So, how is it that you don’t have a girlfriend?” I asked boldly. Joel shrugged. “Have you ever had a girlfriend?” There was no way that he’d never had a girlfriend. He shrugged again. “You’re not serious.” “You’re surprised?” �...
Yes?" she asked, eyeing me guardedly. I struck out a hand and said "Shake." Arra stared at the hand, then into my unfocused eyes. "One good fight doesn't make you a warrior," she said. "Shake!" I repeated angrily. "And if I don't?" she asked. "I'll g...
Not wanting the girls to endure the shame of a crazy mother, I spent my days acting as normal as possible. I walked through life, an actor in a Leave it to Beaver episode, determined to disguise all clues of my real condition until... well, until I c...
As the night air started to creep in, he lifted her in his arms and walked the back way to their home on campus. He spent the evening digging her grave, not even caring who came his way. He didn’t care whether he lived or died, now that he had lost...
Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy….The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the city because they know the city; but it will always be an exceptional sort of citizen who h...
I may not have any power over it at the moment, but at some point that must change. I can be very patient. I am the end of all things, nephew mine. I shall be the last. When birth has ended, I wil cut Clotho's cord, and she will be no more. The time ...
Finally, from what we now know about the cosmos, to think that all this was created for just one species among the tens of millions of species who live on one planet circling one of a couple of hundred billion stars that are located in one galaxy amo...
The tides of time should be able to imprint the passing of the years on an object. The physical decay or natural wear and tear of the materials used does not in the least detract from the visual appeal, rather it adds to it. It is the changes of text...
The tides of time should be able to imprint the passing of the years on an object. They physical decay or natural wear and tear of the materials used does not in the least detract from the visual appeal, rather it adds to it. It is the changes of tex...
I remember a scared, young girl hiding in the guise of arrogance and rebellion. I remember feeling lost in a world where everyone else seemed to have it all figured out. I remember the tears of pain, the rants of anger and the hell that seemed to hav...
Strangers when you meet, strangers when you part -a gymnasium of bodies namelessly masturbating each other. People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or to love. So they became swingers. T...
Grandma Donna passed the oyster stuffing and asked my father straight out what he was working on, it being so obvious his thoughts were not with us. She meant it as a reprimand. He was the only one at the table who didn't know this, or else he was ig...
Sometimes we scratch, claw and climb so hard to conquer a mountain that, once achieved, we cling to its summit much too long and it ultimately instigates our fall. As we dangle by our fingertips we grasp and claw at what’s no more; with a fear of f...
I do think your brother grows more peculiar every day,' I complain to Edward when he comes to my rooms in Whitehall Palace to escort me to dinner. 'Which one?' he asks lazily. 'For you know I can do nothing right in the eyes of either. You would thin...
For me- and for everybody else, probably- this is my first experience growing old, and the emotions I'm having, too, are all first-time feelings. If it were something I'd experienced before, then I'd be able to understand it more clearly, but this is...
Max had to think about these new developments. He hadn't liked getting hit by a rock--his stomach still ached from then rock Judith had thrown--but then again, when his team had used rocks on Alexander, it had caused him to surrender. Now the Bad Guy...
I will insist you be man enough to take it. I won’t have you making light of my feelings, or making light of yourself—as if you’re not worthy of them. Because you are worthy, Colin. You’re a generous, good-hearted person, and you deserve to b...
Many people close themselves off from the world when they are under pressure. That is understandable. I have gone through periods when I didn’t want to meet people because I didn’t feel good about my situation in life and that made my life even m...
when we were kids laying around the lawn on our bellies we often talked about how we'd like to die and we all agreed on the same thing; we'd all like to die fucking (although none of us had done any fucking) and now that we are hardly kids any longer...
The very purpose of designing the Temple of Jerusalem as a series of ever more restrictive ingressions was to maintain the priestly monopoly over who can and cannot come into the presence of God and to what degree. The sick, the lame, the leper, the ...
What was behind this smug presumption that what pleased you was bad or at least unimportant in comparison to other things? … Little children were trained not to do “just what they liked’ but … but what? … Of course! What others liked. And w...
