Lowering my chin, I sighed. What my Seth wanted, I wanted, but... daimons? I rubbed my hands on my bent knees and sighed again - louder, like a petulant child. Aiden's back twisted as he turned his head. "What, Alex?" "Nothing," I mumbled. "There's s...
So, yes, I should have just surrendered, cinched the entitled scion her little pouch of entitlements, put in my calls to the name shufflers, done my duty. I thought about that moment later on. Maybe I got extratuned to the concept of bitchhood once I...
A little later, the Apollo mission was consummated and there were Americans on the moon. I remember distinctly looking up from the quad on what was quite a moon-flooded night, and thinking about it. They made it! The Stars and Stripes are finally flo...
People like you are the reason this album needed to be written in the first place. When you’ve got your salary, and your cosy little ivory tower, you’re dead happy to spout off about artistic integrity and us getting there together. But the minut...
Sometimes Alton Darwin would talk to me about the planet he was on before he was transported in a steel box to Athena. 'Drugs were food,' he said. 'I was in the food business. Just because people on one planet eat a certain kind of food they're hungr...
Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, "Well, that's pretty much what I thought I'd see," you a...
He has little hope that university, when he gets there next year, will be any different. Like right now, all these pupils taking notes as if their life depended on it. All for what? he wants to shout. To get into the top university, so that you can s...
You know what I was thinking about on my way home? How different my life would be if you’d made that gash a little deeper. Or how different yours would be if I’d vaulted myself off a roof nine years ago. Do you ever think about things like that? ...
That's what yer little sister said,' said Hagrid, nodding at Ron. Met her jus' yesterday.' Hagrid looked sideways at Harry, his beard twitching. 'Said she was jus' lookin' round the grounds, but I reckon she was hopin' she might run inter someone els...
He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said: "What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?" He sounded faintly sad. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening — I do myself som...
Did you ever notice that all machines are made for some reason?" he asked Isabelle. "They are built to make you laugh, like the mouse here, or to tell the time, like clocks, or to fill you with wonder like the automaton. Maybe that's why a broken mac...
My child, I am the Lord Who gives strength in the day of trouble. Come to Me when all is not well with you. Your tardiness in turning to prayer is the greatest obstacle to heavenly consolation, for before you pray earnestly to Me you first seek many ...
And what I thought most about was luxury. I had never realised before that it is more than just having things; it makes the very air feel different. And I felt different, breathing the air: relaxed, lazy, still sad but with the edge taken off the sad...
crawling up into daddy's lap when dad was still DADDY nodding my head against his chest soaking in the comfort of his heart LISTENING to the thump...thump somewhere beneath muscle and breastbone I remember his arms their sublime ENCIRCLING and the sh...
The most insidious of the premature responsibilities that may be foisted onto some children is the expectation that the child is somehow supposed to take care of his parents, rather than the other way around. Parents who were themselves raised with t...
On the board was a list of words and phrases which her mother considered not suitable for use in college T-shirt design. She had been asked about them so often that in the end she had started a blacklist of banned words to which everyone could refer....
In a funny way, Dad was always a bow-tie wearer, always a little more traditional than you might imagine. Because even though he had blue hair and tattoos and wore leather jackets and worked in a record store, he wanted to marry Mom back at a time wh...
But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time. It does not accept that limit. Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here...
I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten pounds. Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I’ve a use for it.' 'And so have I, sir,' I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind me. 'I could not spare the money on any account.' 'Little ni...
Then there was this freedom the little guys were always getting killed for. Was it freedom from another country? Freedom from work or disease or death? Freedom from your mother-in-law? Please mister give us a bill of sale on this freedom before we go...
Some daughter of one of the gentry planters, perhaps? Those girls had the domestic virtues. But — he was comfortable enough with his good servants at Fairfield House. His yearnings had little relation to somebody to preside over his household. Some...
