A smaller rocket cut across the sky, trailing smoke. It exploded in a red heart. "Awwwww!" said the crowd. "Upside down," said Sean. The heart was, indeed, upside down. It grew and grew, upside down, until it's lights trailed and faded. A bigger rock...
But in the military you don't get trusted positions just because of your ability. You also have to attract the notice of superior officers. You have to be liked. You have to fit in with the system. You have to look like what the officers above you th...
Let me tell you something you haven’t learned yet, something you learn only by living awhile. As you get older, you find that life begins to wear you down. Doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, it happens. Experience, time, events—they all...
Hi, Nikki," Gavin said. Ariel didn't even bother looking up from Gavin's neck. "Hey, Gavin," I said. "I thought that latest STD test came back positive? Ariel's head shot up. Good, I had her attention. I kept my eyes on Gavin. "I'm happy to be wrong ...
Generally ‘training’ went something akin to this: “So what you have to do is—“ “Understand?” Sin stared at the man blankly before raising his own weapon and unloading his entire clip into the paper target. He didn’t speak and didn’t...
The books are to remind us what asses and fool we are. They're Caeser's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, "Remember, Caeser, thou art mortal." Most of us can't rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of t...
You don’t get to tell me how you think I’m going to feel or assume what I’m going to do. If you don’t want to tell me this secret of yours, then by all means, don’t tell me. I will never force you to do something that you don’t want to do...
Meditation,” said his teacher, “hasn’t got a damn thing to do with anything, ‘cause all it has to do with is nothing. Nothingness. Okay? It doesn’t develop the mind, it dissolves the mind. Self-improvement? Forget it, baby. It erases the se...
I have a scar-a faint gouge in my knee from when I fell down on the sidewalk as a child. It's always seemed stupid to me that none of the pain I've experienced has left a visible mark; sometimes, without a way to prove it to myself. I began to doubt ...
For a Catholic understanding of the faith there is no reason why the basic concern of Evangelical Christianity as it comes to expression in the three “only's” should have no place in the Catholic Church. Accepted as basic and ultimate formulas of...
Then why was his tongue in your mouth? Was he conducting a clinical test of your gag reflex?" He smiled, but not nicely. "How is your gag reflex, Ms. Lane? Are you a hair trigger?" Barrons likes to use sexual innuendo to try to shut me up. I think he...
The gospel is absurd and the life of Jesus is meaningless unless we believe that He lived, died, and rose again with but one purpose in mind: to make brand-new creation. Not to make people with better morals but to create a community of prophets and ...
So, Zoe told me today that—” “Wait. Are you going to talk like that?” I glanced down and realized he was referring to the fact that my shirt was sitting on the floor beside me. “My bra’s still on. What’s the problem?” “The problem i...
...the years have taught me not to wonder too much at the dark things men do. Strange how it is that men never act crueller than when they're fighting for the sake of an idea. We've been killing since Cain over who stands closer to god. It seems to m...
You don’t have any friends, your sister dumped you, you’re a freak eater..and you’ve got some weird thing about Simon Snow." "I object to every single thing you just said." Reagan chewed. And frowned. She was wearing dark red lipstick. "I have ...
Enmerson's interest is in the workshop phase, the birthing stage of art, not the museum moment, the embalming phase. Poetry mimics Creation and is therefore sacred. More precisely, just as God may indeed be a verb (as Mary Daly insists), poetry is th...
[you’ll acquire] A certain amount of cynicism. This business works on you. When you were in law school you had some noble idea what a lawyer should be. A champion of individual rights; a defender of the Constitution; a guardian of the oppressed; an...
Sweat isn't a bad thing," he said, leaning his head against the wall thoughtfully. "Some of the best things in life happen while your sweating. Yeah, if you get too much of it and it gets old and stale, it turns pretty gross. But on a beautiful women...
There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or ...
I nodded. I liked Augustus Waters. I really, really, really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked his voice. I liked that he took existentially fraught free throws. I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Depart...
Well, Arminius, I can’t say you’re the most natural horseman I’ve ever seen.’ Arminius sneered down at the men standing around him, then leaned out of the saddle and put a sausage sized finger in Double-Pay Silus’s face. ‘Just so we’re ...
