Tempting as it may be to draw one conclusion or another from my story and universalize it to apply to another's experience, it is not my intention for my book to be seen as some sort of cookie-cutter approach and explanation o...
You arrogant...” thrust through the stomach of a snapping zombie, twisting and using all my strength to cleave him in half “... over published...” wasn't going to work, it clawed at the blade, and my God, these things were tough, “...showy ol...
I am both numb and oversensitive, overwhelmed by the need, the raw and desperate need of the girls I am listening to and trying to help. I'm overdosing on the trauma of others, while still barely healing from my own. I cry for hour at home and have f...
Right there in that room, listening to the tape Laura gave me, I decided that I wanted something more than what I’d allowed myself to become. Listening to the voices and piano notes fade in and out, I decided that I wanted to be happy. If I had to ...
Ik wilde niet aan haar denken en me op de mantra concentreren: MAAA, zei ik bij het inademenen en OEEMMM bij het uitademen. MAAA... het was vast al bijna twee uur... OEEMMM. MAAA... je zou het niet zeggen, maar die lotushouding zat niet echt lekker.....
My mother lived alone in the ruins of the great Library, which was called Compleat, and a very passionate and dashing Library indeed. Under the slightly blackened rafters and more than slightly caved-in walls, my mother lived and read and dreamed, al...
People talk about nightfall, or night falling, or dusk falling, and it’s never seemed right to me. Perhaps they once meant befalling. As in night befalls. As in night happens. Perhaps they, whoever they were, thought of a falling sun. That might be...
Her mind moved around and around the subject, moving with a kind of fuzzy firmness. With no coherent thought process, she arrived at a conviction - a habit with the basically insecure; an insecurity whose seeds are invariably planted earlier, in unde...
Then to give the kids a historical perspective, Chacko told them about the earth woman. He made them imagine that the earth - 4600 million years old - was a 46 year old woman- as old as Aleyamma teaacher, who gave them Malayalam lessons. It had taken...
Have you ever been in a large forest and seen a strange black tarn hidden deep among the leaves? It looks bewitched and a little frightening. All is still — fir trees and pines huddle close and silent on all sides. Sometimes the trees bend cautious...
What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person? People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers ...
What’s your rank of choice?” Juliet started, nearly spilling her cup of lemonade. “Pardon?” Drake gestured to all the other men in the room. “Every rank from a duke down to a second son who became a vicar is available for your choosing. Any...
So we're getting close to suggesting that camp is both the opposite of cool and a refinement of it. Camp and cool both have an element of not-caring, of disdain for the ordinary. The difference is that cool implies a lack of conscious effort, whereas...
When the meat platter was passed to me, I didn't even know what the meat was; usually, you couldn't tell, anyway-but it was suddenly as though _don't eat any more pork_ flashed on a screen before me. I hesitated, with the platter in mid-air; then I p...
Over centuries, organised perpetrator groups have observed and studied the way in which extreme childhood traumas, such as accidents, bereavement, war, natural disasters, repeated hospitalisations and surgeries, and (most commonly) child abuse (sexua...
Unhappy memories are persistent. They're specific, and it's the details that refuse to leave us alone. Though a happy memory may stay with you just as long as one that makes you miserable, what you remember softens over time. What you recall is simpl...
We sleep, allowing gravity to hold us, allowing Earth- our larger body- to recalibrate our neurons, composting the keen encounters of our waking hours (the tensions and terrors of our individual days), stirring them back, as dreams, into the sleeping...
Why should the spread of ideas and people result in reforms that lower violence? There are several pathways. The most obvious is a debunking of ignorance and superstition. A connected and educated populace, at least in aggregate and over the long run...
It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten m...
He updated his report, doing his best to tune out the two men who staggered into the police station, dragging each other. "I want you to arrest this idiot bastard," the taller one shouted, face contorted with rage. "He shit on my front porch!" Your d...
His phone rang just as he set his evidence kit on the ground. He glanced at the display and took the call. "Hey, Mom." "I ran into Cindy Jenners at the store today." "No." "She's such a nice young woman." "Not interested." "Your sisters abandoned me....
