Every woman needs secrets,' her mother said with a smile then, her eyes meeting Sally's in the rearview mirror. 'Remember that when you're old like me, pumpkin, because the world has a way of making a woman's life everyone else's business--you have t...
I once laughed at the vanity of women of thirty or forty who whitened their ruddy old skin with lead, but now I know such salves are not disguises for old crones who wish to catch a young husband. Instead they are only a mask we wear so that we can, ...
Look at your hand. Its structure does not match the structure of assertions, the structure of facts. Your hand is continuous. Assertions and facts are discontinuous.... You lift your index finger half an inch; it passes through a million facts. Look ...
Like the muscles knew from the beginning that it would end with this, this inevitable falling apart... It's sad, but a relief as well to know that two things so closely bound together can separate with so little violence, leaving smooth surfaces inst...
We're always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like a village bath-house, grimy, and spiders in every ...
Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I've heard ...
Spend the glittering moonlight there Pursuing down the soundless deep Limbs that gleam and shadowy hair, Or floating lazy, half-asleep. Dive and double and follow after, Snare in flowers, and kiss, and call, With lips that fade, and human laughter An...
I went out to the hazel wood because a fire was in my head cut and peeled a hazel wand and hooked a berry to a thread and when white moths were on the wing and moth-like stars were flickering out I dropped the berry in a stream, and caught a little s...
History repeats itself. Someone says this. History throws its shadow over beginning, over the desktop, over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters. history is the little man in a brown suit trying to define a room he is outside of, I know...
I guess I'm just feeling Septemberish," sighed Chester. "It's getting towards autumn now. And it's so pretty up in Connecticut. All the trees change color. The days get very clear―with a little smoke on the horizon from burning leaves. Pumpkins beg...
The fractal structure nature has devised works so efficiently that, in most tissue, no cell is ever more than three or four cells away from a blood vessel. Yet the vessels and blood take up little space, no more than about five percent of the body.
A man who knows how little he knows is well, a man who knows how much he knows is sick. If, when you see the symptoms, you can tell, Your cure is quick. A sound man knows that sickness makes him sick and before he catches it his cure is quick.
The quick, sudden terror of exploding bombs is not the same as the never-ending, bone-sapping fear of discovery and capture. It never goes away. There isn’t ever any relief, never the possibility of an ‘All Clear’ siren. You always feel a littl...
He tried to give his wife pleasure in little ways, because he had come to realize, after nearly two decades together, how often he disappointed her in the big things. It was never intentional. They simply had very different notions of what ought to t...
Lorcan rubbed his head. “Am I asking too much to want the little bitch dead? Am I?” It seemed Hefaidd-Hen learned long ago not to answer certain questions. “All I want is for her to suffer a painful, horrifying death. And for her head to be on ...
Talking about one's feelings defeats the purpose of having those feelings. Once you try to put the human experience into words, it becomes little more than a spectator sport. Everything must have a cause, and a name. Every random thought must have a ...
In fact we put so many things in our mouths we constantly have to be reminded what not to eat. Look at that little package of silicon gel that's inside your sneakers. It says DO NOT EAT for a reason. Somewhere sometime some genius bought a pair of sn...
Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn. We may have a little more to eat next winter but what will we plant so we and our children will have enough to get through the winters to come?
He said that knowledge was of little use without wisdom, and that there was no wisdom without spirituality, and that true spirituality always included service to others. As he explained many times, the essence of a good physician consisted of a capac...
Among Chinese Singaporeans and Malaysians, many hold the belief that when Admiral Cheng Ho landed in Nanyang, he relieved himself in the jungle, and the steaming puddle of shit and piss evolved into the durian tree. To put it less elegantly, the moun...
He closed his eyes for a moment and pulled at the fragments of the elements to light the torches hanging at the pillars on either side of him. The fire did little to warm the night, but Kaustab found its presence reassuring, the flickering blue flame...
