Yet the Narrator’s quest is not only for his own identity and vocation. He seeks an understanding of art, sexuality and worldly and political affairs: he is a snoop and a voyeur; he comments and classifies; his taxonomic impulse makes the novel app...
Give me the lowest place: not that I dare Ask for that lowest place, but Thou hast died That I might live and share Thy glory by Thy side. Give me the lowest place: of if for me That lowest place too high, make one more low Where I may sit and see My...
And now here was Arabella, making him feel worse. Maybe that was what she always did; maybe she always made him feel worse, and he'd never really noticed before. Maybe what seemed like the ordinary rough-and-tumble of marriage, combined with hard wor...
Maturity A stationary sense . . . as, I suppose, I shall have, till my single body grows Inaccurate, tired; Then I shall start to feel the backward pull Take over, sickening and masterful — Some say, desired. And this must b...
For the photograph's immobility is somehow the result of a perverse confusion between two concepts: the Real and the Live: by attesting that the object has been real, the photograph surreptitiously induces belief that it is alive, because of that del...
I only regret that it came too soon. I--I would have wanted to-- to court your first. To take you driving, with a chaperon." (Jem) "A chaperon?" (Tessa) "To tell you my feelings first, before I showed them. To write poetry for you --" (Jem) "You don'...
By the Angel, Bridget’s depressing,” said Henry, setting down his newspaper directly on his plate and causing the edge to soak through with egg yolk. Charlotte opened her mouth as if to object, and closed it again. “It’s all heartbreak, death...
We stay busy so we don't have to admit we don't have all the answers. After long enough with our constant distractions, we end our search for them. And God. Soon enough, we'll all come to realize we can't be God. We'll settle for telling ourselves we...
I don’t want to be Nephilim,” said Jace. “I want to be something else. Stronger, faster, better than human. But different. Not subservient to the Laws of an angel who couldn’t care less about us. Free.” He ran his hand through a curl of her...
We were born to be friends. We both knew it. The Australian Aborigines have the traditional belief that a complete human being comprises two parts that are split before birth, that we spend our lives seeking the other part to make ourselves whole aga...
We know that children with autism like order, that they are often very visual and that they can be quite literal. They deserve beautiful resources and symbols that make sense. If a picture does not explain visually, it is pointless and the child will...
The air was warm and heavy as sprinkles began to fall from the clouds high above. The Triton glided through the waters and the whoosh of the ship combined with the steady beat of the rain to make a concerto, like a pianist fluttering his fingers on t...
Novels are forged in passion, demand fidelity and commitment, often drive you to boredom or rage, sleep with you at night. They are the long haul. They are marriage. Stories, on the other hand, you can lose yourself in for a few weeks and then wrap u...
In general, I call her every night, and we talk for an hour, which is forty-five minutes of me, and fifteen minutes of her stirring her tea, which she steeps with the kind of Zen patience that would make Buddhists sit up in envy and then breathe thro...
They're crystal blue, a shade that shouldn't exist on the human body, I shade I immediately crave, a shade that makes my heart beat a little bit faster--almost as if I recognize it. I want to steal it, paint it, throw it into every room I ever decora...
Can you be a little baby? The baby howls all day, yet its throat never gets hoarse - harmony at its height! The baby makes fists all day, yet its fingers never get cramped - virtue is all it holds to. The baby stares all day without blinking its eyes...
With all the confusion in the world these days, no matter how often I point the way, what good does it do? And if I know it does no good and still make myself do it, this too is a kind of confusion. So it is best to leave things alone and not force t...
What the hell are you getting so upset about?" he asked her bewilderedly in a tone of contrite amusement. "I thought you didn't believe in God." "I don't," she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. "But the God I don't believe in is a good God, a ju...
To Trazada's surprise the Generalissimo laughed, a great subterranean rumbling that shook his gigantic frame like an earthquake. 'Remedios, mia pobre Remedios, they are ignorant. They are afraid. They are stupid and superstitious. Why, most of them t...
No such private nights of ecstasy or hushed-up drinking and sex orgies ever occurred. They might have occurred if either General Dreedle or General Peckem had once evinced an interest in taking part in orgies with him, but neither ever did, and the c...
Right is not right; so is not so. If right were really right, it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument. If so were really so, it would differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argument. F...
