Ivanov's fear was of a literary nature. That is, it was the fear that afflicts most citizens who, one fine (or dark) day, choose to make the practice of writing, and especially the practice of fiction writing, an integral part of their lives. Fear of...
His touch was like an electric current that ran through his fingers into my cheek and down the back of my neck. I took another step back, away from him. "Don't do that," I whispered and hated the part of myself that died for his soft touch. "Why? Why...
Well, I guess it’s all in God’s hands anyway. He has a way of making things turn out,” Mattie asserted. “Yes, He does. Doesn’t He? Thank you for reminding me of that, Mattie.” She gave her friend a hug. “Sometimes it’s hard not to sec...
In the kitchen, her family nibbled Helen’s lemon squares. Melanie urged brownies on the nurses. “Take these,” she told Lorraine. “We can’t eat them all, but Helen won’t stop baking.” “Sweetheart,” Lorraine said, “everybody mourns ...
But as Van casually directed the searchlight of backthought into that maze of the past where the mirror-lined narrow paths not only took different turns, but used different levels (as a mule-drawn cart passes under the arch of a viaduct along which a...
I couldn't tell anyone how I felt because I knew they wouldn't understand. Oh, poor little Christina, falling for the bad man who treats her like dirt because she didn't know any better. And isn't it a pity that they don't still teach sex-ed in schoo...
I know what I really want for Christmas. I want my childhood back. Nobody is going to give me that. I might give at least the memory of it to myself if I try. I know it doesn't make sense, but since when is Christmas about sense, anyway? It is about ...
I darted away from Geir and jmped through the gaping hole in the wall Will's body had made. The settling dust choked me, but I made it through and ran to Will. He was struggling to his feet, leaning heavily on his sword as the point dug into the cold...
Once there was a dictator. He drove millions to various kinds of deaths, by war, in prison, or simply in harsh deserts farming their lives away. He destroyed temples, burned books, and ruined the art of calligraphy. He wrote terrible poetry and force...
Her heart sprang up into her throat. Watching that shadow play was like paying a quarter for a peep show. Only she got it for free. He thinks I'm pretty. Butterflies did a dance around her heart before she could swat them away. Behind the shade. his ...
Lexie,” he said, his voice guttural, “I told you this to wake you up. A man like me isn’t capable of being your fucking white knight.” His fingers peeled my hand from his neck and he gently pressed me away. I felt the anger boil up inside me....
To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace...
The idea of Zen is to catch life as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. I raise my hand ; I take a book from the other side of the desk ; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond...
I Don’t Know whether lust is a human coarseness or a human fineness: I don’t know why death holds a so sweet lure since it would take away my Body: I don’t know that I wouldn’t deny my Christ, if I had one, three times before a given cockcrow...
The Nevernever is dying, human. It grows smaller and smaller every decade. Too much progress, too much technology. Mortals are losing their faith in anything but science. Even the children of man are consumed by progress. They sneer at the old storie...
Dad fastens his knife jacket before putting his black pea coat on. He’s like a walking armoury. He has two guns on either side of his chest secured in his black shoulder holsters, an array of magazines on his belt and of course the knives. I don’...
Many well-meaning Dutch people have told me in all earnestness that nothing in Islamic culture incites abuse of women, that this is just a terrible misunderstanding. Men all over the world beat their women, I am constantly informed. In reality, these...
The energy you drew on so extravagantly when you were a kid, the energy you thought would never exhaust itself - that slipped away somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four, to be replaced by something much duller, something as bogus as a coke high:...
I was beginning to understand something I couldn't articulate. It was a jazzy feeling in my chest, a fluttering, a kind of buzzing in my brain. Warmth. Life. The circulation of blood. Sanguinity. I don't know. I understood the enormous risk of tellin...
She would be quiet at first. Then she would say a word about something small, something she had noticed, and then another word, and another, each one flung out like a little piece of sand, one from this direction, another form behind, more and more, ...
The man walked past me and stopped, observing the blood running down my neck. "Your injury. Let us tend to it." He looked out through the open doorway and silently gestured to someone out there. "Our world," he said, "is far more advanced than yours....
