On my seventh birthday, my father swore, for the first of many times, that I would die facedown in a cesspool. On that same occasion, my mother, with all the accompanying mystery and elevated language appropriate for a prominent diviner, turned her c...
Believing himself to be unseen by other bathers, he gave himself up to being alone with his body. He wriggled his toes, breathed hard through his nose, twisted his brown moustache where some drops of water still clung, and looked himself critically a...
I wanted to know what had created the chasm in his spirit. Maybe it was a broken heart. Or maybe it had always been there, like mine. Because really, I could blame my existential sadness on a lot of issues, but the truth is, it’s been a part of me ...
She was right: school was lonely. The eighteen and nineteen year olds didn't socialize with the younger kids, and though there were plenty of students my age and younger [...] their lives were so cloistered and their concerns so foolish and foreign-s...
How is Angeline?" asked Dimitri. "Is she improving?" Eddie and I exchanged glances. So much for avoiding her indiscretions. "improving how exactly?" I asked. "Improving how exactly?" I asked. "In combat, in following the dress code, or in keeping her...
One not only wants to be understood when one writes, but also quite as certainly not to be understood. It is by no means an objection to a book when someone finds it unintelligible: perhaps this might just have been the intention of its author, perha...
Even the king's Erkynguard might have wished to be elsewhere, rather than here on this killing ground where duty brought them and loyalty prisoned them. Only the mercenaries were here by choice. To Simon, the minds of men who would come to this of th...
And then there were cats, thought Dog. He'd surprised the huge ginger cat from next door and had attempted to reduce it to cowering jelly by means of the usual glowing stare and deep-throated growl, which had always worked on the damned in the past. ...
Don't tell me from genetics. What've they got to do with it?" said Crowley. "Look at Satan. Created as an angel, grows up to be the Great Adversary. Hey, if you're going to go on about genetics, you might as well say the kid will grow up to be an ang...
A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with 'Got To Get You Off My Mind', but then realised that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I del...
While you might think the choices that leave no regrets behind are the minimal ones and the casual ones and the safe ones, I believe the opposite is true. Regret happens when we are still left with “what if.” Regret is the result of leaving a sto...
The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, l...
I am overweight. But to me, it's fat. I don't have Body Dysmorphic Disorder. When I look in the mirror I don't plunge into a depression and stick my finger down my throat or carve FAT in my arm with a pickle fork. I can appreciate when I look good as...
An apple a day might have kept the doctor away prior to the industrialization of food growing and preparation. But, according to research compiled by the United States Drug Administration (USDA) today’s apple contains residue of eleven different ne...
You said just now, "Don't be so ashamed of yourself, because that's the root of your trouble"––with those words, you seem to have reached right into my innermost soul. What I mean is, when I visit people, I always feel that I'm really the lowest ...
If you don't believe in God, it may help to remember this great line of Geneen Roth's: that awareness is learning to keep yourself company. And then learn to be more compassionate company, as if you were somebody you are fond of and wish to encourage...
I don’t know where dreams come from. Sometimes I wonder if they’re genetic memories, or messages from something divine. Warnings perhaps. Maybe we do come with an instruction booklet but we’re too dense to read it, because we’ve dismissed it ...
I feign knowledge of writing: that I know something about it, that I should have learned something after all these years, that I might know something tomorrow. I read too much and write too little, or write too much and live too little. I have no cla...
Caleb dumped me on my birthday, Before I’d ordered an entrée, “What a dick!” some might say! But don’t you worry my little sheep, I am not sad and will not weep, For Caleb Jones is a cheat! He two-timed me with some ho, Whose name is Kacey �...
She threw up her hands. "All right. Why not?" Why not?" Sure." His arms fell to his sides. "That's it? I pour my heart out. I love you so much I've got freakin' tears in my eyes. And all I get in return is 'Why not'?" What did you expect? Am I suppos...
I wish I worried about my uncle's opinions, and had problems to work out with my mom. Hell, I'd settle for knowing what her voice sounded like." I put a hand on her shoulder. "Trite but true—you don't know what you have until it's gone. People chan...
