Mr. McCleod: And if there’s anything I want you guys to take with you from this class, as you’re abusing your bodies over break, is three things: the heart is the body’s strongest muscle, that the brain has more cells in it than our galaxy has ...
You hear stories like that all your life and think: cool, a ghost bus. But now we have to look at this stuff analytically... a The “ghost” of a A public conveyance, presumably, which didn't head towards the light, move on to join the choir invisi...
Take off my clothes and there becomes a man. Take off my skin and there becomes my bones. Break all my bones and there becomes my heart. Smash my heart and there becomes my soul. And that you cannot take. And what is my soul?...It is everything that ...
Italian-Americans in New York had not been in much of a flag-waving mood prior to DiMaggio's arrival. By the All-Star break, the rookie had established himself as a wonderful player (.358, 10HR, 60 RBIs), fully justifying the acclaim. But Gehrig was ...
Seated on a paving-stone near Enjolras, Courfeyrac continued to jeer at the cannon, and every passage of that sinister cloud of projectiles that is called grapeshot, accompanied by its monstrous din, drew from him an ironical comment. 'You're wearing...
If anybody comes to challenge you, we'll kick their ass. We'll find a way to handle Roland. And if the pack Council produces any kittens, we'll give them to Jim to raise., He needs to mellow out anyway.' I looked at him. He took his hands off the whe...
Sometimes when dogs greeted a returning soldier, they'd go over the edge. They would have to take a few moments to run crazily in circles around the human, or around a room or a yard. I'd have to take a break from watching, so my brain had a chance t...
The large, gaping flaws in the construction of the stories--mad wives in the attic, strange apparitions in Belgium--are a representation of the life she could not face; these gothic subterfuges represent the mind at a breaking point, frantic to find ...
You are so special and important and elegant and smart and kind and worthwhile, and you are so much better than me and everyone else I’ve ever known in every single way, and you are the only truth I have ever found in this lying world, and I love y...
There's no way to tell what will make someone break down in tears. There are some who will cry at the merest melancholy word, and there are some who need the longest, cruelest speech to even dampen one eyelash. There are those who will cry at any sad...
Then there were the shabti, magical figurines that were supposed to come to life when summoned. A few months ago, I’d fallen for a girl named Zia Rashid, who’d turned out to be a shabti. Falling in love for the first time had been hard enough. Bu...
Species tend to bite sometimes during the sharing of sex but we never break the skin. There are only two ways this usually happens. I had to bite you to assert my control if we fought for dominance during sex or because I wanted to mark you to show o...
Sybil’s female forebears had valiantly backed up their husbands as distant embassies were besieged, had given birth on a camel or in the shade of a stricken elephant, had handed around the little gold chocolates while trolls were trying to break in...
There's a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, "Why on our hearts, and not in them?" The rabbi answered, "Only God can put Scripture insi...
Every time he studied this instrument, with its slender, gleaming steel rod that tapered down to such needle-like sharpness, he wondered why it was necessary to have things like this in the world. If it were truly only for chopping ice, you'd think a...
What is the meaning of life?" asked man. "Seek and ye shall find," said God. "That was my method." The man replied, "How might I do that?" "Take a setting," instructed God. "Add some dirt and water, mold it into something likeable. Let there be light...
He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the t...
The regime's policies, whether intentionally or unintentionally, had engendered a sharp divide between Muslims and Christians, in spite of the fact that generations of Muslims and Coptic Christians had lived together peacefully in the past. The regim...
He held his fingers to my lips. “Shh, don’t say it, Tyler. Don’t say the words that will fucking break me. Don’t say the words that will tear my world apart.” Dean sighed and gripped his eyes shut before looking back at me again. “Don’t...
How I suffered when I had to preach to you those pious lies that I detest in my heart. What remorse your credulity caused me! A thousand times I was on the point of breaking out publicly and opening your eyes, but a fear stronger than myself held me ...
Do I look the sort to cause trouble?" he asks. For the first time, he looks me directly in the eye. I catch my breath as his eyes slam into me. They're the gray of the sky right before a blizzard. "Well, they did just throw you into a cell," I say, v...
