All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for mould...
I would have stolen it for you, had I known you were interested." His voice was muffled by the door to the lumber room down the hallway, and I heard thumps and a crash. I raised my voice a trifle more than mere volume required. "I'm interested becaus...
He swallowed and shifted his weight a little uneasily, and then said, very quietly, his lips almost touching hers, 'Promise me you'll marry me. Not now. Someday. Because I need to know." Claier felt a flutter inside, like a bird trying to fly, and a ...
I love this world," he added. "That is what rules my life. When I die, I want to have done all in my power to leave it in a better state than it was when I found it. At the same time I know that this can never be. The world has grown so complex that ...
There is a strange duality in the human which makes for an ethical paradox. We have definitions of good qualities and of bad; not changing things, but generally considered good and bad throughout the ages and throughout the species. Of the good, we t...
Forse sapevano, un po' meglio degli altri, decifrare, o magari suscitare, questi segni favorevoli. Le loro orecchie, le loro dita, il loro palato, come se fossero stati costantemente all'erta, aspettavano solo questi istanti propizi, scatenabili con ...
En 1492, los nativos descubrieron que eran indios, descubrieron que vivían en América, descubrieron que estaban desnudos, descubrieron que existía el pecado, descubrieron que debían obediencia a un rey y a una reina de otro mundo y a un dios de o...
livid, Fuck You for cheating on me. Fuck you for reducing it to the word cheating. As if this were a card game, and you sneaked a look at my hand. Who came up with the term anyway? A cheater, I imagine. Someone who thought was too harsh. Someone who ...
As Master Nathaniel jogged leisurely along his thoughts turned to the Farmer Gibberty, who many a time must have jogged along this path, in just such a way, and seen and heard the very same things that he was seeing and hearing now. Yes, the Farmer G...
He leaned her back against the tub, setting her head on the edge, then washed her shoulders. "I know I left you once." She opened her mouth, wanting to say it didn't matter, it was forgotten. But it wasn't. "I know I hurt you." Again, she wanted to a...
The lights were off so that his heads could avoid looking at each other because neither of them was currently a particular engaging sight, nor had they been since he had made the error of looking into his soul. It had indeed been an error. It had bee...
The most flattering spin I can put on this phase of paradoxes and metaphysical tangles is that I was smart enough, at age fourteen, to destroy any fledgling hypothesis I came up with. A tentative explanation, theory, or formulation would pop up in my...
Something amazing happens when the rest of the world is sleeping. I am glued to my chair. I forget that I ever wanted to do anything but write. The crowded city, the crowded apartment, and the crowded calendar suddenly seem spacious. Three or four ho...
In fact, Lig never formally resigned his editorship—he merely left his office late one morning, and has never returned since. Though well over a century has now passed, many members of the Guide staff still retain the romantic notion that he has si...
Before the war Sofya Levinton had once said to Yevgenia Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova, 'If one man is fated to be killed by another, it would be interesting to trace the gradual convergence of their paths. At the start they might be miles away from one an...
He was telling her here, in this cellar, as he kissed her feet, he had understood love for the first time - not just from other people's words, but in his heart, in his blood. She was dearer to him than all his past, dearer to him than his mother, th...
But this was suddenly interrupted, William Bankes remembered (and this must refer to some actual incident), by a hen, straddling her wings out in protection of a covey of little chicks, upon which Ramsay, stopping, pointed his stick and said "Pretty�...
Holly clambered after him, struggling up the human-size steps. "Wait! Just wait," she called, overtaking Artemis and looking him in the eye from one step up. "I know you, Artemis. You like to play your genius card close to your chest until the big re...
O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish; Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave...
There it was before her - life. Life: she thought but she did not finish her thought. She took a look at life, for she had a clear sense of it there, something real, something private, which she shared neither with her children nor with her husband. ...
Slant narrowed his eyes. “Do the Clans walk alone into the final battle?” Half Moon flattened her ears. “Never alone!” She lifted her chin. “I will fight alongside Jayfeather.” Broken Shadow unsheathed her claws. “And I will fight along...
