He tousled Baby's hair, then looked up at Tiger Lily. "The woods have rules." He put Baby down gingerly in his trough with his bottle. "But the rules are ugly." "It's nature," she said, thoughtfully. "I have a lot of disagreements with nature," he sa...
...Elizabeth's doze had deepened into real sleep. Once she might have been young and beautiful. Once she might have been some young man's dream baby. Now she was snoring with her mostly toothless mouth pointed at the ceiling. If there's a God, I thin...
Everyone wants to know why customer service has gone to hell in a handbasket. I want to know why customer behavior has gone to hell in a handbasket.
Two weeks until your cure" she says finally. "Sixteen days" I say, but in my head I'm counting: Seven days. Seven days until I'm free and away from all these people and their sliding superficial lives brushing past one another gliding, gliding, glidi...
She pressed his amulet to her lips, then let it fall on its chain to rest between their two bodies. “We could leave here,” she said to him. “We could run away together.” He frowned at the stars, the bubble of peacefulness that had settled aro...
She had golden blazing sun kissed hair, which hung down in loose, lazy spirals, a heart shaped pouted mouth, which was pink tinged with violet blushing, wide, spangled blue eyes that glimmered sparks to flicker and ember in the vivid intelligence of ...
I had a dream about you. We were playing table tennis, which angered my family because they were trying to enjoy their Thanksgiving dinner on it. They thought we were selfish, and we thought they were two months too early. Seriously, Thanksgiving is ...
Francesca took a navy blue sheath from a hanger and held it up. "This is darling, Gabriel. Don't you love it? You're right, I think we need to concentrate on much more feminine articles of clothing." He reached around her and fingered the soft materi...
Lord, help us root our feet to the earth And our eyes to the road And always remember the fallen angels Who, attempting to soar, Were seared instead by the sun and, wings melting, Came crashing back to the sea. Lord, help root my eyes to the earth An...
Lethargy. It's a word I know, because it's in one of my father's favorite expressions. Lethargy breeds lethargy. It means the more you lie around doing nothing, the more you want to lie around doing nothing. Your limbs and your mind feel so heavy tha...
I tell you, say the rich, the poor are naught but dirty wind welling in air-shafts over the cinders and droppings of the past, their voices thick with grease and ordure, sewer-greed to corrode the ear with the horrors of the past and the voids of new...
I should not be surprised," said Mr. Graham, "that the day should come when men will refuse to believe in God simply on the ground of the apparent injustice of things. They would argue that there might be either an omnipotent being who did not care, ...
I think it was love at first sight for both of us; it just took us a little while to figure it out. That was understandable, considering we were being stuck with needles, shot through with radioactive particles, possibly poisoned by the horrific subs...
I was raised thinking that moral and ethical standards are universals that apply equally to everyone. And these values aren't easily compatible with the kind of religion that posits a Creator. To my way of thinking, an omnipotent being who sets up a ...
Over the years I have forged intimate familial ties with these characters, who are reflections of a portion of myself. Consequently, even a character who appeared only once in a short story waits now in the wings, concealed by the curtain, for his ne...
Technically,' I said, "I'm not breaking any of the Laws of Magic. I'm not robbing you of your will, so I'm clear of the Fourth Law. And you didn't get loose, so I'm clear of the Seventh Law. The Council can bite me.' The bone ridges above Chauncy's e...
Jesus, you never fail to surprise me, baby.” He’s supporting the heavy bike, and us, with his strong legs braced on either side. He reaches between us and rips my yoga pants at the seam of my crotch. Holy fucking shit! My panties are next, and be...
Vengeance and forgiveness are about reconciling the accounts, but accounting is an ugly description of the tangled ways we're connected. I sometimes think everything comes out even in the end, but an end that arches beyond the horizon, beyond our cap...
The best literature is always a take [in the musical sense]; there is an implicit risk in its execution, a margin of danger that is the pleasure of the flight, of the love, carrying with it a tangible loss but also a total engagement that, on another...
For the first time, there’s no barrier between us and we make eye contact. All of a sudden, I feel like the character in Raiders of the Lost Ark—the one who watches in horror as the wispy, beautiful angels floating from the Ark of the Covenant mo...
If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.
