My shipmates and I only grasped our roles on the very superficial level we were taught. We were fighting the bad guys. They were the bad guys because we were told that they were the bad guys. We had to control, infiltrate, and shove our authority aro...
You're a wrestler, right, Jake?" Dad asked, passing Jake more saag. My parents were in an Indian food phase. The evening's entree consisted of limp spinach. God forbid we'd throw a few burgers on the grill and just have a barbecue when guests came ov...
Spackle!” Manchee barks, tho he’s too chicken to attack now that I’ve held back. “Spackle! Spackle! Spackle!” “Shut up, Manchee,” I say. “Spackle!” “I said !” I shout, which stops him. “Spackle?” Manchee says, unsure of thin...
He waited a moment, as they walked side by side through the camp, and then asked, 'Sir, if there's something we can't handle how do we handle it anyway?' She either grunted or laughed from the same place that grunts came from. 'Sawtooth wedges and ke...
But you can't fault me on my footnotes. I've worked hard on them and they look pretty impressive. And almost all the sources I quote actually exist. I must confess, however, that the idea of putting footnotes in chapter 5, the autobiographical chapte...
Has anyone ever told you that you're unbearably rude?" she returned, facing him again. "Why, yes. You have on several occasions, as I recall. If you care to apologize for that, however, I'll be happy to escort you wherever you wish to go." A flush cr...
You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring th...
I know what's wrong with me - I could never stand still for death! Which you've got to do by a certain age, or be ridiculous - you've got to stand there nobly and serene, and let death run his tape on your arms and around your belly and up your crotc...
Okay. Now my skin is really prickling. I've read all the Harry Potter books, all five of them. I don't remember any half-blood prince. "What's this?" Trying to sound casual, I point at the ad, "What's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince?" "That's ...
I want you to know that you will not be alone in your loneliness,” he said. Her tear-filled eyes welled over. “You will be surrounded by your court…and all the beautiful ladies there.” Rodrigo shook his head. “I’ve never cared about any o...
His deep voice drifted to her through the crowd of women. “…my lady when she returns. Och, there ye are, Blossom,” Faolán grinned, standing up and taking her hand so she could ease back into the restaurant booth. “These lasses were just aski...
She will not come back, but her beauty, her voice, will echo until the end of time. She believed in something beyond herself, and her death gave her voice power it didn’t have in life. She was pure, like your father. We, you and I”—he touches m...
Now, why did Kitty, who was the falsest thing on earth, who was in tune with every kind of falsity, by merely suffering somehow remind us of reality? Why did her tears reveal to me what I had learned long ago, but had forgotten in my frenzied love, t...
When Sartre says man has been thrown into the world, he is alone, there is no God, we are responsible for what we are, what we do, I say yes!" The affirmative echoed around the woods. The dog pricked up his ears. This man has no one to talk to, thoug...
Like all of my important memories, it has a potency that has influenced the pocket of time that holds it, so I can remember that particular Saturday afternoon, even though in many ways it was no different from any other. I can remember, for example, ...
She seemed dressed in all of me, stretched across my shame. All the torment and the pain leaked through and covered me. I'd do anything to have her to myself. Just to have her for myself Now I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do when she m...
My father prided himself on maintaining traditions that were hundreds of years old. You'll feel as if you've stepped back into the eighteenth century." Her brows lifted in surprise. He could see the wheels turning in her clever brain, but she chose m...
Years ago, when I was working on my master's thesis, I went to New York for a semester as an exchange student. What struck me most was the sky. On that side of the world, so far away from the North Pole, the sky is flat and gray, a one-dimensional un...
An hour would be enough. An hour with my head on the pillow beside yours, foreheads touching, eyes locked with eyes (just the two of us, mind you, minus that sodding cat); an hour to smell the smell of you - garlic and all, I wouldn't mind, no, I wou...
The Rochester group [of VOTF], however, was met with some concern as they found it hard to believe my account as it unfolded before them. I feel that some people have a hard time with the truths around us, not only the sexual abuse by priests, but al...
In my freshman and sophomore years of college, I read dozens of books by the great thinkers of Western civilization. From Plato to Nietzsche, Homer to Shakespeare - you name it, I read it. At times it drove me crazy - picture reading hundreds of page...
