Almsgiving is a major tenet of Islam. It's also a kick in the pants of the highest order. Nothing is as cool as skimming off a couple of hundred thousand from some multinational corporation and handing it out to random strangers. Or writing a harmles...
You fall in love, it's intoxicating, an for a little while you feel like you've actually become one with the other person. Merged souls, and so on. You think you'll never be lonely again. Only it doesn't last and soon you realize you can only get so ...
They really kicked me out?" "Refunded the tuition and everything." Julie blinked a couple of times coming to grips with this tidbit. "So what happens now?" "I expect you'll be a bum. Homeless and jobless begging on the street for a crust of bread..."...
Dale’s face is older. Just a little. Around the eyes and mouth. The skin of his neck. The back of his hands. Maybe not, he thinks, turning on the faucet, letting the water grow warm then hot. He begins shaving his lubricated chin and cheeks. Chrysa...
The public talk -- and injuriously! -- Well! are you ignorant of the little importance of such talk? -- The public speak! -- It is not the world, it is only the despicable part of it -- only the ill-natured, who upon the smallest evidence pass rash j...
She watched him take the trumpet from its case and fit the mouthpiece. She watched as he raised it to his lips and then, so suddenly, from that tiny cup of metal against his flesh, the sound would burst out like a glorious, brilliant knife dividing t...
Most of us are continually engaged in some form of pursuit. We are seeking excellence within one or more areas in our lives, and that is the basis of our motivation. It is human nature to have a need to get ahead, need a little something more—it’...
Since her retirement from teaching Miss Beryl's health had in many respects greatly improved, despite her advancing years. An eighth-grade classroom was an excellent place to snag whatever was in the air in the way of illness. Also depression, which,...
You want to stab me again, don't you?" He didn't look at all ashamed. "Think of it as testing the limits of your new abilities." I groaned. "I've created a monster." "I don't think someone who recently crawled from the grave should be throwing around...
Ramon looked closely at the little guy as he ate. "Maybe he's Jewish. I mean, if Sammy Davis Jr. could convert to Judaism, why not a chupacabra? We should name him Harry Mendelbaum." I held up my arms in protest. "You're all racist. Now shut up. We'l...
Why?" she screamed. "Are you crazy? You know the English subjunctive, you understand trigonometry, you can read Marx, and you don't know the answer to something as simple as that? Why do you even have to ask? Why do you have to make a girl SAY someth...
If your situtation is the fault of anything or anyone else...there is very little hope and absolutely zero power over your own life. "Responsibility is about hope and control. And...who doesn't want hope for a greater future that their choices contro...
The bottom line on the declaration, 'This is part of our culture,' is this: At its best, this is a choice made with little or no critical thinking about future results. At its worst, it is merely an excuse to do what one wants to do. It is selfish, l...
It was one of those things they keep in a jar in the tent of a sideshow on the outskirts of a little, drowsy town. One of those pale things drifting in alcohol plasma, forever dreaming and circling, with its peeled, dead eyes staring out at you and n...
I became aware of just how fleeting the sense of happiness was, and how flimsy its basis: a warm restaurant after having come in from the rain, the smell of food and wine, interesting conversation, daylight falling weakly on the polished cherrywood o...
Danny looked stunned. “But what about the people who care about you?” I shook my head. “They shouldn’t waste their time … I’m not gonna change. I can’t be fixed Danny!” I wiped ferociously at the tears that were falling down my cheeks...
Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dess? I though that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you an...
The shrub that half concealed her was a malignant plant, a Madagascan tanghin tree with wide, box-like leaves with whitish stems, whose smallest veins distilled a venomous fluid. At a moment when Louise and Maxime laughed more loudly in the reflected...
The theologians dead, knew no more than the theologians now living. More than this cannot be said. About this world little is known,—about another world, nothing. Our fathers were intellectual serfs, and their fathers were slaves. The makers of our...
It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction. And our mutation, of which the assembly line, the collective farm, the mechanized army, and the mass production of food are evidences or even symptoms, might well co...
Without knowing it, the adults in our lives practiced a most productive kind of behavior modification. After our chores and household duties were done we were give "permission" to read. In other words, our elders positioned reading as a privilege - a...
