Maybe that’s why I get frustrated sometimes, because there’s no one to blame for how our lives have turned out. I wouldn’t change any of the things I’ve done, but at the same time I wish things were different than they are. I have no regrets,...
She never thought she'd be into sex that was so overwhelming and desperate, but after that night on the dining room table she started eyeing his furniture in a whole new way. Would he take her on the couch in the formal living room? Or how about the ...
I was doing my little stand up shtick, the one I did for pretty girls, so they'd like me quickly and wouldn't try too hard to actually get to know me beyond my role as wisecracking Cameron, the orphan. Maybe it was a little like flirting, but also a ...
This was something she would keep hidden within herself, maybe in place of the knot of pain and anger she had been carrying under her breastbone...a security blanket, an ace up her sleeve. She might never use it, but she would always feel its presenc...
Marla poked Duncan. He stepped forward. "Maybe I can help." Atomic Jack looked at him., his eyes glowed a sickening shade of radioactive orange. "I really don't see how." He slipped off his glove and his hand burst into small flames. The guy didn't y...
So, how’d you get the tattoo?” she said. “Drunken frat boys don’t say no to things their drunken frat brothers are telling them to do.” “That almost sounds like an admission of weakness from the invulnerable Andrew Sheffield.” “Not we...
I see love, like art, as an obsession. Maybe that's an overly romantic view of human existence, but I'm an overly romantic human being. If love, like rock and roll, doesn't consume me 24-7, it's not love. It can be respect, appreciation, admiration, ...
There’s a long, uncomfortable silence in which I contemplate what might happen next. Maybe like the villain in a movie, this is where she gives me a long spiel about her hard-up life before she kills me. Not that I totally believe she’s nefarious...
The culture you live in today is the culture you have allowed. That is true of your family, and it is true of your country. "Never forget that you will shape the culture in which you exist, or the culture you allow will determine how and - maybe some...
She needs you, Dad," Julia says. "She has unfinished business in this world." "What is the matter with you?" Charlie asks his daughter. "Any sane person would have told me to go to the doctor. I'm seeing a headless apparition every day. Maybe my medi...
He made a small sigh, as he swallowed the first blood, then his mouth closed over my earlobe, mouth working at the wound, tongue coaxing blood from the wound. He pressed his body the length of mine, one hand cupping my turned head, the other playing ...
I have lightning and wind powers," Jason reminded him. "Piper can turn beautiful and charm people into giving her BMWs. You're no more a freak than we are. And, hey, maybe you can fly, too. Like jump off a building and yell 'Flame on!'" Leo snorted. ...
The streetlight outside my house shines on tonight and I'm watching it like it could give me a vision. James ain't talked ever and he looks at that streetlight like it was a word and maybe like it was a verb. James wanted to streetlight me and make m...
When He'd told his mother he wanted to go to military school so he could though up, she'd given him a strange look. (Not as strange as if he'd said he wanted to go to demon-fighting school so he could drink from the Mortal Cup, Ascend to the ranks of...
She smiled, pulling the photo a little closer, and I wondered if I should ask her, too, the question for my project, get her definition. But as she ran a finger slowly across the faces, identifying each one, it occurred to me that maybe this was her ...
Brrr, who had never admired books particularly...didn't remember that a mere book might reek of sex, possibility, fecundity. Yet a book has a ripe furrow and a yielding spine, he thought, and the nuances to be teased from its pages are nearly infinit...
Shanta now addressed Jeebleh: "Did you know that in everyday Somali the term 'amerikaan' means 'weird'? Why do you think that is so?" ('American' means 'weird'.) .... Jeebleh said. "Maybe it came about as a result of the Hollywood movies we've seen?"...
A telkhine was hunched over a console, but he was so involved with his work, he didn't notice us. He was about five feet tall, with slick black seal fur and stubby little feet. He had the head of a Doberman, but his clawed hands were almost human. He...
Percy," Apollo said, "I wouldn't worry too much. The last Great Prophecy about took almost seventy years to complete. This one may not even happen in your lifetime." I thought about the lines Rachel had spoken in that creepy voice: about storm and fi...
I still believe in you, as a writer, but the only stuff we ever had in common doesn't travel very far." "What stuff is that?" he'd asked her. "We're completely at ease being naked in front of strangers and total fuckheads", she'd told him. Maybe that...
You are well aware of your effect on women, and I'm sure it gratifies you no end to watch them sigh and salivate over your magnificent physique. I do not wish to spoil your fun, Dain, but I do ask you to consider my pride and refrain from embarrassin...