There are many things worth telling that are not quite narrative. And eternity itself possesses no beginning, middle or end. Fossils, arrowheads, castle ruins, empty crosses: from the Parthenon to the Bo Tree to a grown man's or woman's old stuffed b...
Beth had been a middle school science teacher and Joni was a librarian and they both had collections of weird stuff they had found. Bizarre, misspelled letters written by lovelorn eighth graders. Obscene Polaroids left in between the pages of library...
I can't believe you've been here all day and didn't come visit. ", Tatiana said. "Aw, I figured you had more important things to do than see me, " Adrian told her. "Besides, I quit smoking, so now we won't be able to go sneak cigarettes out behind th...
We can't give you any further information," the fairies replied. "Be satisfied, madam, with the assurance that your daughter will be happy." She thanked them very much and did not forget to give them many presents. Although the fairies were quite ric...
You are sauntering along the back streets of Avallon; you step into a tavern for a cup of wine. A great lummox claims that you have molested his wife; he takes up his cutlass and comes at you. So now! With your knife! Draw and throw! All in a single ...
He was astonished at how calm he found he was. Fear of death had always energised him, making him move far more quickly than his body should have been capable of, accelerating his reactions and his thought process to a quite incredible level. This ti...
To understand the extreme lengths to which the Sufis were prepared to go in reading esoteric meanings into the quite simple language of their Scriptures, it is necessary to remember that the Koran was committed to memory by all deeply religious men a...
Stephanie had been raped, beaten and left for dead on the Atlantic City Boardwalk several times. You'd think she would have hit rock bottom after those experiences. But no. None of that made her quit. It just made her want to use even more drugs, to ...
Indicating his twisted legs without a trace of self-pity or bitterness, as if they belonged to all of us, he casts his arms wide to the sky and the snow mountains, the high sun and dancing sheep, and cries, ’Of course I am happy here! It’s wonder...
But whatever happens, I've been happy. I've been loved. I've amazed crowds and drunk in their applause. Not because of luck or favor or magic. Because of will. My will. I've been willing to do whatever it takes. That's the closest thing I have to a s...
You and I are faced with one of those situations (which fortunately are not very numerous in one lifetime) which cannot possibly be adequately judged beforehand. It strikes me as a colossal gamble, or rather, a very great adventure. And personally I ...
However, one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings. And there's one that I find I am not saying with quite the same conviction as I once used to: In particular, I have slightly stopped...
It is the thought that the least efficient way of of finding either happiness or pleasure is to pursue them. Put in terms of happiness, we can see it like this: To be happy you must quite literally "lose yourself". You must lose yourself in some purs...
If this were a proper world, beautiful faces would belong to beautiful people. Good people with kind hearts and clever minds would always have bright eyes and dazzling smiles, and bad people would have scraggly hair and warty noses. That way if you s...
I hope that's a good thing,' I said, thinking he might say I reminded him of a film star- then we'd actually have something in common. I was hoping for Anne Hathaway or Julia Roberts, and not the obvious Vivien Leigh. Even Angelina Jolie would have d...
There are people everywhere. Lindsay wants to be sick, it's like he can feel all their eyes on him, but he does it anyway and when he finally moves away a good minute later Valentine seems to have turned from himself into a silly bashful schoolgirl, ...
You can tell it any way you want but that's the way it is. I should of done it and I didn’t. And some part of me has never quit wishin I could go back. And I cant. I didn’t know you could steal your own life. And I didn’t know that it would bri...
If she had loved him, he would have opened windows, allowed all of that precious light of hers in she wanted! If she could tolerate him, he would have donated to every stinking animal shelter in her name, quit his drinking habits completely, and play...
Though I have said that I envy the normal man to the last drop of my bile, yet I should not care to be in his place such as he is now (though I shall not cease envying him). No, no; anyway the underground life is more advantageous. There, at any rate...
It's hard to know, isn't it, whether the things we face are just because the world is full of sin and sinful people, or if God is working out a plan,' Grandma continued. 'I happen to think it's both. There's sin, but through it all, He takes the mess...
Now it was Arla’s turn for astonishment. The Boy gave Perry a wide smile as he shook his hand. “You know the land you say? Up along the promontory? Good. Well, perhaps we should take you along. Do you have a horse?” “No” Perry replied. “B...
