I know it's late, but could you find a book for me? It's called The Slavs: Study of Pagan Tradition by Osvintsev." Barabas sighed dramatically. "Kate, you make me despair. Let's try that again from the top, except this time pretend you are an alpha."...
You be happy, Elizabeth. Just be happy. If you go and feel sorry for yourself, or if you dwell on what has happened, if you hold on to your pain, that is allowing him to steal more of your life away. So don't you do that! Don't you let him! There is ...
Ky gives me three gifts for my birthday. A poem, a kiss and the hopeless, beautiful belief that things might work. When I open my eyes... I say, "I didn't give you anything for your birthday, i don't even know when it is." And he says, "Don't worry a...
That one,” Ferox said, pointing at Johann with a claw. “I can see he’s communicated like that before and I think I can speak to his mind. Let me see.” After a moment, Johann broke from the line and approached the dragon. “You did ask me to ...
Outside the rain began to pour in sheets, and the wind howled . Giant pieces of hail began to pelt the building— banging off the skylights so hard that Simpson worried the glass might shatter. Then, as it had earlier in the day, the wind briefly le...
No time spent with a book is ever entirely wasted, even if the experience is not a happy one: there’s always something to be learned. It’s just that, every now and again, you hit a patch of reading that makes you feel as if you’re pootling abou...
Tell me a truth, Senna." "I don't know how," I breath. "Then tell me a lie." "I don't love you," I say. I sink beneath the weight of it all. Isaac stirs behind me, and then he is leaning over me, his elbows on either side of my head. "The truth is fo...
By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, but music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not mo...
If art made you think, then this was Art. Staring at the ball, made of layers and layers of cloth, I wondered about the glass marble at its heart. What if you wanted to reach that marble? Make sure it was still whole? You'd have to remove the layers....
It was true. After our divorce, I'd ended up in a slight relationship with my last research assistant, Aurelia Feinstein, age 34-though let me state for the record it was not as hot as it sounded. Making love to Aurelia was like rummaging through a c...
Let us then understand at once that change or variety is as much a necessity to the human heart and brain in buildings as in books; that there is no merit, though there is some occasional use, in monotony; and that we must no more expect to derive ei...
I didn't let her go. She went. It's not my fault. She did it. She could undo it. This is feeling so fucking famliar. Why do we even bother? Why do we make ourselves so open to such easy damage? Is it all loneliness? Is it all fear? Of is it just to e...
We stopped to browse in the cases, and now that William - with his new glasses on his nose - could linger and read the books, at every title he discovered he let out exclamations of happiness, either because he knew the work, or because he had been s...
To the people who love you, you are beautiful already. This is not because they’re blind to your shortcomings but because they so clearly see your soul. Your shortcomings then dim by comparison. The people who care about you are willing to let you ...
Parker fixated on the envelope's precise penmanship as she lifted it. Her grandmother rarely took the time to write her own name in the return address, let alone give it the aesthetic attention that this one so seemed to demand. Once, when Parker que...
Doing risk sport had taught me another important lesson: never exceed your limits. You push the envelope and you live for those moments when you’re right on the edge, but you don’t go over. You have to be true to yourself; you have to know your s...
Because that’s the thing about depression. When I feel it deeply, I don’t to let it go. It becomes a comfort. I want to cloak myself under its heavy weight and breathe it into my lungs. I want to nurture it, grow it, cultivate it. It’s mine. I ...
Let's tell the truth to people. When people ask, 'How are you?' have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know, however, that people will start avaoiding you because, they, too, have knees that pain them and heads that hurt and they don...
Prayer is such an intimate act, a place of vulnerability. It is, hopefully, when we are our least guarded, our most honest selves. And this is good, of course; this is as it ought to be. When we come to God, we certainly want to come as honestly and ...
A four-year-old has so little past, and he remembers almost none of it, neither the father he once had nor the house where he once lived. But he can feel the absences – and feel them as sensation, like a texture that was once at his fingers every d...
She let her mind drift, thinking about new lingerie designs, wishing she'd brought along her sketchpad. Inspiration could strike at the most inconvenient times--in the shower, in the car, on this road--but she was grateful it was with her again, an o...
