bare hands and leave his bro...
For so long, it was just my secret. It burned inside me, and I felt like I was carrying something important, something that made me who I was and made me different from everybody else. I took it with me everywhere, and there was never a moment when I...
I felt I was drawing close to that age, that place in life, where you realize one day what you'd told yourself was a Zen detachment turns out to be naked fear. You'd had one serious love relationship in your life and it had ended in tragedy, and the ...
There will be a time when love is beautiful and passionate and nothing else will exist but you and the person you love, and a time when love hurts so badly that you will wish you wouldn't wake up. I say this. Always, always, always approach love with...
I don’t know. I don’t know, Jess,” he said as a sob shuddered through him. “Because I am a damned fool. Fuck! I have everything I want right in front of me, I love you so damned much I can’t think straight, and then it’s like…I don’t ...
Anger is the only emotion many men allow themselves to express. Growing up, we are taught to avoid anything that is seen as the least bit feminine. We are taught that men 'do' while women 'feel.' We learn to keep all emotions under wraps, to see them...
Look," I said, "We knew Jason and Becky would be back, the break would end. This isn't a surprise, it's what's supposed to happen. It's what we wanted. Right?" "Is it?" he asked. "Is it what you want?" Whether he intended it to be or not, this was th...
Holding his daughter close with one arm, he pointed toward the distant horizon. "As far as you can see—it all belongs to you, Faith. Someday, I'll take you to the top of a windmill and teach you to dream. When you reach for some of those dreams, yo...
It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affe...
Don’t hold back because you’re afraid of hurting someone else. If your best friend wants to be a cheerleader and you make the team but she doesn’t, don’t feel guilty. If you end up earning more than your sister, it’s not a betrayal. Your su...
She felt the glide of his hair as he lowered his head to study the zipper on her skirt. Her imagination supplied other places his hair could touch, and she drew in her breath. He carefully pulled down the zipper, then pulled it back up. After several...
The possibility of pain is inherent in the very existence of a world where souls can meet. When souls become wicked they will certainly use this possibility to hurt one another; and this, perhaps, accounts for four-fifths of the sufferings of men. It...
It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, becau...
Everyone keeps telling me that time heals all wounds, but no one can tell me what I’m supposed to do right now. Right now I can’t sleep. It’s right now that I can’t eat. Right now I still hear his voice and sense his presence even though I kn...
I heard the universe as an oratorio sung by a master choir of stars, accompanied by the orchestra of the planets and the percussion of satellites and moons. The aria they performed was a song to break the heart, full of tragic dissonance and deferred...
You said to your mind, "I want everyone to like me. I don't want anyone to speak badly of me. I want everything I say and do to be acceptable and pleasing to everyone. I don't want anyone to hurt me. I don't want anything to happen that I don't like....
Has he ever trapped you in a room and not let you out? Has he ever raised a fist as if he were going to hit you? Has he ever thrown an object that hit you or nearly did? Has he ever held you down or grabbed you to restrain you? Has he ever shoved, po...
George, who is out somewhere there in the dark, who is good to me - whom I revile, who can keep learning the games we play as quickly as I can change them. Who can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy. And yes, I do wish to be happy. George an...
The idea that women's strong attachments to each other are what make them so vulnerable is horrifying. I count my close friendships with a few girls that I know as one of the best things I have going for me right now. My love for them leaves me open ...
What was the payoff? It obviously kept me in my cozy zone of being in control, being a good mother, with a good daughter. Most of all, I realize, is that it allowed me to maintain the lie that she was healed, that Nick hadn't permanently damaged her,...
[Their marriage] will not be all cakes and ale.... They are too much alike to be the ideal match. Patty is thick-skinned and passionate, too ready to be hurt to the heart by the mere little pinpricks and mosquito bites of life; and Paul is proud and ...
