You have to take this with you too,” she said, opening a box and holding up a silver necklace with the Syriac cross (a crucifix with a budding flower shape on each tip) dangling from it. “My mother gave it to me mother, who passed it to me. Now i...
Smiling at me ruefully, Luka scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, I guess you can.” He sauntered toward the sliding doors. “I’ll be right outside if you need me. Call if you get dizzy.” “You’ll probably just hear a very loud thump.”...
I couldn’t figure out if it was fate or faith that had brought me there. How funny those two words sounded when paired together. One was the inevitable, something I could not change in my life, while the other was the hope and belief that I could. ...
If I were standing right beside her, I probably would have heard her heart breaking. It would have sounded like the cracking of a wooden bat connecting with a baseball. No, that was too clean of a break. It would have sounded like rain from a powerfu...
Except then I wonder what it's like to feel normal because if you take away the things I've felt all my life--the insecurity, the pain, the loneliness, the absolute dissolution of any sane or rational thought during one of my more manic moods and the...
No one particular religion has been able to secure the exclusive rights for the power of prayer. No matter who you are, we all have the ability to take advantage of this amazing and wonderful power. Once you realize this, you will then be filled with...
Life is a test. It was designed to be so. It is where we taste the bitter and the sweet; where we feel pain and pleasure; where we learn right from wrong; where we pass through both darkness and light. It is a time to make choices. And throug...
I will not speak falsely and say to you: 'Do not grieve for me when I go.' I have loved my children and tried to be a good mother and it is right that my children grieve for me. But let your grief be gentle and brief. And let resignation creep into i...
Well, right now I'm dead. But when I am, it's like...I don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading. [...] An old one. It's up on a library shelf, so you're safe and everything, but the book hasn't been checked out for a lo...
I remember Mitchell Sanders sitting quietly in the shade of an old banyan tree. He was using a thumbnail to pry off the body lice, working slowly, carefully depositing the lice in a blue USO envelope. His eyes were tired. It had been a long two weeks...
He holds out a trembling hand and traces the shape of her arm, descending to her elbow. “You’re like mist,” he says. “You really don’t feel this?” Love shakes her head. “No.” But that’s not entirely true, because this illusion of a ...
Grover was sniffing the wind, looking nervous. He fished out his acorns and threw them into the sand, then played his pipes. They rearranged themselves in a pattern that made no sense to me, but Grover looked concerned. "That's us," he said. "Those f...
And there, shimmering in the Mist right next to us, was the last person I wanted to see: Mr. D, wearing his leopard-skin jogging suit and rummaging through the refrigerator. He looked up lazily. "Do you mind?" Where's Chiron!" I shouted. How rude." M...
What happened to the perp?” “Perp?” “The piece of crap who tried to kill my wife. Where is he now?” There was a pause, then, “Well, uh, you see, the guy—he’s in the parking lot right now.” “What’s he doing there? Is he being arr...
Devote the mind to confusion and we know only too well, if we´re honest, that it will become a dark master of confusion, adept in its addictions, subtle and perversely supple in its slaveries. Devote it in meditation to the task of freeing itself fr...
And if we don't keep moving, we won't make it to a computer in time to stop the submarine sale because we'll have to spend a second night in the jungle, surrounded by friggin' pit vipers. In the rain. And I am sick and tired of the rain. I want to ge...
The road to heaven isn’t much of a road,” he was saying. “It’s more like a dusty trail, roughly cut out through the underbrush. Most people don’t even notice it. It doesn’t look like a path at all, so they walk right by. Others see it, bu...
Explain it to me." But I couldn't. I'd had to learn it my own way, and so had my mother. Jason would eventually, as well. No one could tell you: you just had to go through it on your own. If you were lucky, you came out on the other side and understo...
War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?" he said. "Dunno, Sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?" "Absol—well, okay." "Defending yourself against a totalitarian aggressor?" "All right, I'll grant you that, but—" "Saving civilization from a horde of—" "It ...
Nobody got me out," Nellie replied. "They just let me go. They think I'm a deranged Jonah Wizard fan. Apparently, the hotel's full of them. A couple of idiots actually jumped off the front balcony. Can you picture that?" "In Technicolor," Amy said bi...
She closed her eyes, soaking in the feel of his hand, then opened them and stared at his perfect face as longing wrapped itself around her heart. "If this is a mistake, it's one I'll gladly keep making." "I don't think it's a mistake, I just want to ...
