Are you going to give a speech?' she asked gaily. He gave a choked laugh. 'Of course not,' he said. 'Not for ages.' 'My cousin Davey gave one on his very first day!' ... 'In the Lords, I remember. It was about how he didn't like strawberry jam.' 'Be ...
Sure am glad I'm not royalty," I muttered. "I wouldn't want to have to bump uglies with someone I can't stand. On a regular basis. And no one else." "Ow!" I exclaimed, trying to yank my fingers from Trent but finding them caught. Then I colored, real...
I also knew I had inherited the name of the world's most famous philosopher. I hated that. Everyone expected something from me. Something I just couldn't give. So I renamed myself Ari. If I switched the letter, my name was Air. I thought it might be ...
It was difficult to imagine that a full day hadn't yet passed since we boarded the airliner in New York. I paused. Medieval man believed that one was placed beyond the touch of time, and therefore aging, while attending Mass. What, I wondered, would ...
When you give your heart away, you usually get it back in pieces, fragments. And often, a great deal of time passes before you realize that every piece wasn’t returned to you—and probably never will be. You crave nothing more than to get those sm...
Is Jase already gonna marry you?” I start coughing again. “Uh, No. No, George. I’m only seventeen.” As if that’s the only reason we’re not engaged. “I’m this many.” George holds up four, slightly grubby fingers. “But Jase is seven...
Getting shot hurts. Still my fear was growing because no matter how hard I tried to breath it seemed I was getting less & less air. I focused on that tiled ceiling and prayed. But I realized I couldn't ask for Gods help while at the same time I felt ...
It seemed to me then - and to be honest, sir, seems to me still - that America was engaged only in posturing. As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of yo...
Look now,' Vesna's mother continued, 'what do you know, a civil war might break out any minute: Serbs would fight with Croats, Czechs would fight with Slovaks, Hungarians would fight with Jews. how can you be sure of anything?' 'But, Mother, if this ...
It’s scary. This love thing. The sweet vulnerability of extension. The naked of ‘here I am’. The tentative reaching of outstretched arms. The wide open of hope…Teach me how to be loved. Let me show you how to love me well. School me in the wo...
If this was the true self it was marvelous and what’s more it seemed never to change but always to pick up from the last stop, to continue in the same vein, a vein I had struck when I was a child and went down in the street for the first time alone...
Sir Thomas More was a victim of injustice and irony. Generously and meekly, just as he was about to be martyred, he said: Paul . . . was present, and consented to the death of St. Stephen, and kept their clothes that stoned him to death, and yet be t...
In the end, the record companies have the power to control the quality that is served online. Online service has been problematic in that it actively or discreetly promotes trading and duplication of music. It is not offensive to me that the MP3-quai...
I am Orafoura, but you can call me Jarod Kintz. I’m fairly proud to proclaim that Dora J. Arod has me on her short list of “World’s worst writers.” The list couldn’t get any shorter, because I’m the only name on it. I should tell her to s...
The media are desperately afraid of being accused of bias. And that's partly because there's a whole machine out there, an organized attempt to accuse them of bias whenever they say anything that the Right doesn't like. So rather than really try to r...
De pronto no puedo decirte lo que yo te debo decir, hombre,perdóname; sabrás que aunque no escuches mis palabras no me eché a llorar ni a dormir y que contigo estoy sin verte desde hace tiempo y hasta el fin. I can't just suddenly tell you what I ...
I have been told by the third grade teacher that my daughter Poppet is reading at middle school level. Yet if I leave Poppet a note in block letters telling her to feed the dogs I will come home to find the dogs have been ... given a swim in the abov...
Life is plenty pointless. We're all put here on this earth, such a minuscule thing, really. This tiny Earth, in the midst of an ever-larger universe. We were put here for reasons unbeknownst to us, reasons that may not even exist. And, above all that...
People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise you’d never be confident of things like ‘My wife loves me’. But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day w...
Moral philosophers say things like, ‘What is actually wrong with cannibalism?’ There are two ways of responding to that: one is to shrink back in horror and say, ‘Cannibalism! Cannibalism! We can’t talk about cannibalism!’ The other is to s...
Leave this touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not news nor pottage. I can get politics, and chat, and neighborly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not the soci...
