I would think of certain winter nights when he wedged himself between Nona and me in bed, a furtive warmth embedded in his skin already tinctured with virginal earth and milk and possibility, or how that peculiar scent common to all small children be...
Grimes believed in what he did, with no doubts. Though he was older than me by over a decade, I suddenly felt old. Some things mark your soul, not in years but in blood and pain and selling off parts of yourself to get the bad guys, until you finally...
Okay, time to get serious. I let my smile fade slowly and lowered my pitch, as no human woman could have. “I’m not joking this time. If I see it, it’s mine, and you won’t get it back at the end of the school year.” I growled, deep and long,...
Don't think I know you," Harold said, grinning, as they shook. He had a firm grip. Larry's hand was pumped up and down exactly three times and let go. It reminded Larry of the time he had shaken hands with George Bush back when the old bushwhacker ha...
Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outc...
A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full or wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adul...
... was the great and general renunciation which old age makes in preparation for death, the chrysalis stage of life, which may be observed wherever life has been unduly prolonged; even in old lovers who have lived for one another with the utmost int...
If you feel like a nearly-drowned rat that’s been dragged through the mud, all twisted up inside your mother’s borrowed, prized quilt, having been tossed about by gale force winds that managed to entangle you in barbed wire one-thousand miles fro...
When I reach out, you take my hand. When I smile, you mirror the expression. When I triumph, you glory as if it were your own. When I fail, you point to the light at the end. When I need, you tenderly provide. When I cry, you kiss away my tears. Wh...
There are people who are never content, never appeased, forever dissatisfied—who continually look to what escapes them, convincing themselves that if only they could attain that one desire outside of reach they would be happy. It seems almost poi...
Perhaps, if you weren't so busy regarding my shortcomings, you'd find that I do possess redeeming qualities, discreet as they may be. I notice when the sky is blue. I smile down at children. I laugh at any innocent attempt at humor. I quietly...
" "Oh, man in the moon, send an evening star to wink at my dreary eyes, and I shall make a wish for a peaceful world that spins with no more lies. Oh, man in the moon, send the night's cool breeze to lull my leery heart, and I shall cast my fears to ...
I am in love with this world... I have tilled its soil, I have gathered its harvest, I have waited upon its seasons, and always have I reaped what I have sown. I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, ...
Time and again the sun sets like a bedimming curtain before my eyes, taking with it all illumination, warmth, and color. I am overwhelmed by night and the monsters that lurk in shadows of despair. But alas, stars twinkle from afar, shedding the t...
There are so many charlatans in the world of education. They teach for a couple of years, come up with a few clever slogans, build their websites, and hit the lecture circuit. In this fast-food-society, simple solutions to complex problems are embrac...
The scientific creation story has majesty, power and beauty. and is infused with a powerful message capable of lifting our spirits in a way that its multitudinous supernatural counterparts are incapable of matching. It teaches us that we are the prod...
For it would be only for a time. Until what he knew and thought became no longer relevant or necessary and was forgotten. But that was the same with all of us. We were only what we were for a time, at that time. Then our own silver began to mix with ...
We'd start slow, the way we always did, because the run, and the game, could go on for awhile. Maybe even forever. That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was reall...
To take a specific example, a researcher in the Journal of Traumatic Stress interviewed 129 women with documented histories of child sexual abuse that occurred between the ages of 10 months and 12 years. Of those, 38 percent had forgotten the abuse. ...
For almost a generation, psychologists around the world have been engaged in a spirited debate over a question that most of us would consider to have been settled years ago. The question is this: is there such a thing as innate talent? The obvious an...
After visiting these two places (Berchtesgaden and the Eagle's lair on Obersalzberg) you can easily see how that within a few years Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived. He ha...