But you're absolutely sure we're right?' The question carried an intensity absent from the previous conversation. 'I remember talking with Henry Kissinger,' she continued, 'and he came up and said 'What's the matter, don't you think we're going to be...
A black boy brought Wilson's gin and he sipped it very slowly because he had nothing else to do except to return to his hot and squalid room and read a novel - or a poem. Wilson liked poetry, but he absorbed it secretly, like a drug. The Golden Treas...
I wish I knew why she never told me any of this. Maybe she thought I wouldn't be able to handle it, that I was too sheltered or too innocent or something. If she had told me why she cut herself all the time, or that it was the pills that made her act...
Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. By most astounding stroke of luck and infinitesimal porti...
Charlotte: "It’s too bad they don’t give out diplomas for what you learn at the mall, because I could graduate with honors in that subject. No really. Since I’ve worked there, I’ve become an expert on all things shopping-related. For example,...
It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible—in short, an absolute woman-hater—had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen—nay, let us b...
Like most people I am smarter than some, dumber than others, skinnier than most, and fatter than a few, but none was ever more confused than I was. I flew with confusion always parallel to me, and a whole internal chase at my rear. The one matter tha...
We got talking about how some people were selfish and some weren’t, and the difference between right-wing people and left-wing people. You said it all came down to imagination. Conversative people don’t usually have very much, so they find it har...
Listen to Your Lover (Or Babe, Sweetie Cakes, Hot Rod, Honey, Dancing Queen, Dairy Queen, etc.) If she tells you she likes it when you bite her neck—do it! It doesn’t matter where she learned that she likes it or why she does, just be thankful yo...
For two nights Félicité never left the dead girl. She said the same prayers over and over again, sprinkled holy water on the sheets, then sat down again to watch. At the end of her first vigil, she noticed that the child's face had gone yellow, the...
I'm going to go out on a limb here. I've thought a lot about this one, as a feminist, and as an author. How traditional roles be portrayed? In fantasy literature there is a school of thought that holds that women must be treated precisely like men. O...
How did Ixtel become real for me? The world is full of Ixtels who I can help without hurting my father. Why this one? How was it her suffering that touched me? Father. I feel connected to her through my father's actions. I feel an obligation to right...
The odor of burning sulphur shifted on the night air, acrid, a little foul. Somewhere, the Canaan dwellers had learned of a supplier of castor - an extract from the beaver's perineal glands. Little packets containing the brown-orange mass of dried an...
If you really believed that you'd lost your soul, then when I found you in Volterra, you would have realized immediately what was happening, instead of thinking we were both dead together. But you didn't―you said ' ,'" I reminded him, triumphant. "...
For, I think, when I woke up today, with a dream of yesterday still in my eyes,I felt tired in life. And thinking of the little blond girl of Mays & Junes long gone by,I felt strange looking on a field of wheat, and I thought, in a moment I was God a...
And in front of it all are the pearly gates: the proverbial entrance to Heaven that she, in earthly life, thought might not exist. But they are real, not myth or fantasy. As she passes through them, several people greet her. In foreign tongues even, ...
The thing about real life is, when you do something stupid, it normally costs you. In books the heroes can make as many mistakes as they like. It doesn't matter what they do, because everything works out in the end. They'll beat the bad guys and put ...
We sat like that for a long time, until a discrete knock at the half-open door broke us apart. Lissa stood in the doorway. "Sorry," she said, her face shining with joy when she saw me. "Should have put a sock on the door. Didn't realize that things w...
In a matter of a moment the amount of sand in the upper part of the hour-glass had dwindled dramatically, the tiny grains were rushing through the opening, each grain more eager to leave then the last, time is just like people, sometimes it’s all i...
Up and down," Meera would sigh sometimes as they walked, "then down and up. Then up and down again. I hate these stupid mountains of yours, Prince Bran." "Yesterday you said you loved them." "Oh, I do. My lord father told me about mountains, but I ne...
Everyone asks me how I got started into writing. I wish I had some cool story to tell, but the truth is pretty lame. My wife and I were having a drink on our back porch and I mentioned a concept I'd been mulling over. She suggested that I write it do...
