Women's lib, Frannie had decided, was nothing more nor less than an outgrowth of the technological society. Women were at the mercy of their bodies. They were smaller. They tended to be weaker. A man couldn't get with child, but a woman could---every...
She was satisfied with the answer God had given Moses from the burning bush when Moses had seen fit to question. Who are you? Mose asks, and God comes back from that bush just as pert as you like: I Am, Who I AM. In other words, Mose, stop beatin aro...
But before [William Stoner] the future lay bright and certain and unchanging. He saw it, not as a flux of event and change and potentiality, but as a territory ahead that awaited his exploration. He saw it as the great University library, to which ne...
And the vampires. You used to know where you stood with them – smelly, evil, undead – but now there are virtuous vampires and disreputable vampires, and sexy vampires and glittery vampires, and none of the old rules about them are true any more. ...
There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting; It’s luring me on as of old; Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting So much as just finding the gold. It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder, It’s the forests where silence has lea...
Okay, let's see if I got this straight. The butt is the new breast, and the lower back is the new ankle. Now if only we could figure out where the brain has moved.
... when she called to mind all this utter and crushing misery that had come upon my aunts' old music-master, she was moved to very real grief, and shuddered to think of that other grief, so different in its bitterness, which Mlle. Vinteuil must now ...
Frozen yogurt is tastier than ice cream, nobody is too old for cartoons, bald men are sexy, chocolate is the best medicine, BIG books are better, cats secretly rule the planet, and everything should be available in the color pink, including monster t...
[Gina] I got them Bad Old Cosmic C-Word Blues Again. [Mark] What does ‘c-word’ mean? [Gina] It means continuing to believe even when you don’t feel it. Not letting go even when you can’t find squat to hold onto. Going all the way from the beg...
They urge us to study our history that we might learn from past tragedies and errors. But sometimes I think it's actually a good thing that humanity so easily forgets. The haze that eventually claims old suffering often enables us to move on.
Though I loved the wired world, the new-wave librarians, the avatars and activists, I turned into a dinosaur in that library. I couldn’t help it; I was an old-fashioned writer who loved the ancient books summoned via pneumatic tubes, the archives, ...
The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, li...
It was all about money. Dirty, bloody money. It can come and go so easily. They don't see that life is what's important. Love, friendship, trust, respect, a daily routine, someone to grow old with, siblings to cherish, family, a home; things people d...
There are lots of superheroes with different superpowers, and some of them are big and flashy, like super strength and super speed, and molecular restructuring, and force fields. But these abilities are really not so different from the superpower stu...
I'll tell you something of the forbidden horrors she led me into - something of the age-old horrors that even now are festering in out-of-the-way corners with a few monstrous priests to keep them alive. Some people know things about the universe that...
On January 24th, Apple computers will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.” – Old Hollywood film director Sir Ridley Scott’s classic “1984” Apple Macintosh commercial, first aired 15 Dec. 1983, Top Ten Commer...
The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no pri...
In the shop, breathing the scent of dusty grease and oil; in the old house, staring into the living room where Dad and Jake used to take naps together on the couch; in the sheep barn, remembering the joy implicit in so much baaing life; in every inch...
Old Madame du Deffand and her friends talked for fifty years without stopping. And of it all, what remains? Perhaps three witty sayings. So that we are at liberty to suppose either that nothing was said, or that nothing witty was said, or that the fr...
Aw, man. I’d just shot an angel in the face.I made my way into the foyer and sat down on the stairs. I glanced up at the big old grandfather clock. It was going on ten. My folks would be home soon. “How was your evening, honey?” “Killed an an...
The shots left a hard ringing sound within the closeness of the brick walls. Terry held the pistol at arm's length on a level with his eyes--the Russian Tokarev resembling an old-model Colt .45, big and heavy--and made the sign of the cross with it o...
