There was noise in the corridor outside Alice’s office; and though it was nothing of concern, they separated. Roger stood, fingers tucked into his waistcoat pockets, admiring prints on the wall that held no interest for him. The noise was Melanie, ...
When someone uses the phrase ‘the prick one’, and you know immediately that this is a synonym for the word ‘metaphorically’, you are entitled to wonder whether you know the speaker too well. You are even entitled to wonder whether you should ...
But God also helped those who helped themselves, and presumably expected the chosen to bring warm clothing, water purification tablets, basic medication, a weapon such as the bronze knives that were selling these days, possibly a tent - in short, to ...
Oh, don’t be absurd, man.' The Prime Minister sat back in his chair. 'Come on. We can’t just ban a thing because we can’t control it.' The minister responsible for health and safety looked startled. 'I don’t see why not. It’s never stopped ...
A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.
Our relationship, however, soon went awry. Occasionally, something will happen that will change your opinion of someone irrevocably, that wil shatter the ideal you've built up around a person and force you to see them for the fallible and human creat...
What I never expected is how much nothing there is afterwords. In life,, he was not nearby. Now he is everywhere I dream and every place I wake. Or if not him exactly, then a nothing so much like him I cannot seem to wish it goodnight.
As long as you think that the cause of your problem is “out there”—as long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering—the situation is hopeless. It means that you are forever in the role of victim, that you’re su...
Do you remember how this life of yours longed in childhood to belong to the grown-ups? I can see that it now longs to move on from them and is drawn to those who are greater yet. That is why it does not cease to be difficult, but also why it will not...
I wasn't going to kiss you."' 'You weren't?' I look up look up at him. [...] 'Nope, the next time I kiss you it'll last a long, long time. And when we're done you're going to realize being turned on is not about experience.
I was so happy that my mother, father, and two brothers had somehow found one another. Perhaps my mother and father have gotten back together, I thought.
He’s a fallen angel,” Dale said. “The goth punk rocker thing… I don’t know. He picked the costume.” “The costume?” Daphne said. “Body,” Uriah explained. “And I didn’t fall. I left. Tendered my resignation, as it were.
Possibly a man who hates the land should dwell on shore forever. Alienation and the long voyages at sea will compel him once again to dream of it, torment him with the absurdity of longing for something that he loathes.
It was tragic how life had sucked her down to the bones, all her spontaneity her laughter and freedom had vanished. I knew then that I didn't ever want to be like that. Whatever happened, life was something too precious to give up on so easily.
I kissed my fingers,held my palm flat beside my mouth and blew it into the air that surrounded her memory. I closed my eyes, thinking this was one of those moments you see in movies or read about in books where everything comes together.
My cat has long hair. Like a hippy. It gets annoying because I can’t get him to shut up about Vietnam. I can’t relate, because I wasn’t there. Neither was he, because like I said, he's like a hippy.
I had this theory. It was based loosely on the unremarkable observation that the old are always looking back with longing while the young, with the same longing, look ahead. One man remembers what the other imagines.
Church leaders raised on rationalism lead ministries where the supernatural, the Vertical, is suppressed and where God Himself is at best an observer and certainly seldom, if ever, and obvious participant in church.
And I saw that all my life I had known that this was going to happen, and that I'd been afraid for a long time, I'd been afraid for a long time. There's fear, of course, with everybody. But now it had grown, it had grown gigantic; it filled me and it...
But kind of like when you move something on a wall after it’s been there for a long time, and its place is bright but everything around it is faded—that’s how I feel about her. She wasn’t there very long, but when she left, everything around ...
You want us to bargain with a lizard?” “They’re not lizards, Father. They’re extraordinary creatures who were here long before any human was crawling on this earth. They are warriors and scholars and—” “He has long hair like a woman,”...
