Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.... The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not t...
You sea! I resign myself to you also- I guess what you mean, I behold from the beach your crooked fingers, I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me. We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land, Cushion me s...
Raynor slapped her so hard her teeth rattled and eyes stung, but she refused to react except to say saucily, "You must have heard how I like foreplay." "I hope you like it a lot, because with your mouth, you'll be getting it nonstop." "Goody," she sa...
I hate it when people talk like friendship is less than other kinds of-as though it's some sort of runner-up prize for people who can't have sex. I had a boyfriend once, but I never liked being with him the way I like being with you." I held his gaze...
It was her. No one had eyes like that. Eyes as pure as the sky on a fresh, wintery morning. Ones that sucked him in and refused to let go. No one had her touch. Feather light and warm. A touch that sizzled his insides and brought him to his knees. An...
They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked higher than the pyramids; they had killed themselves over...
We ended up our talk by my asking Dennis his feelings now about the Marines. Any regrets for all those wounds? Or about having been sent to and having to fight an unpopular war? "No. The Marine Corps meant a tremendous amount to me. And even today I ...
It was more work than it seemed, looking through a telescope, as the Earth was continually moving and you had to move along with it. You don't realize how fast this acutally happens, and it's kind of both creepy and wonderful when you stop to think a...
The word on the street was that I had two options when it came to caring for my future baby: I could either eat, sleep, drink, bathe, walk, and work with my baby permanently affixed to my body until the two of us meld into one, or I could leave my ba...
For the first time in my life I actually feel sorry for Carol. I'm only seventeen years old, and I already know something she doesn't know: I know that life isn't life if you just float through it. I know that the whole point- the only point- is to f...
And because God's love is uncoercive and treasures our freedom - if above all he wants us to love him, then we must be left free not to love him - we are free to resist it, deny it, crucify it finally, which we do again and again. This is our terribl...
I wanted intimacy in caps lock but I got it in parentheses. We curled into each other, upside down, my empty spaces filled by another. "Give me the three minute version of your life story," he said. I nailed it it one then refused to throw the questi...
It's been a harsh fight. You've been pummeled and knocked down. Your body aches, flesh torn and bruised. Your eyes can hardly see through a stream of blood. But you are cognizant and alive; therefore, you rise from the fight. This is life. It will te...
To say that I wished I wasn't there would be a ludicrous understatement, but I'd only ever had the illusion of choice: We have to do this, Hank had said. It's for Ellis. To refuse would have been an act of calculated cruelty. And so, because of my hu...
I find so many opportunities to fall, to falter, and fail when I refuse to surrender to change. Change will come into my room and rearrange my tidy world. Then like dominoes, one things changed falls upon another until it feels like the world is coll...
Fine art refers to an accomplished or advanced skill being used to testify and reveal the knowledge, ability, and wisdom of the creator. There is no art more exquisite than the work of the Master Artist Himself. Even those who choose to deny Him cred...
Deciding we won't drive to that chain grocery store and buy that imported pineapple is a path to liberation. Deciding to walk to the farmers' market and buy fresh, local peas is like spitting in the eye of the industries that control us. Every act of...
When words don’t add up in love, it is because of six possible reasons: 1. They are afraid to tell you the truth because you will leave them. 2. They enjoy being a liar or playing people because of ego reasons and/or control. 3. They don’t know t...
He squinted at her. He recalled the tears in her eyes that had not fallen into her teacup. No, it wasn’t a revelation. Not even to him. Yet, this was the same woman who had stolen a camel right out from under the Anti-Zionist army’s nose. She’d...
In a shelter meant for battered women, there were only two reasons a person would decide to leave. One, she had decided to launch out on her own and begin a new life. Or two, she had decided to go back to the one who had hurt her. It happened all the...
Just remember, no matter how much they love you, they'll never love you as much as I do." I had to catch the tears before they could fall, refusing to make him feel bad about the choice he had to make but also wanted to make. "I know. And same for yo...
