I don’t know who you think you are” — my mother’s voice was low and dangerous — “but if you don’t get out of my way right this instant, it won’t matter.” Adam was the Alpha werewolf in charge of the local pack. He was tough. He coul...
Some stories consumed you, they made time stop, your worries float into the ether, and when it came to my reading habits I chose romance over any other genre. The appeal of the happy ever after, the winsome heroine being adored for who she was, and t...
It ain't that you get religion. Religion gets you and then milks you dry. Won't let you drink a little whiskey. Won't let you make no fat-assed girls grin and giggle. Won't let you do a damn thing except work for what you'll get in the hearafter. I l...
A robin perched on the branch of the apple tree, his feathers ruffled, his red chest blazing. 'No need to look so down in the mouth,' he chirruped. 'Things'll get worse before they get better.' 'I don't know what it is about that tree,' Geno grumbled...
I feel closer ties and more intimate bonds with certain characters in books, with certain images I’ve seen in engravings, than with many supposedly real people with the metaphysical absurdity known as ‘flesh and blood’. In fact, ‘flesh and bl...
It reached a point where the paranoia was getting to me. Everywhere I looked, it seemed like people were hanging out, wanting to date, hooking up, wanting to hook up—it was relationships, relationships, relationships everywhere. Guys checking out g...
My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, b...
It's easier to make up stories than it is to write them down. When I speak, the words come pouring out of me. The story wakes up and walks all over the room. Sits in a chair, crosses one leg over the other, says, Let me introduce myself. Then just st...
I really loathe [the bumper sticker] 'Proud Parent of a Terrific Kid!' Why not a bumper sticker for the unlucky parents, something like: 'My Fifteen-Year-Old's in Detox and Not Speaking to Any of Us' or 'My Kid Robbed a 7-Eleven and is in a Center fo...
A blanket could be used to say hello to a man who’s not only tone deaf, but also regular deaf. Just wave the blanket up and down, and be advised: If that blanket is red, he’s liable to charge you like a bull. I’d charge you too, if only I had y...
Bricks could be used to promote social progress. If we could amass enough bricks to build a prison big enough to cage every citizen, then everybody would be equal. And I think our current political leadership is savvy enough to see this, and is takin...
But when you love somebody, things don't always go the way you want them to. Sometimes you have to stick through adversity and not give up. You know, I think love can be a test. When it gets difficult, that's when we learn if our love is real, and if...
--she walked into her bathroom, stripped, and entered the shower. The door opened a minute later to expose Riley standing there, beer in hand. Scraping damp strands of red off her face, she glared at him. "I don't remember giving you an invitation." ...
Everyone I have lost in the closing of a door the click of the lock is not forgotten, they do not die but remain within the soft edges of the earth, the ash of house fires and cancer in sin and forgiveness huddled under old blankets dreaming their wa...
Starting over can be the scariest thing in the entire world, whether it’s leaving a lover, a school, a team, a friend or anything else that feels like a core part of our identity but when your gut is telling you that something here isn’t right or...
I walked down Paseo del Prado, losing myself to the sights, sounds, and dense magic of the city. There's something weirdly calming about being alone in a big city. It made me feel like the universe was hugely generous, and that my species was so damn...
Too many of us live with an uncontrolled thought life. It is possible to learn to identify destructive thoughts and make wiser choices. Instead of letting those thoughts rumble freely about in my mind, I make the choice to harness them and direct the...
Launching a turnaround takes courage. I cannot measure that and so it is not going to be included in my analysis, but behind the moments of change there are always a few people within these societies who have decided to try to make a difference.
It is so demanding to be born into a house full of women, where everyone loves you so overwhelmingly that they end up suffocating with their love; a house where you, as the only child, have to be more mature than all the adults around.... But the pro...
I'm a patient man, but I'm not going to wait endlessly." "But...," She stammered. "But what?" "It's so fast." He growled. "When I went slow, you wanted fast. Now I'm going fast, you want slow. Luanne Mayfair, are you trying to drive me crazy on purpo...
It is precisely that requirement of worship that has been the principal source of suffering for individual man and the human race since the beginning of history. In their efforts to impose universal worship, men have unsheathed their swords and kille...
