He saw on the paper a picture of a man, white-skinned, who hung upon a crosspiece of wood. The man was without clothes except for a bit about his loins, and to all appearences he was dead, since his head drooped upon his shoulder and his eyes were cl...
One day, I learned that a single look can change everything. And since then I have seen it countless times. I have grappled to understand it and failed. For instance, all it took was a look from another man for my wife to fall out of love with me. It...
My courage is faith--faith in the eternal resilience of me--that joy'll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does I've got to keep my lips shut and my chin high and my eyes wide--not necessarily any silly smiling. Oh, I've bee...
You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape – the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring in...
He carried her over the Owl Creek mountain range without stopping,” he said, quietly this time. “He carried her until he reached one of the hot springs around what became Chapin, and then he walked into the water with her and held her there for t...
Her grey, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that first I had...
If you ordered up a whore here, you'd probably get a theater major doing Joan Crawford as Sadie Thompson. I wonder what would happen if I ordered up a Hershey bar?" His eyes lit up for a moment. "I wonder what would happen if I ordered up a whore and...
a dementia sufferer effuses delight and notices very different things when taken out in her wheelchair. Such people can teach us to see again the little things that make a big difference. They can show us how to enjoy familiar environments with fresh...
But there is a beauty every girl has—a gift from God, as pure as the sunlight, and as sacred as life. It is a beauty that all men love, a virtue that wins all men's souls. That beauty is chastity. Chastity without skin beauty may enkindle the soul;...
He looked up and I realised how close we were, both of us leaning in together. I blinked a few times, suddenly light-headed, but not like before when I'd passed out. Being so close to the smooth dark skin of his face, getting lost in the shifting sha...
He put the knuckles of his fist to the table, leaned toward Niles and spoke quietly, cuttingly, in his rough, gravelly voice. “Fucked her last night, man, and this morning. Five times. Five. It was like she hadn’t been touched in a decade. So fuc...
Hell's bells, Susan, you don't know what you've done. You've got to get out of here." She snorted. "Like hell." "I mean it," I said. "You're in danger." "Relax, Harry. I'm not letting anyone lick me, and I'm not looking anyone in the eyes. It's kind ...
August said you row?” she asked. Her voice spilled over me like warm syrup. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the drugging sensation then realized she’d asked me a question. “Yeah,” I answered belatedly. Good. A short answer but it’s better than...
Had I glimpsed just a little of the suffering I would witness and the heartbreak I would endure, I would have fled in the other direction...But I could not foresee any of these things...And many years later, with tears in my eyes, I remembered my dec...
The fundamentalists of every faith remain blind to the truth that the “sigh within the prayer is the same in the heart of the Christian, the Muslim, and the Jew.” I have seen this unity with my eyes, heard it with my ears, felt it with all my bei...
What have the nibblers ever done for you?" The breeze ruffled her hair, pushing it back from her face, giving him a clear shot of her eyes. They were asking for an answer. Needing to know if she could count on him. "They saved your life," he said. An...
I saw it in his eyes, first—the beginning of the end, the beginning of things to come. The blackest night, they cut into me, paralyzing my trembling body. Not even the gods could sense my fear now, for the celebration of the monsters who’d claime...
What are you and Henry going to do tonight anyway?" "My secret," I said, and when I walked around to see the look on her face, I rolled my eyes. "Not that. What are you and Xander going to do?" "That." She gave me an impish look, and I scowled. "What...
The moment he left the warm sheets and the door clicked shut, I had that feeling you get when you are lost in a strange town at night. I curled into the chair where he had watched me undress and tears wet my cheeks. Then I dried my eyes, I looked in ...
Mrs. Mudkin closed her eyes. "We should pray." "I ain't praying," Crazy Cora said. Mrs. Mudkin said, "Lord, please bless---" "I ain't praying." "--this land and the people who--" "I ain't praying." "--have toiled on this earth--" "Stop that praying."...
Somewhere, on the long road that wound through those four years, the girl with her sachet & dancing slippers had slipped away & there was left a woman with sharp green eyes, who counted pennies & turned her hands to many menial tasks, a woman to whom...
