Even today, some opt for the comforts of mystification, preferring to believe that the wonders of the ancient world were built by Atlanteans, gods, or space travelers, instead of by thousands toiling in the sun. Such thinking robs our forerunners of ...
Did she ever feel nostalgia for any of her girlhood dreams? But life was made up of a succession of dreams, some few to be realized, most to be set aside as time went on, one or two to persist for a lifetime. It was knowing when to abandon a dream, p...
Her youngest daughter shrugged. “Ain’t got no money, do we?” “I don’t understand. Why aren’t you pillaging like the rest of your kin?” “It was the Northlands, Da. Ain’t nothin’ to pillage but the crows in the trees.” “And snow...
(From the Author Note at the beginning of the book.) Dorothy L. Sayers used to say that mystery stories were the only moral fiction of the modern world--because in a mystery, you were guaranteed to see that the bad got punished, the good got rewarded...
Tears welled in Penelope's eyes, making the blue even darker. Then she reeled back and slapped him hard enough that his cheek stung. "That is for what you did to me. Not in the dark, Jeremy. Not as the faceless lover. Not even for today when you made...
You’ll learn, as you get older, that rules are made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path. Lau...
The nearest arched window poured its soft light over him, allowing me to see every inch. Dressed smartly in black loafers and slacks, he wore a thigh-length, black coat. He'd brushed his golden hair back, tucked behind his ears, and his cheeks looked...
This time, I want the hugs, kisses, and love that comes with a farewell … even if it’s a temporary one.” He takes a step and cups my head in his hands. “I want to say ‘see ya later’ and know that it’s not a final goodbye. I want to memo...
It is amazing how dispiriting it can be to enter a learning environment and to be made immediately to suppress your own exploratory inclinations. So many learning environments in the world are still like this. It conditions us to be slaves. The minut...
Irimiás: God is not made manifest in language, you dope. He's not manifest in anything. He doesn't exist... God was a mistake. I've long understood there is zero difference between me and a bug, or a bug and a river, or a river and a voice shouting ...
It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel i...
Jake's POV: Meanwhile, Ally was here with Marshall Moss, who she was obviously going to hook up with later. They'd barely stopped touching each other all night. Even now, they were out in the middle of the dance floor dancing to some Black Eyed Peas ...
But she was wrong; it was what gave her away; she had not taken into account that this fragmentary detail of the truth had sharp edges which could not be made to fit in, except to those contiguous fragments of the truth from which she had arbitrarily...
Quite possibly one of the most revealing passages about Shakespeare as a man comes from one of the roughest of the jottings made by gossip John Aubrey from his interview with William Beeston, son of the Christopher Beeston who had acted with Shakespe...
We were never lovers, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however. I regret the conversations we never had, the time we did not spend together. I regret that I never told him that he made me happy, when I was in his company. The world wa...
Happiness, thou art naught but an illusion. Thy enchantments are cast upon my eyes, my mind, my spellbound heart. Dependent upon nothing but thy victim's perception of thee, souls soar at thy artful hand! I have fallen in love with thy illusions, Hap...
Francie had heard swearing since she had heard words. Obscenity and profanity had no meaning as such among those people. They were emotional expressions of inarticulate people with small vocabularies; they made a kind of dialect. The phrases could me...
He unlaced his arms and took a step forward. "You hurt?" "Not badly." She tried to smile, but her lips only curved on one side. "My main problem is that I'm stuck to a cactus." (...) "How'd you manage to get tangled up with a cactus?" J.T. crouched b...
To avoid the hard necessity of either obeying or rejecting the plain instructions of our Lord in the New Testament we take refuge in a liberal interpretation of them. We evangelicals also know how to avoid the sharp point of obedience by means of fin...
I’m so in love with you, Braith,” he told her, and she felt in her bones that he meant every word. “And do you know why?” “I have no idea,” she replied honestly. “Because I am such an amazing dragon that I know I richly deserve a She-dr...
Perhaps our judgement of the purple woman was unfair. No doubt her theories concerning the "approach of the Teatro" made us all uneasy. But was this reason enough to cast her out from that artistic underworld which was the only society available to h...
