I had begun to see a new map of the world, one that was frightening in its simplicity, suffocating in its implications. We were always playing on the white man's court, Ray had told me, by the white man's rules. If the principal, or the coach, or a t...
After all, we were young. We were fourteen and fifteen, scornful of childhood, remote from the world of stern and ludicrous adults. We were bored, we were restless, we longed to be seized by any whim or passion and follow it to the farthest reaches o...
I want to introduce the world to my princess.’ In a state of disbelief, Izzy took his hand and they walked back towards the stage. Happiness bubbled up inside her as it slowly dawned on her that this was real. She lifted her face to look at him. �...
He was quite a Casanova, no doubt about it. He was in a very good mood today and stopped longer than usual. The girls could see he was gloriously drunk. ’Well, Ragna, why do you think I come here so often?’ asked Rolandsen. ’I’ve no idea,’ ...
I'm a religious man," he said. "I don't believe in a particular God, but even so one can have a faith, something beyond the limits of rationality. Marxism has a large element of built-in faith, although it claims to be a science and not merely an ide...
Do you hear that?” he says. “You mean the crashing thunder and pounding rain?” He shakes his head. I listen closely, trying to filter o ut the sounds of the storm. Then I hear it. A whooshing sound with a fast buzzing underne ath it. It’s so,...
Luck I get,” she said when they’d sat in silence once more. “But why brave?” He shifted in his seat then sat forward, his gaze piercing through her. “Because, Natalia, love is a risk. Love from the depths of your soul requires a certain amo...
So, Mr. Digence, home to visit the family?" "That's right. My mother's folks are from Killarney." "Oh, really?" "O'Reilly, actually. But what's a vowel between friends?" "Very good. You should be on the stage." "It's funny you should mention that." T...
He felt so tired, so weary of holding on with an iron grip to something he knew was slipping away. “You can’t make someone love you,” he said. Her hand stilled for a moment, the dirty tissue between her fingers. “True.” “Even if you love ...
For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but t...
Her learning to sew (from a book Yankel brought back from Lvov) coincided with her refusal to wear any clothes that she did not make for herself, and when he bought her a book about animal physiology, she held the pictures to his face and said, "Don�...
There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under my jurisdiction. There are certain lottery tickets I can buy, thereby increasing my odds of finding contentment. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact wi...
The most striking impression was that of an overwhelming bright light. I had seen under similar conditions the explosion of a large amount—100 tons—of normal explosives in the April test, and I was flabbergasted by the new spectacle. We saw the w...
Everything depends on what is being enacted. Enactment itself, since it is almost synonymous with ceremony, is, as we have seen, part of the very fabric of our human life. We do enact things. We will enact things. No on can stop us from enacting thin...
Money, dished out in quantities fitting the context, is a social lubricant here. It eases passage even as it maintains hierarchies. Fifty naira for the man who helps you back out from the parking spot, two hundred naira for the police officer who sto...
My father,' I replied, 'I am fond of action. I like to succour the afflicted, and make people happy. Command that there be built for me a tower, from whose top I can see the whole earth, and thus discover the places where my help would be of most ava...
If someone had told Allie that she would commit a premeditated act of murder, she would not have believed it. She would have spouted off all the reasons how she could never be capable of such a thing—that no matter how dire the circumstances, she w...
You can overcome the things that are done to you, but you cannot escape the things that you have done. Here is the truth: It matters, what you do at war. It matters more than you ever want to know. Because countries, like people, have collective cons...
Last night I thought about all that kerosene I've used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put t...
Cathy, don't look so defeated. She was only trying to put us down again. Maybe nothing did work out right for her, but that doesn't mean we are doomed. Let's go forth tomorrow with no great expectations of finding perfection. Then, expecting only a s...
Samuel Vimes dreamed about Clues. He had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They got in the way. And he distrusted the kind of person who’d take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, “Ah, my...
