The sky [above Tehran] was like a star-eaten black blanket, and so far as I could read them its constellations were unfamiliar. Lawrence speaks somewhere of drawing 'strength from the depths of the universe'; Malcolm Lowry speaks about the deadness o...
Page 15, paperback version by Virago Press 1997: ... Let me ask you this, Mr Ai: do you know, by your own experience, what patriotism is?” ‘No’, I said, shaken by the force of the intese personality suddenly turning itself wholly upon me. ‘I ...
There is a great difference between one idler and another idler. There is someone who is an idler out of laziness and lack of character, owing to the baseness of his nature. If you like, you may take me for one of those. Then there is the other kind ...
For me, family means the silent treatment. At any given moment, someone is always not speaking to someone else.' Really,' I said. We're passive-aggressive people,' she explained, taking a sip of her coffee. 'Silence is our weapon of choice. Right now...
Have you any idea how much my kingdom has swollen in this past century alone, how many subdivisions I've had to open?" I opened my mouth to respond, but Hades was on a roll now. More security ghouls," he moaned. "Traffic problems at the judgment pavi...
Then one morning she’d begun to feel her sorrow easing, like something jagged that had cut into her so long it had finally dulled its edges, worn itself down. That same day Rachel couldn’t remember which side her father had parted his hair on, an...
It sounded old. Deserve. Old and tired and beaten to death. Deserve. Now it seemed to him that he was always saying or thinking that he didn't deserve some bad luck, or some bad treatment from others. He'd told Guitar that he didn't 'deserve' his fam...
His eyes darkened in frustration. "I'm tired of waiting, Thalia. I'm not a patient person. You have to know." "What do you mean, Keal? You know I like Joss." I tried to move away again, but his hands on either side of me pinned me in. Keal's determin...
The survivor movements were also challenging the notion of a dysfunctional family as the cause and culture of abuse, rather than being one of the many places where abuse nested. This notion, which in the 1990s and early 1980s was the dominant underst...
During those times, they'd stand there watching me watching them. I'd pray, please. Put a pillow to my face. Clench a hand around my throat. Stab me. Shoot me. Put me out of everyone's misery. Why did you give birth to such a loser? Why didn't you ad...
In un angolo remoto, cupamente illuminato dai bagliori della fiamma, vidi un gran mucchio di monete e quadrilateri costruiti con lingotti d'oro. Era quello il tesoro di Flint che eravamo venuti a cercare da così lontano, e che diciassette uomini del...
I think Dr. Willis McNelly at the California State University at Fullerton put it best when he said that the true protagonist of an sf story or novel is an idea and not a person. If it is *good* sf the idea is new, it is stimulating, and, probably mo...
Hundreds of people began to care in a personal way about the suffering of farm workers because they care about you and learned that you were willing to go to jail with striking farm workers,” Chris wrote the delegates from the Jesuit spirituality c...
Mostly she just missed Vaughn. Missed all those quiet, unspectacular moments that, when added up, showed how entwined their lives had become. And right now, she missed being able to phone him, because it would be so easy to tap in the eleven digits t...
YOUR ABUSIVE PARTNER DOESN’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HIS ANGER; HE HAS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR ANGER. One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him. No matter how badly he treats you, he believes that your voice sho...
I thought of Sammy Glick rocking in his cradle of hate, malnutrition, prejudice, suspicions, amorality, the anarchy of the poor; I thought of him as a mangy puppy in a dog-eat-dog world. I was modulating my hate for Sammy Glick from the personal to t...
Then don't. I can't help you. They say that women dream of danger to those in their care and men of danger to themselves. But I don't dream at all. You say you can't? Then don't do it. That's all. Because I am done with my own whorish heart and I hav...
I’ve got a question for you… Are you the person who you thought you’d be by now? I know I am not. The fact is that life may not be what you thought it would be by now (If It is, I congratulate you & applaud you) You may feel stuck in a job you ...
When I first read Lovecraft around 1971, and even more so when I began to read about his life, I immediately knew that I wanted to write horror stories. I had read Arthur Machen before I read Lovecraft, and I didn’t have that reaction at all. It wa...
There’s a huge difference in sex and making love. We have sex with someone who can satisfy us physically, but we make love to someone who can satisfy us soulfully and eternally. Once you realize the fine-line between making love and having sex, you...
Growing up means learning what life is. When you're little, you have a set of ideals, standards, criteria, plans, outlooks, and you think that you have to sit around and wait for them to happen to you and then life will work. But life isn't like that...
