Until then I had always thought of loneliness as something negative—an absence of company, and, of course, something temporary... That day I had learned that it was much more. It was something which could press and oppress, could distort the ordina...
I must be in love with this woman, Sumire realized with a start. No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I'm in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. This current's too overpowering; I don't have any choice. It may very wel...
Hermione: Beautiful day. Ron: Gorgeous. Unless of course you've been ripped to pieces. Harry: Ripped to pieces? What are you talking about? Hermione: Ronald has lost his rat. Ron: I haven't lost anything! Your cat killed him! Hermione: Rubbish! Ron: ...
Briony Tallis, aged 13: The princess was well aware of his remorseless wickedness. But that made it no easier to overcome the voluminous love she felt in her heart for Sir Romulus. The princess knew instinctively that the one with red hair was not to...
On Love and Happiness:When someone embarks on his research, if he ever makes it, (there is, in addition, a contingency that he/she will never embark on it), then he sails on a journey, a course that incubates various events. It's like opening a preci...
Lift not the painted veil which those who live Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there, And it but mimic all we would believe With colours idly spread,--behind, lurk Fear And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave Their shadows, o'er the chas...
He had a charm about him sometimes, a warmth that was irresistible, like sunshine. He planted Saffy triumphantly on the pavement, opened the taxi door, slung in his bag, gave a huge film-star wave, called, "All right, Peter? Good weekend?" to the tax...
Those who are close to us, when they die, divide our world. There is the world of the living, which we finally, in one way or another, succumb to, and then there is the domain of the dead that, like an imaginary friend (or foe) or a secret concubine,...
I confidently walked up to the counter, and his friends moved to the side to let me through. I handed him the note. "Happy Birthday," I said. Then I smiled and walked out of the store. I did my crossing-the street trick again, lurking in the shadows ...
Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who arranged his conclusions probably with the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order. Out there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surely witnessed something crudely and essentia...
You come to this place, mid-life. You don’t know how you got here, but suddenly you’re staring fifty in the face. When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led; all houses are haunted. The wr...
Perhaps the most difficult thing about loving and helping an addict, which most people who haven't been through it don't understand, is this: every day the cycle continues is your new worst day. When looked at from the outside it seems endless, the s...
My name is Ferrum. I was the first, born of the forges, when mankind first began to experiment with iron. I rose from their imagination, from their ambition to conquer the world with a metal that could slice through bronze like paper. I was there whe...
[the Shape is lurking by a bush on the sidewalk] Laurie: Annie, look! Annie Brackett: Look where? I don't see anything. Laurie: That guy who passed us in the car before, the one you yelled at! Annie Brackett: Subtle, isn't he? [marches over to the bu...
Karrin." She looked up at me. She looked very young somehow. "Remember what I said yesterday," I said. "You're hurt. But you'll get through it. You'll be okay." She closed her eyes tightly. "I'm scared. So scared I'm sick." "You'll get through it." "...
In the end, that’s what Kevin has never forgiven us. He may not resent that we tried to impose a curtain between himself and the adult terrors lurking behind it. But he does powerfully resent that we led him down the garden path—that we enticed h...
Secularity is a way of being dependent on the responses of our milieu. The secular or false self is the self which is fabricated, as Thomas Merton says, by social compulsions. 'Compulsive' is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to...
To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must write dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let ...
If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in bea...
Norman picked up a sketch, glanced at it, then put it back down on the table. "I saw Bea Williamson this morning," he said in a low voice. "Lurking about looking for cut glass." "Oh, of course," Mira said with a sigh. "Did she have it with her?" Norm...
What's the first sign of a lurking, hidden expectation you didn't know you had? Pain! People don't do what we want, things don't happen quickly enough, the weather doesn't cooperate, our bodies don't cooperate. Why are these moments so painful? Becau...
