In the midst of aches in the joints, anxiety over the payment of bills, concern for the safety of those you love, envy of the rich, fear of robbers, dog-weariness at the end of a long day, and the unacceptable slipping away of youth, there does occas...
I am a child of the Milky Way. The night is my mother. I am made of the dust of stars. Every atom in my body was forged in a star. When the universe exploded into being, already the bird longed for the wood and the fish for the pool. When the first g...
Viktor looked at the older man’s nightshirt, robe, and nightcap. His lips quirked into a smile. “The hour is late, and the household sleeps. How is it that you are still awake?” “I knew you would be knocking on the door sooner or later.” Pi...
So they spread the paintings on the lawn, and the boy explained each of them. "This is the school, and this is the playground, and these are my friends." He stared at the paintings for a long time and then shook his head in discouragement. "In my min...
I blame Chennai. Pointless neighbourhood gossip travels faster than tsunami alerts around here. I know that aunties are a universal problem but this city is particularly aunty dominated. And by that, I mean, even many of our twenty-somethings act lik...
Edgar, do you actually think that how long a person grieves is a measure of how much they loved someone? There's no rule book that says how to do this." She laughed, bitterly. "Wouldn't that be great? No decisions to make. Everything laid right out f...
You read all kinds of books and see all kinds of movies about the man who is obsessed and devoted, whose focus is a single solid beam, same as the lighthouse and that intense, too. It is Heathcliff with Catherine. It is a vampire with a passionate lo...
Edith’s clothes were flung in disarray on the floor beside the bed, the covers of which had been thrown back carelessly; she lay naked and glistening under the light on the white unwrinkled sheet. Her body was lax and wanton in its naked sprawl, an...
I had some peculiar ideas about love. I’ll tell you what I thought on the subject back then: it’s about as much use as a barrel with no bottom. When I fed the pigs and two of them got to scrapping over an old soft onion, I thought: that’s love....
He made what apology he could and hurried home, overjoyed that the satisfaction of his curiosity had preserved their love intact, and that, having feigned for so long, when in Odette's company, a sort of indifference, he had not now, by a demonstrati...
A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of h...
It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions. After eggs and bacon it says, "Work!" After beefsteak and porter...
Jesus said, " I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself," knowing that the nature of a forgiving Christ on the cross would compel people to follow Him. As long as the church remains an effective platform for God's light to re...
I finally found him sitting on his balcony. He was leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed. Soft music played, and a cool ocean breeze blew back my hair as I stepped on to the balcony and inhaled the scent of the sea. "May I join you?" I a...
Trying to remember old dreams. A voice. Who came in. And meanwhile the rain, all day, all evening, quiet steady sound. Before it grew too dark watched the blue iris leaning under the rain, the flame of the poppies guttered and went out. A voice. Almo...
I remember an insight that taught me much about life. One day I felt that I had everything that I really wanted in life. I had a creative and meaningful work as a therapist and course leader, I had a relationship with a beautiful woman, who I loved a...
This book says 'life isn't fair' and I'm telling you, one and all, you better believe it. I got a fat spoiled son�he's not gonna nab Miss Rheingold. And he's always gonna be fat, even if he gets skinny he'll still be fat and he'll still be spoiled ...
Lucy gripped her chilled glass of orange and raspberry juice. When Rebecca talked about Austen, she’d mostly mentioned Mr. Darcy or Mr. Knightley. She hadn’t really thought of the doe-eyed, pale-skinned heroines. On the screen, Anne Elliot walked...
Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and light…unless all ages and races of men have been delu...
She stared at the faded tile floor before her feet, but knew his every step around her small kitchen. When Martin touched the coffee cup patterned curtains he must assume she’d made, her fingers throbbed. When his eyes slid across the flowery alumi...
I always thought of it like you said, that all the strings inside him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we’re grass—our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as lo...
