The last remnants of Deanna the child--the idealist, the sheltered elite--had been torn loose by tonight's tragedies, slain with the same bullet that had felled her would-be killer. She had no idea who the new person inhabiting this shell of her old ...
I knew the world too well to believe this sudden smiling. (…) The gods never send us this invitation to delight so readily or so strongly as when they are preparing some new agony. We are their bubbles; they blow us big before they prick us.
People talk about the beauty of the spring, but I can't see it. The trees are brown and bare, slimy with rain. Some are crawling with new purple hairs. And the buds are bulging like tumorous acne, and I can tell that something wet, and soft, and cold...
A smell of burned hair and cotton wafted into the air as I spun toward my desk. There was a low whine from the desk and then smoke billowed out of my closed laptop. I gaped. My precious, perfectly brand new laptop I cherished like one would a small c...
It is not the job for those who are angry about the events of the day to strike out and post things that they hope will incite anger in others as well. Do not sell your social media friends short as far as their ability to find the news for themselve...
We watch death and destruction on TV, in movies, over the news and online so much that it is just a part of our lives. It was never meant to be that way. In the end, we have paid a heavy price for our curiosity.
Do…you…have…a…hard…time…finding…Steve’s dick?” she enunciated, enjoying Mary’s extreme discomfort. “He’s big as a fuckin’ house so I imagine it might be a bit of a problem.” The New Jersey accent that was still there after...
Everything good or bad in my life had started and ended within the limits of that town. It was over now, though, and a new chapter was beginning. Nothing would ever be the same as it had been before. I just hoped this chapter wouldn't be the final on...
New research into cognitive functioning—how the brain works—proves that bullet points are the least effective way to deliver important information. Neuroscientists are finding that what passes as a typical presentation is usually the worst way to...
As long as you wear clothes you love, which suit your body and your personality, it won’t matter if you’re wearing a dress that was in vogue five years ago; you’ll still look amazing. Also, somebody has to START new trends, and that somebody co...
She’s the latest freshest fruit of our great American evolution. She’s the self-made girl! (…) Well, to begin with, the self-made girl’s a new feature. That, however, you know. In the second place she isn’t self-made at all. We all help to ...
I had discovered something; there was a pleasure in becoming something new. You could will yourself into a fresh shape. Now all I had to do was figure out how to do it out there, in my life.
I jerk around and see Sister Dora, a portly woman who's the head cook in the kitchen, staring daggers at me. This is nothing new. She stares daggers at everyone who walks through the lunch line holding a tray, as though our needing sustenance is a pe...
The older I got the more I appreciated the role of travel as a stimulus to memories, and the way in which journeys even to new places were somehow always awakening memories of places seen in an ever-receding past.
Because of the gospel -- the news about what Jesus did on the cross to save sinners -- mothers who make Christ their treasure can rejoice in their work as God works in them.
The greatest drawback to true love was that once true love unexpectedly ends there is no other romance that can replace it. Romance instead becomes a race, with one’s new beau consistently failing to meet up to the grand expectations set by the mea...
Mercy's eyes held equal parts shock, and delight. " " He felt his lips stretch even wider. "I think we need to celebrate with some brand-new etchings." His cat's laugh was surprised and warm and the sound of home. "It's your etchings that got us into...
Past humanity is not only implicit in each new man born but is contained in him. Humanity is an ever-widening spiral and life is the beam that plays briefly on each succeeding ring. All humanity from its beginning to its end is already present but th...
There is usually a moment in the life of a new president when he begins to see himself not as an aspirant desperate to win but as a statesman above the squalor and sweat of actual vote getting. Rising men do not like to be reminded of the smell of th...
I spent my time drinking and staring at a television in the airport bar. More death and destruction. Crime. Pollution. All the news stories were telling me to be frightened. All the commercials were telling me to buy things I didn´t need. The messag...
(Thinking while being interrogated by the Germans) You big shots think you can decide on my life, but I have news for you: you can't touch a hair on my head without the will of God my Father, because He is on my side.
