Why don’t we just say it already?” He smirked. “I mean come on now.” I eyed him carefully not knowing where to step. “What is it you think we want to say?” “That we love each other. I kick myself every time I stopped myself from saying ...
The way Mom saw it, women should let menfolk do the work because it made them feel more manly. That notion only made sense if you had a strong man willing to step up and get things done, and between Dad's gimp, Buster's elaborate excuses, and Apache'...
So then I thought, I'd like you to have something to remember me by, you know, if you ever meet some veela when you're off doing whatever you're doing.' I think dating opportunities are going to be pretty thin on the ground, to be honest.' There's a ...
Raymond continued circling me, and I looked back at him. “Anyway, I know Lilith hates your guts, and she would have killed you yesterday if you hadn’t managed to escape.” He stopped and stepped closer, I didn’t back away. His gaze traveled th...
Human intellectual progress, such as it has been, results from our long struggle to see things 'as they are,' or in the most universally comprehensible way, and not as projections of our own emotions. Thunder is not a tantrum in the sky, disease is n...
A strange cold fear gripped him as he looked down at that angelic face resting against his shoulder. Her thick dark lashes lay heavy against her perfect olive skin like two perfect dark crescent moons concealing those glorious starry green eyes burde...
I said, 'I have heard people talk about war as if it was a very fine thing.' Ah!' said [Captain], 'I should think they never saw it. No doubt it is very fine when there is no enemy, when it is just exercise and parade, and sham-fight. Yes, it is very...
When I worked in a second-hand bookshop — so easily pictured, if you don't work in one, as a kind of paradise where charming old gentlemen browse eternally among calf-bound folios — the thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookis...
The novelist Dumas would one day borrow features from both of his uncles, not to mention his grandfather, the acknowledged scoundrel, in fashioning the central villains of The Count of Monte Cristo. Reading court documents detailing the sordid unrave...
It's really going to happen. I really won't ever go back to school. Not ever. I'll never be famous or leave anything worthwhile behind. I'll never go to college or have a job. I won't see my brother grow up. I won't travel, never earn money, never dr...
I’ve witnessed, incognito, the gradual collapse of my life, the slow foundering of all I wanted to be. I can say, with a truth that needs no flowers to show it’s dead, that there’s nothing I’ve wanted - and nothing in which I’ve placed, eve...
Truth is always stranger than fiction. We craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted. Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees. Reminding us, that the universe does not exist to fulfill...
Please… Whoever you are, whatever you are… I believe in you even though I don’t completely understand you. I feel you around me even though I can’t exactly describe what I’m feeling. Sometimes things happen to me and I know that you’re th...
The wine god sighed. 'Oh Hades if I know. But remember, boy, that a kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword. As a mortal, I was never a great fighter or athlete or poet. I only made wine. The people in my village laughed at me. They said I w...
Do you go see her?" "No," I said, refusing to acknowledge that I'd just seen Lissa last night. "That's not my life anymore." "Right. Your life is all about dangerous vigilante missions." "You wouldn't understand anything that isn't drinking, smoking,...
Krebs, who knew some Russian and at one stage in his career had been embraced by Stalin, was "a smooth, surviving type." And so, with almost incredible effrontery, he tried to talk to Chuikov as an equal, opening the conversation with the general com...
You know what punk is? a bunch of no-talent guys who really, really want to be in a band. Nobody reads music, nobody plays the mandolin, and you're too dumb to write songs about mythology or Middle-earth. So what's your style? Three chords, cranked o...
The Soul bird sang: "My beloved Jay, Look into my eyes. Look deeply, and you will remember hope. You will remember the power of your mind, The great power, big as the sky, that makes all things possible. Look straight into my eyes. I can restore to y...
What to wear on a Minnesota farm? The older farmers I know wear brown polyester jumpsuits, like factory workers. The younger ones wear jeans, but the forecast was for ninety-five degrees with heavy humidity. The wardrobe of Quaker ladies in their mid...
Death's Diary: 1942 - It was a year for the ages, like 79, like 1346, to just name a few. Forget the scythe, God damn it, I needed a broom or a mop. And I needed a holiday. (...) They say that war is death's best friend, but I must offer you a differ...
Didn't you know I was out here, just waiting for a friend like you?" "Of course I didn't know. I'd have been dancing on top of every bar in town, instead of studying, if I'd known that." "Tell me not to kiss you," he said, when his lips were a breath...
