I like your hair down." He twisted his fingers through the curls. My eyes drifted shut as I relaxed next to him. "It's a mess. I need to get a haircut." Hayden's fingers stilled. "No. You shouldn't cut your hair. It's beautiful." I would never cut my...
This is what I think now; that the natural state of the sentient adult is a qualified unhappiness. I think also that in an adult the desire to be finer in grain than you are, "a constant striving" (as those people say who gain their bread by saying i...
The thing is, it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs--if yours are really ones and theirs aren't. You think if they're intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that the...
I think she might at least have waited till the funeral was over,' said Amanda in a scandalized voice. 'It's her own funeral, you know,' said Sir Lulworth; 'it's a nice point in etiquette how far one ought to show respect to one's own mortal remains....
Mahon's wife stared down at us. Her hands went to her hips. "Which one of you idiots wants to explain to me what the hell is going on?" With great effort I raised my arm and pointed in Mahon's general direction. "Him.
You really saw some?" Liz said an hour later. Sure, we had the stereo blaring and the shower running, but Liz still whispered, "They really...exist?" "Liz," I whispered back, "they're not unicorns." "No," Bex said flatly, "they're boys. And they're.....
Pray tell us, what's your favorite number?"... "Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote 10,213,223"... "And pray, why would this number interest us?" "It is the only number that describes itself when you read it, 'One zero, two ones, three...
We treat our stone wives with much more care than they treat their warm ones, anyway. I personally dust mine once a week, and I know Khaamil gives them presents when I am not looking. These are yours - they are in your care, and you must be faithful.
A determined Yankee book drummer once told a Southerner that 'a set of books on scientific agriculture' would teach him to 'farm twice as good as you do.' To which the Southerner replied: 'Hell, son, I don't farm half as good as I know how now.
It's my experience that most folk who ride trains could care less where they're going. For them it's the journey itself and the people they meet along the way. You see, at every stop this train makes, a little bit of America, a little bit of your cou...
Parts of you are phobic of anger and generally terrified and ashamed of angry dissociative parts. There is often tremendous conflict between anger-avoidant and anger-fixated parts of an individual. Thus, an internal and perpetual cycle of rage-shame-...
Right now, the economy is a whole lot like a fairly good-looking brain-dead chick in a persistent vegetative coma. You can't really wake her up, but there's things she's still good for.
Ed Welch says that all counseling is a variation on a single theme: knowing and praying for the counselee. Of all the questions the counselor might ask, then, the central guiding question in the counselor's mind is, "How can I pray for you?
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...
A person is not like a thing that you put down in one place and leave, a person moves, thinks, asks, questions, doubts, investigates, probes, and while it is true that, out of a long habit of resignation, he sooner or later ends up looking as if he h...
I thought it would be quieter here.” [Anna] hadn’t meant to say anything, but the noise startled her. “The wind in the trees,” Bran said. “And there are some birds that stay year-round. Sometimes when the wind is still and the cold is upon ...
But, then, you were born a pagan; I am trying laboriously to make myself one. I can take nothing for granted, I can enjoy nothing as it comes along. Beauty, pleasure, art, women - I have to invent an excuse, a justification for everything that's deli...
If I am a pawn in someone else's chess game, you better believe I am going to demand an explanation before being shoved at some rook. I'll play my part, damn it, but I want the courtesy of being asked for my consent!
Although it seems shocking to say so, grief is a funny thing. On the one hand, you're numb, yet on the other, something inside is trying desperately to claw its way back to normal: to pull a funny face, to leap out like a jack-in-the-box, to say "Smi...
Anyone who thinks cryptozoology is the study of the impossible has never really taken a very good look at the so-called "natural world." Once you get past the megamouth sharks, naked mole rats, and spotted hyenas, then the basilisks, dragons, and cuc...
The unnatural beast plummeted to the ground, vainly attempting to keep his entrails in and put out the fire that covered him. Morfyd spewed another spell at the retreating form and Hefaidd-Hen burst into pieces. Fearghus glanced at his sister. “Tha...