My Uncle Malky always said the Lord Leto never responded to prayer. He said the Lord Leto looked on prayer as attempted coercion, a form of violence against the chosen god, telling the immortal what to do: Give me a miracle, God, or I won't believe i...
I do know the sorrow of being ordinary, and that much of our life is spent doing the crazy mental arithmetic of how, at any given moment, we might improve, or at least disguise or present our defects and screw-ups in either more charming or more inti...
I suppose the best way to tell the story is simply to narrate it, without an effort to carry belief. The thing did not require belief. It was not a feeling of horror in one's bones, or a misty outline, or anything that needed to be given actuality by...
Soul mates. They really call themselves that, which makes sense, because I guess they are ... They have no harsh edges with each other, no spiny conflicts, they ride though life like conjoined jellyfish - expanding and contracting instinctively, fill...
The question I've asked more often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. I supposed these questions stormcloud over every marriage: What are you thinking how are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to ea...
Elphaba concentrated on the first Oompa-Loompa on the left. “ !” A bolt of lightning seemed to come from everywhere and zapped the poor Dymon, who popped like a kernel of popcorn and let out a squeal. “Did I hurt it?” But she didn’t need an...
Only later did I come to understand that to be a mother is to be an illusion. No matter how vigilant, in the end a mother can't protect her child - not from pain, or horror, or the nightmare of violence, from sealed trains moving rapidly in the wrong...
Of all human activities, writing is the one for which it is easiest to find excuses not to begin – the desk’s too big, the desk’s too small, there’s too much noise, there’s too much quiet, it’s too hot, too cold, too early, too late. I ha...
It doesn't matter," said Persephone. "He [Henry] wasn't supposed to do that. While I ruled with him, we only made a few exceptions, and even then there were so many caveats that no one ever really made it back to the surface. He violated everything h...
I later discovered that in order to be a good athlete one must care intensely what is happening with a ball, even if one doesn't have possession of it. This was ultimately my failure: my inability to work up a passion for the location of balls.
Then I saw her smile so close to my eye that there was nothing to see but the smile and the thought came into my head that I’d never been inside a smile before. Who’d have thought being inside a smile would be so ancient and so modern both at onc...
I closed my eyes, adding dark to dark, and the wanting unfurled like the sails of a phantom ship. This could be my universe. This nowhere world, circumscribed by skin and breath, where nothing mattered but two bodies moving together. The past and the...
Wendy is still dead. I hadn't understood before: it really doesn't bring them back. Somehow, you think, despite what you know, it will be a trade. Find the person who did the wrong thing and they will suffer instead of the one who was killed. Instead...
The way my tia looks at Raul is the way I look at Martin. He makes her happy and helps her see that she is stronger than she thought she was. It's not that he makes her stronger, but he definitely helps her see that she has been strong all along.
It does not pay away a penny from you to say "am sorry", "I won't do that again"! It does not take away your integrity to appreciate the very little that you have obtained from someone, even if it's not much! True humility speaks "little is enough if...
It's been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such messa...
I guess we all feel we're in control and we are, until we're not. The problem is that seldom can we tell when it is that we step over the precipice of no return - and then for most of us it is to late.
Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?" "Well […] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel." "And...
It bothered me that he was right. Without Sir Stuart's intervention, I'd have been dead again already. That's right--you heard me: dead again already. I mean, come on. How screwed up is your life (after- or otherwise) when you find yourself needing p...
Don’t you want to get well? Come on, Portia, this won’t be forever, mate: Dad’s confident, everyone’s behind you. Remember,’ I gave her an encouraging punch on the arm, ‘you’ll never walk alone, even if you are an Evertonian.’ She bur...
Epic sex?" I sputtered. "By what standards, precisely, is sex judged to be epic?" "And tons and tons of mortal simps like you used as pawns." Bob sighed happily, ignoring my question. "There are no words. It was like the Lord of the Rings and All My ...
