And if a diversion is needed, why not arrest a general? Arthur Dillon is a friend of eminent deputies, a contender for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front; he has proved himself at Valmy and in a halfdozen actions since. In the Natio...
Night is irregular. What is not done in the daytime becomes possible at night: murder and sex and thought. Simple men are driven to early beds by tomorrow's daytime demands and by fear of the dark, and never dream of the irregular world outside. And ...
God, why do I bother trying to help you? It’s not like you appreciate it. It’s not like the word ‘thanks’ is in your vocabulary. It’s like you’re not capable of being nice to someone you decided to despise when you were six-years-old. Sur...
...with a rush of feeling he felt that this must be happiness. As soon as the thought came to him, he fought it back, blaming the whiskey. The very idea was as dangerous as presumptive speech: happiness could not be sought or worried into being, or e...
Words failed me at the precise moment I thought I was passing my vocabulary test, and I can’t tell you how that made me feel. At the time, I thought I felt, well, I couldn’t tell you without my cheat sheet. What seemed obviate to me then, now see...
Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic. As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. And every day...
…what have you accumulated from the past—what are you in the process of accumulating that will be passed on, if not deliberately, then accidentally? Is this accumulation the best of what has been and the best of what is currently being written, s...
The accountant lingers at his children's doorway a moment more, listening to the easy rhythm of their breathing, and something cold moves through him, like the passage of a ghost - but he know that's not it. It's more like the portent of a future. A ...
Simple Complex systems can arise from simple rules. It's not that we to survive, it's that we've been drugged and made to act as if we do while all the while the sea breaks and rolls, painlessly, under. If we're not copying it, we're lonely. Is this ...
The only difference between people who say they cannot perceive interdimensionally and people who consciously communicate interdimensionally is intent and practice. Most people access interdimensional information unconsciously. When they experience c...
It’s just that you go so crazy being alone like that. Sometimes he’d forget my water or food and I’d cry and cry and cry.” She stops talking and looks out the window. “I would try to tell myself stories to pass the time. Fairy tales. Parts ...
(D)ialogue is generally the worst choice for exposition. 'When you're writing lines...you need to focus on the way people actually talk. And when we talk to each other we never actually explain our terms. We don't say 'Sweetheart, would you pass me t...
Just before he passed behind the hedge at the end of the drive, he turned to look back at Stoke Morrow and caught me spying on him. His shining eyes were so cruel, and before I could close the curtain, I saw the flash of an awful grin on his face. It...
The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phras...
Do you want to be with Dave for the rest of your life?” Then he rips off a piece of paper and picks up the smallest charcoal stick from my set. He writes something. He passes it over to me. It says: Time will tell. “And while you’re waiting,”...
Isn't friendship amazing? At one time, our friends were just strangers to us. However, there was something special about these strangers; you felt a connection, something in common, a special bond, and your friendship began. What if, as we pass all o...
Have you ever noticed how we often live on the surface of our lives? Each day is like the previous day. Time passes, and we continue to feel like we’re living a life less than we deserve. So, dive deeper into your life, and discover what lies below...
The few surviving Armenians no longer ask to go home. They do not ask for restitution. They ask simply to have the memory of their obliteration acknowledged. It is a moral obsession, the lonely legacy passed onto the third and fourth generation who n...
At a certain age our parents offhandedly start telling us things we’ve never heard before, about themselves and their families, their upbringing and history. They’re turning their lives into stories, trying to make sense of them in retrospect and...
But all these hints at foreseeing what actually did happen on the French as well as on the Russian side are only conspicuous now because the event has justified them. If the event had not come to pass, these hints would have been forgotten, as thousa...
Be grateful. These feelings, no matter how painful, are part of living. Today, we are alive—not anesthetized, not sedated, not passed out. Take control of your feelings and through action you can change. Today, as every day of sober living, we have...