Fireworks. Snowflakes. Sunstroke and frostbite. It was all that I could ask for and completely unexpected. I expected demands. He gifted me with tenderness. I expected ego. He let me experiment. I expected disrespect. He called me beautiful. I expect...
And here I thought they were called Peeping Toms." I didn't need to see him to know he wore a smile. "Stop laughing," I said, my cheeks hot with humiliation. "Get me down." "Jump." "What?" "I'll catch you." "Are you crazy? Go inside and open the wind...
If you love someone, if someone loved you, if they taught you to write and made it so you could speak, how can you do nothing at all? You might as well take their words out of the dirt and try to snatch them from the wind. Because once you love, it i...
With a little more patience and a little less temper, a gentler and wiser method might be found in almost every case; and the knot that we cut by some fine heady quarrel-scene in private life, or, in public affairs, by some denunciatory act against w...
This maze is laid out such that should you step through the correct path, by its end you will have learned the most extraordinary dance, such that any coronation would be proud to see you at the height of its feast, such that any holy dervish would w...
I can believe whatever I want to believe. Who's to prove me wrong this side of the big dirt nap? Doesn't matter, either, what anyone believes. Or whether anyone else believes what believe. The important thing is to believe. Really, truly . That's why...
And, she thought uncomfortably, what would happen if people did not recognize you? Would you know who you were yourself? If tomorrow they started to call her Vanessa or Janet or Elizabeth, would she know how to be, how to feel like, Charlotte? Were y...
My father, for whose skills as a surgeon I have the deepest respect, says, "The operation with the best outcome is the one you decide not to do." Knowing when not to operate, knowing when I am in over my head, knowing when to call for the assistance ...
In general, I call her every night, and we talk for an hour, which is forty-five minutes of me, and fifteen minutes of her stirring her tea, which she steeps with the kind of Zen patience that would make Buddhists sit up in envy and then breathe thro...
... for systems belonging to the singular part of the stability boundary a small change of the parameters is more likely to send the system into the unstable region than into the stable region. This is a manifestation of a general principle stating t...
We as Christians are called to battle. The problem is, we don’t fight about the right things and we do fight about the wrong things. We aren’t getting in the battle that we should and so we fight over petty, insignificant things. Why? Because we ...
I was pure, before you defiled me, and don't you forget it. As though the concept of purity is anything more than the construct of selfish, competitive men stampeding toward the women to call dibs. I'll be damned if I'm not worth stampeding toward, b...
Whenever I feel ‘less of myself’, or as if I am not as productive as I can be, or abundance is not flowing into my life, or I am not laughing and smiling as much, or my relationships seem stuck and difficult, it is an indication that I am losing ...
The Drowned Cities hadn’t always been broken. People broke it. First they called people traitors and said they didn’t belong. Said these people were good and those people were evil, and it kept going, because people always responded, and pretty s...
No singer would ever make a song about that battle. No maester would ever write down an account for one of the Reader's beloved books. No banners flew, no warhorns moaned, no great lord called his men about him to hear his final ringing words. They f...
When your heart is heavy and your spirit in distress, Reach out your arms to Jesus, and sense his sweet caress. He answers when we call him, our every prayer he hears, Reach out your arms to Jesus, for he is always near.
I started to walk away, but she [Clarisse] called out, "Percy?" "Yeah?" "When you, uh, had that vision about your friends..." "You were one of them," I promised, "Just don't tell anybody, okay? Or I'de have to kill you." A faint smile flickered acros...
Right before the game, she strolled up to me. "Hey, Seaweed Brain." "Will you stop calling me that?" She knows I hate that name, mostly because I never have a good comeback. She's the daughter of Athena, which doesn't give me a lot of ammunition. I m...
I came running down the stairs that morning, like it was Christmas. My parents were already up. In my family, presents never waited; they were there upon waking. Our family has a problem with what they called delayed gratification. We want what we wa...
Her jaw dropped. She grabbed him by the shoulders. “I think I have formed an attachment to you. You know, what the English call a desire to have symphonic concerts with someone at all hours of the day?” He smiled. “And I love you too, darling.�...
I am the foremost collector of velvet Elvii in the city of Chicago," I said at once. "Elvii?" Marcone inquired. "The plural would be Elvises, I guess," I said. "But if I say that too often, I start muttering to myself and calling things 'my precious,...
