A teasing smirk flitted across his face, as he completed his thought, “I’ll try not to take it too hard if I fail miserably, because you can be the world’s greatest skeptic…” “Nah…” I coughed out a little chuckle, “not when you’re...
…he is unlike the other customers. They sense it too, and look at him with hard eyes, eyes like little metal studs pinned into the white faces of young men [...] In the hush his entrance creates, the excessive courtesy the weary woman behind the co...
The voice welling up out of this little man is terrific, Harry had noticed it at the house, but here, in the nearly empty church, echoing off the walnut knobs and memorial plaques and high arched rafters, beneath the tall central window of Jesus taki...
When somebody is a little bit wrong - say, when a waited puts nonfat milk in your espresso macchiato, instead of lowfat milk - it is often quite easy to explain to them how and why they are wrong. But if somebody is surprisingly wrong - say, when a w...
You know how it is. You feel a little different because other people have two parents, even if they’re divorced. It’s like you grow up knowing that you’re missing something important that everyone else has, but you don’t know exactly what it ...
Finally, her father spoke. “Are you sure? I mean, I don’t understand how this could have happened. She’s only fifteen; I didn’t even know she was sexually active.” Mallory’s father, normally in control, was on the verge of tears. He refus...
The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in ones own home." Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questi...
Beth had been a middle school science teacher and Joni was a librarian and they both had collections of weird stuff they had found. Bizarre, misspelled letters written by lovelorn eighth graders. Obscene Polaroids left in between the pages of library...
Even Dad likes it," said Caddy, and her father agreed that he did. In a way. Being a broad-minded, tolerant, artistic sort of person. Or so people told him... "Oh, yes?" said Saffron, rolling her eyes. "Yes," said Bill, sounding a little bit peeved. ...
Many people are partial to the notion that . . . all writers are somehow mere vessels for Truth and Beauty when they compose. That we are not really in This is a variation on that twee little fable that writers like to pass off on gullible readers, t...
The next thing Jordana says makes me realize that it's too late to save her. "I've noticed that when you light a match, the flame is the same shape as a falling tear." She's been sensitized, turned gooey in the middle. I saw it happening and I didn't...
Pre-forty, you can wash your face with Tide and use Vaseline for moisturizer, toss on a little mascara and lip gloss, and you're a friggin' cover girl. Those of us on the slippery slope that is the Other Side of Forty can testify-- those days are so ...
I had always had a little problem looking out for myself in love. I was afraid people would leave me. So I sort of clung and did everything possible to keep someone around. I didn't have a hard talk with myself about who I was keeping around. Doesn't...
For more than a decade, the United States had been giving large-scale military aid to the French colonialists, and then to the American-installed but authoritarian South Vietnamese government, to fight nationalists and communists in Vietnam. More tha...
Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does:otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, m...
Have you ever seen ?" "I love it." "Really?" I'm over the moon. We share a movie. Finally, we're on the same planet. "Don't you love the part where he says, 'Stay alive. I will find you'?" I ask. "I love that massacre scene," he says, like an excited...
A man who, night after night, falls like a lump of lead upon his bed, and ceases to live until the moment when he wakes and rises, will such a man ever dream of making, I do not say great discoveries, but even minute observations upon sleep? He barel...
In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish.The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop the...
Uncommon success is found on the spiritual plane; you can't get there through common convention or following others. Hard work is not enough; many work slavishly-hard for little reward. Intelligence is insufficient; how many educated and brilliant pe...
Dad said I had no respect for money and that if I didn't learn when I was little when was I going to learn? Kids who get Bart Simpson dolls at the drop of a hat turn into punks who steal from convenience stores, ‘cos they wind up thinking they can ...
Michael looked embarrassed. “No, I don’t really… I mean in real life, I don’t do that. I read BDSM once in a while, but honestly, I prefer the sweeter romances.” “Sure. I believe you. Bondage Ben.” “Stop it.” Michael laughed. “Cra...
