We would be in each other's lives again. No, he hadn't been the best father, but he was my father, and we loved each other. We needed each other. Though he'd disappointed me countless times through the years, life had already proven too short for me ...
Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful to me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having ...
The odor of burning sulphur shifted on the night air, acrid, a little foul. Somewhere, the Canaan dwellers had learned of a supplier of castor - an extract from the beaver's perineal glands. Little packets containing the brown-orange mass of dried an...
And what does he feel?" "He feels uneasy. A little afaid. Angry. Oddly, a hint of pride." "Good," Henry said. "ANd where are you?" "Backstage." Henry shook his head gravely. "THere's no such thing as backstage. The play begins, and there's only the w...
Secrets have power,” Widget begins. “And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, bec...
Woolrich had a genius for creating types of story perfectly consonant with his world: the noir cop story, the clock race story, the waking nightmare, the oscillation thriller, the headlong through the night story, the annihilation story, the last hou...
Six-Pack didn't despise George W. Bush to the degree that Ketchum did, but she thought the president was a smirking twerp and a dumbed-down daddy's boy, and she agreed with Ketchum's assessment that Bush would be as worthless as wet crap in even the ...
We're a lukewarm people for all our feast days and hard work. Not much touches us, but we long to be touched. We lie awake at night willing the darkness to part and show us a vision. Our children frighten us in their intimacy, but we make sure they g...
Sala called for more drink and Sweep brought four rums, saying they were on the house. We thanked him and sat for another half hour, saying nothing. Down on the waterfront I could hear the slow clang of a ship’s bell as it eased against the pier, a...
I sometimes have moments of such despair, such despair … Because in those moments I start to think that I will never be capable of beginning to live a real life; because I have already begun to think that I have lost all sense of proportion, all se...
For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving a...
Martin thought of the iron El trestles winding and stretching across the city, of department store windows and hotel lobbies, of electric elevators and street-car ads, of the city pressing its way north on both sides of the great park, of dynamos and...
BOTTOM There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisby that will never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladies cannot abide. How answer you that? SNOUT By'r lakin, a parlous fear. STARVELING I believe we must ...
Sonnet LXXXI And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream. Love and pain and work should all sleep, now. The night turns on its invisible wheels, and you are pure beside me as a sleeping ember. No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You...
Yet I never sought what is real, yearned for the real, but rather I have yearned for dreams more than solid things. I can say I love the textures of dreams. The way they hover and almost taste. The clouds and darkness that linger behind, mostly unsee...
They're kicking us out saying it's time to close We're leaning on each other try'na beat the cold Carry your shoes and I give you my coat Walking these streets like they're paved gold Anymore excuses is not to go Neither one of us want to take that t...
You once said that you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with o...
It is a dreadful thing to wait and watch for the approach of death; to know that hope is gone, and recovery impossible; and to sit and count the dreary hours through long, long, nights - such nights as only watchers by the bed of sickness know. It ch...
[longer introduction to "Night On Bald Mountain" and "Ave Maria"] Narrator: The last number in our Fantasia program is a combination of two pieces of music so utterly different in construction and mood that they set each other off perfectly. The firs...
[first lines] Sig Mickelson: In 1935, Ed Murrow began his career with CBS. When World War II broke out, it was his voice that brought the Battle of Britain home to us, through his "This Is London" radio series. He started with us all, many of us here...
Sheriff Leigh Brackett: I have a feeling that you're way off on this. Dr. Sam Loomis: You have the wrong feeling. Sheriff Leigh Brackett: You're not doing very much to prove me wrong! Dr. Sam Loomis: What more do you need? Sheriff Leigh Brackett: Wel...