He tries to get close to her because he wants to know what her glow feels like. She’s alone on the dance floor and even though she’s dancing, there’s a kind of sadness lurking about her, like her heart is somewhere else. Roman doesn’t think h...
Okay, gang," I said, "according to blueprints, there's an elevator access panel on the east side of the building. We may get a little dirty, but—" "I thought we'd just go through the doors," Liz said, flashing three beautifully engraved invitations...
I still remember our first meeting, when Albers brought him to my house. On the little carriage which carried him from the station, and which was hardly built with such loads in mind, sat a massive figure who appeared even more enormous by virtue of ...
She scrambled to her feet, uncaring that a stray knee and elbow had Erik wincing. “How can you be groaning about a simple knee to the groin when you’ve just been battered by flying furniture, candelabras and hit on the head by a pot plant that mu...
I am writing this on a computer that I can’t imagine living without. This is an alarming thought, the extent to which I have organised my life around a metal box full of wires (and, via the Internet, to many other metal boxes full of wires). Someon...
The silence of the storm weighs heavily On their strained spirits: sometimes one will say Some trivial thing as though to ward away Mysterious powers, that imminently lie In wait, with the strong exorcising grace Of everyday's futility. Desire Become...
All right. Here's the deal, bigshot: suck my cock. Do that and I'll let you go. Straight trade." He unzipped his fly and pulled down the elastic front of his shorts. Something that looked like a dead whitesnake fell out. Johnny observed the thin stre...
Equally, the surrealists consider words as witnesses of life acting in a direct way in human affairs. To use words properly it was necessary to treat them with respect, for they were the intermediaries between oneself and the rest of creation. To abu...
If little else, the brain is an educational toy. The problem with possessing such an engaging toy is that other people want to play with it, too. Sometime they'd rather play with yours than theirs. Or they object if you play with yours in a different...
Not town can live peacefully, whatever its laws," Plato wrote, "when its citizens ... do nothing but feast and drink and tire themselves out in the cares of love." But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few m...
To sum up what is most crucial in Japanese political culture: the Japanese have never been encouraged to think that the force of an idea could measure up to the physical forces of a government. The key to understanding Japanese power relations is tha...
So they all went home afterwards. My sisters and I sat on the veranda and cried until a storm drove us inside. We agreed to meet in the barn loft for crying once a week but after a while we forgot. Once we did but nobody could work up a cry and we st...
Though many non-Native Americans have learned very little about us, over time we have had to learn everything about them. We watch their films, read their literature, worship in their churches, and attend their schools. Every third-grade student in t...
They'd fallen into an easy routine, the three of them. Breakfast together in the morning, then Hughie would leave for work and she and Nell would get started in the house. Lil found she liked having a second shadow, enjoyed showing Nell things, expla...
Didn’t need to see your aura.” He tapped my forehead. “You get a cute little frown there when you’ve got something bothering you.” “Not everything about me is cute.” “That’s true. Some things are cute. The rest are sexy.” His voic...
When the nurse leaves, Doctor Rose mouths, “Act like you’re in pain.” Then she mimics a painful expression in case Summer doesn’t understand. On the contrary, Summer’s an expert at interpreting body language and reading lips. It’s all tha...
I think the iPod is the true face of Republican politics, and I’m in favor of the music industry … standing up proud and saying it out loud: We in the Chiclet-manufacturing business are not about social justice, …we’re not about a coherent se...
Grief causes you to leave yourself. You step outside your narrow little pelt. And you can’t feel grief unless you’ve had love before it - grief is the final outcome of love, because it’s love lost. […] It’s the cycle of love completed: to l...
Roosevelt spoke eloquently, in his penetrating tenor, of those 'who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life . . . I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-no...
Identity is not the face, Identity is not the trait, Neither is it the success pace, Nor is it the personality grace. Let alone it being your cliché phrase, Or did you think, It’s some religious faith? My child, it’s alarming that it’s none, I...
(We loved Mother too, completely, but we were finding out, as Father was too, that it is good for parents and for children to be alone now and then with one another...the man alone or the woman, to sound new notes in the mysterious music of parenthoo...
