I learned that what happened to me did not have to define who I was. My past could not control my future unless I allowed it to.
[T]he Christian is unable to sin and not care ... They may sin, but they cannot do so comfortably and continually. They are very much aware of their wrong actions, and they are very miserable.
If you want to give the devil a nervous breakdown, just get up every day and see how much good you can do.
To be sure, it was not Easter Sunday but Holy Saturday, but, the more I reflect on it, the more this seems to be fitting for the nature of our human life: we are still awaiting Easter; we are not yet standing in the full light but walking toward it f...
There is certainly a universal and unconscious propensity to impose a rhythm even when one hears a series of identical sounds at constant intervals... We tend to hear the sound of a digital clock, for example, as "tick-tock, tick-tock" - even though ...
Im's offspring stare at stars and make clocks that calculate useless happenings like the angle of a hawk's claws as it strikes its prey. They demonstrate their contraptions and everyone marvels. My children get drunk, confuse a herd of cows with an e...
What if, you know—what if hanging out with Griffo Gerritszoon wasn’t always that great? What if he was weird and dreamy? What if the best part of him was the shapes he could make with metal? That part of him really is immortal. It’s as immortal...
So I guess you could say Neel owes me a few favors, except that so many favors have passed between us now that they are no longer distinguishable as individual acts, just a bright haze of loyalty. Our friendship is a nebula. (p.34)
It took a qualified wizard to detect a summoning in progress. It required only a half-literate idiot with a twitch of power and a dim idea of how to use it to attempt one. Before you knew it, a three-headed Slavonic god was wreaking havoc in downtown...
Not only will you sleep with me, but you will say 'please.'" I stared at him, shocked. The smile widened. "You will say 'please' before and 'thank you' after." Nervous laughter bubbled up. "You've gone insane. All that peroxide in your hair finally d...
You know," she said, stirring her tea, "the fastest way to get him off your back is to sleep with him. And tell him you love him. Preferably while in bed." I smirked and the tea almost came out of my nose. "He'd run like he was on fire.
I know a man who is in love with my friend. He loves her absolutely. The only thing he wants in return is for her to love him.” Saiman arched his eyebrows, imitating me. “And?” "You’re the exact opposite of him. You lack the capacity to love,...
I could write an epic poem about your thighs.” “That would amuse polite society rather too much, and I wouldn’t like that.” “I wouldn’t either.” She pressed her cheek to his belly. “I can’t think of a word to rhyme with marble colum...
I was never very good with either my hands or feet. It always seemed to me they'd just been stuck on as an afterthought during my making. Dreams didn't translate through sports, or music, dancing, carpentry, plumbing. I was the bookish kid, more at h...
...so one day my mother sat me down and explained that I couldn't become an explorer because everything in the world had already been discovered. I'd been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated.
I'm sure it's not any wish of mine that I'm born with inclinations for better things. If I could be born again, and had the designing of myself, I'd be born the lowest and coarsest-minded person imaginable, so that I could find plenty of companionshi...
Still everyone, including the abbot, had said that he was running away from his grief. They'd had no idea what they were talking about. He'd cradled his grief, almost to the point of loving it. For so long he refused to give it up, because leaving it...
Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep, - the innocent sleep; Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief ...
To have endured all the horrors he did, to have seen the worst of humanity and have your life made unrecognizable by it, to come out of all that the honorable and brave and good person I knew him to be— *that* was magical.
It seemed like my parents were always trying to get me to care about money, but I didn't, really. Then again, it's easy to say you don't care about money when you have plenty of it.
You're - psychotic. There's something wrong with you." "I know," Benteley agreed. "I'm a sick man. And the more I see, the sicker I get. I'm so sick I think everybody else is sick and I'm the only healthy person. That's pretty bad off, isn't it?