You know how they say that right before you die your life flashes before your eyes? It doesn’t. That is just a notion they came up with for books and movies to make death seem romantic. Here’s what really happens: Your intestines feel like a dish...
I know, I know…there’s something cliché about that. The heroine initially wanting to clobber a protagonist male, but later realizing that he’s grown on her and she actually really likes him. Technically, I’m not supposed to find that appeali...
He didn't mean I couldn't leave, he meant I couldn't leave leave. If he meant I couldn't even take out the trash and had to stay inside all the time, that would result in a vitamin D deficiency and I would get scurvy and turn pale, wither, and die an...
What happened next… well, I'm going to blame it on the fact that I was scared. And I had just flown or fallen or something through about eighty years worth of Time. Or maybe it was the beans. I farted. I farted loud enough that it echoed around the...
The seeking of a mate shall be undertaken with due preparation and care. A life-bond should never be contemplated as a light thing--unlike a legal union or sanctified joining, the sealing of souls CANNOT be severed. When a mate is SOULBOUND to anothe...
Every fairy tale, it seems, concludes with the bland phrase "happily ever after." Yet every couple I have ever known would agree that nothing about marriage is forever happy. There are moments of bliss, to be sure, and lengthy spans of satisfied comp...
They were contemplating moving into another house or, more exactly, loudly saying to each other, so as to be overheard by anyone who might be listening, that they were contemplating moving, when all at once the fiend was gone, as happens with the , t...
You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of color in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across ...
George was full of hatred. Of his own weakness and stupidity, of his magic, of the stubbornness and the pride of Beatrice and Marit, and, last of all, hatred of Dr. Gharn, who had started it all. But the hatred swayed to pity. Then to hopelessness. T...
A stab had clearly once been made at de-uglifying these public spaces by painting a corridor a jaunty yellow. This was because, it turned out, babies come here to have their brains tested and someone thought the yellow might calm them. But I couldn�...
Once upon a time, the Reindeer took a running leap and jumped over the Northern Lights. But he jumped too low, and the long fur of his beautiful flowing tail got singed by the rainbow fires of the aurora. To this day the reindeer has no tail to speak...
Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by so...
They cleared swiftly, dramatically, like a stage set or a movie; we went from black to stunning blue, the day emerging at once wet and crisp, the trees dripping jewels, the flowers drunk on drinking, their heads lolling with dizzy delight, rivulets e...
Wrath crawled out from the well, on direction from Hell, to get back what it once lost. With vengeance in mind, it set out to find, a specified soul to accost. When the Hell-well beckoned, Mother’s will now reckoned, her dead soul now wholly enslav...
Once, in a three-day taping that included several sadists, the material was so overwhelming that both the film crew and I got sick - I with a sinus infection, and the entire film crew with a flu so severe they had to delay their departure from the mo...
But what were you supposed to do with that weight? Once it was on you? Just be a man? Just suck it up? Maybe you were. Maybe that was the real test. Maybe that is exactly the thing that made you a man: the ability to function with the worst possible ...
Yet Katie held fast to the dream that perhaps there were men in the world who appreciated good women - men capable of loving a woman enough to die for her. Something had to inspire the heroes in fairy tales and books. Her Aunt Augusta always said it ...
How do you even know I'm someone you'll want to remember? We've only seen each other once before.' (Amber) 'Have you ever looked at a painting and known you had something in common with it? Have you ever seen something so beautiful you feel like cryi...
We say that flowers return every spring, but that is a lie. It is true that the world is renewed. It is also true that that renewal comes at a price, for even if the flower grows from an ancient vine, the flowers of spring are themselves new to the w...
Are you waiting for someone to come and get you?” I whisper. I sound small and thirsty. He doesn’t answer. Instead, he bends his head and kisses me, just once, then let’s me go. When Connor would kiss Angelie in the halls last spring, he did it...
Listen carefully, Lucas Steele, because I will only say this once. I am NOT your mate, I will never be your mate, and if you ever put your hands on me again I will cut them off along with other body parts you might want to use one day. Got it?" Jacqu...
