I could picture how Caprice was before we lost her. Dark hair, beautiful smile, intelligent hazel eyes, quick wit. Now gone. Just gone. Like a chessboard where suddenly one of the knights disappeared. A blank spot on the board of life that could neve...
He just wanted to stop thinking. It was easier that way. The numbness hadn't left him; if anything it was spreading. When he looked at the pictures, there was no emotion, even though he knew there should be. He should be sad. But he wasn't. He felt n...
They wouldn't understand, and I don't feel the need to explain, simply because I know in my heart how real it was. When I think of you, I can't help smiling, knowing that you've completed me somehow. I love you, not just for now, but for always, and ...
Why do you stay with me?" he whispered. He wished he hadn't said it once the words were out of of his mouth, wished he could pull them back, but Laurie didn't seem fazed at all. In fact, he just smiled a crooked smile and kissed him again. "Because I...
They told me that nothing was a sin, just a poor life choice. Poor impulse control. That nothing is evil. Any concept of right versus wrong, according to them, is merely a cultural construct relative to one specific time and place. They said that if ...
Must be weird for you, having your mom here." "Weird for me, weird for her, probably weird for you since you had to give up your swinging bachelor pad." "Mrs. Casnoff let me install my heart-shaped Jacuzzi in my new dorm room." "Cal," I said with moc...
I knew this id who very bravely and bossily came out of the closet when she was only fourteen years old. She told me then that we can't choose who we love. We just love the people we love, no matter what anyone else might want for you.
A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel... he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men... a good ruler has to learn his world's language... it's different for every world... the language of the rocks and growing things... th...
It often seems to me that's all detective work is, wiping out your false starts and beginning again." Yes, it is very true, that. And it is just what some people will not do. They conceive a certain theory, and everything has to fit into that theory....
Each person has to face this challenge – you must search inside yourself. The props – surroundings, interactions, rituals, customs and superstitions – are just palliatives. You have to achieve your balance on your own; it has to come from the s...
The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realise about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, flowing from point to point...
, I heard my aunt Diane boom in my head. Those words had been the bane of my childhood, a constant reminder that nothing turned out right, not just for me but for anyone, and that's why someone had invented a saying like that. So we'd all know that w...
The dominant culture eats entire biomes. No, that is too generous, because eating implies a natural biological relationship. This culture doesn't just consume ecosystems, it obliterates them, it murders them, one after another. This culture is an eco...
Court games aren't fair. They don't judge men by their worth, and they aren't about what's just. Guilty men can hold power their whole lives and be wept for when they pass. Innocent men can be spent like coins because it's convenient. You don't have ...
In all memory there is a degree of fallenness; we are all exiles from our own pasts, just as, on looking up from a book, we discover anew our banishment from the bright worlds of imagination and fantasy. A cross-channel ferry, with its overfilled ash...
The secret weapon is cucumber.' Solange sat all the way up. 'Jasmine, cover your ears.' MaryAnn, Juliette and Jasmine burst out laughing. 'Sheesh, Solange. Get your mind out of the gutter.' 'MY mind is just fine, thank you. It's MaryAnn's I'm concern...
Libby wasn't a big talker - Michelle and Debby seemed to hog all her words. She made pronouncements: I like ponies. I hate spaghetti. I hate you. Like her mother, she had no poker face. No poker mood. It was all right there. When she wasn't angry or ...
There were so many places in my time with Rogerson that I wished I could go back to, hitting the stop button at just one moment to stop everything that came after. I had so many If Onlys, but each place I thought to stop meant missing something that ...
That room was Rolandsen’s world. Rolandsen was not just irresponsibility and inebriation, he was also great thinker and inventor. There was a smell of acids that permeated the corridor and came to the notice of every visitor. Rolandsen made no secr...
I say this to myself alone: when you feel crushed, those around you look broken. When you glow, darkness turns to black light. If you hurt, even the comforts you are offered wound you. As you prosper, your failures prove to be just the right thing, p...
If I am not master of my life, not sultan of my own being, then no man's logic and no man's ecstatic fits may force me to find less silly my impossibly silly position: that of God's slave; no, not his slave even, but just a match which is aimlessly s...
