To speak pidgin to a Negro makes him angry, because he himself is a pidgin-nigger-talker. But, I will be told, there is no wish, no intention to anger him. I grant this; but it is just this absence of wish, this lack of interest, this indifference, t...
Lieutenant Welsh remembered walking around among the sleeping men, and thinking to himself that 'they had looked at and smelled death all around them all day but never even dreamed of applying the term to themselves. They hadn't come here to fear. Th...
The best way a writer can find to keep himself going is to live off his (or her) spouse. The trouble is that, psychologically at least, it’s hard. Our culture teaches none of its false lessons more carefully than that one should never be dependent....
In this world where too many are willing to see only the light that is visible, never the Light Invisible, we have a daily darkness that is night, and we encounter another darkness from time to time that is death, the deaths of those we love, but the...
I'd realized then just how strong our connection was, how perfectly we understood each other. I'd been skeptical about people being soul mates in the past, but at that moment, I knew it was true. And the emotional connection had come a physical one. ...
They all knew about me and Dimitri," I said, wondering if I'd be saying any of this sober. "But I never told them we were together." "You didn't have to. It's written all over your face." "They acted like I was his widow or something." "You might a...
Heather leaned toward me and placed a soothing hand on my knee. “It’ll be fine, sweetie. You’ll see.” “I’ve never done anything like this. What if I can’t go through with it? I’ll feel like such a dolt.” “I won’t let that happen...
I’ve never had a reason to survive—no reason to question the way things were. I lived because I was told to…now I live because I want to. I survive because I want to know what is outside the deception we’re buried in, and I want to experience...
She was at that crucial age when a women begins to regret having stayed faithful to a husband she never really loved, when the glowing sunset colors of her beauty offer her one last, urgent choice between maternal and feminine love. At such a moment ...
What we want is never simple. We move among the things we thought we wanted: a face, a room, an open book and these things bear our names -- now they want us. But what we want appears in dreams, wearing disguises. We fall past, holding out our arms a...
He clung to her more tightly, knotting his hands in her hair, trying to tell her, with the press of his mouth on hers, all the things he could never say out loud: I love you; I love you and I don’t care that you’re my sister; don’t be with him,...
This work is not easy, and it never goes smoothly. Because we are hopelessly committed to both individual and group effectiveness, groups committed to public or civic value are rarely permanent. Instead, groups need to acquire a culture that rewards ...
Don't most astrophysicists now predict some "end of the line" - an end to it all? Not just the death of things, but the annihilation of everything. Some great contraction, or collapse. Or, perhaps, some vast dissipation into eternal emptiness. Maybe ...
I adore Wilkie Collins,” Tessa cried. “Oh—Armadale! And The Woman in White … Are you laughing at me?” “Not at you,” said Will, grinning, “more because of you. I’ve never seen anyone get so excited over books before. You’d think th...
The past is a curious thing. It’s with you all the time. I suppose an hour never passes without your thinking of things that happened ten or twenty years ago, and yet most of the time it’s got no reality, it’s just a set of facts that you’ve ...
God had spoken to His people through His Word. It had humbled them in their sins, but it had lifted them up to see the grace and mercy of God, and then had directed them into a new life of obedience. In all our desperate searching for ways to find jo...
Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are. Some people are slow to take offense, which may make you misjudge the thickness of their skin, and fail to worry about insulting them. But should you offend t...
I crave you, mi amor. More than I ever thought a man should a woman. Just when I think I can make it on my own, you say these things that call me home to you. I want to leave, I want to run and never look back, and I'm terrified. Terrified of the fee...
Mr. Passaro, let me teach you about how medicine works.” He starts out. “One of two things is going to happen. Either the Doctors are going to say I told you so, or they are going to say that Jess was the exception. What you believe will determin...
Some things happen to us from which we never recover, and they disrupt the normalcy of our lives. That's how life is. Human nature has a tendency to try to reconstruct old ways and pick up where we left off. If we're wise, we won't continue to go bac...
She smoothes the front of the dress, looking down at her hands, at her bitten fingernails, at her big feet in the pointy-toes shoes. This is a woman's dress, she thinks, a young woman's dress. It is not a girl's dress. It is solidly on the other side...
