I'm a Christian first, and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it. You know who else was kind of "divisive" in terms of challenging the status quo and the powers-that-be of his day? Jesus Christ.
I told myself, Malala, you have already faced death. This is your second life. Don't be afraid — if you are afraid, you can't move forward.
What's with what you're wearing?" Griggs asks while we stand outside waiting for the others. "It's pretty hideous, isn't it?" I say. "Don't force me to look at it," he says. "It's see-through." That kills conversation for a couple of seconds.
So much was so easy. Glamour was second nature. It was just making folk see what they wanted to see. Fooling folk was as simple as singing. Tricking folk and telling lies, it was like breathing. But this? Convincing someone of the truth that they wer...
Are we going to Portland?" I asked. "Or Multnomah Falls?" He smiled at me. "Go to sleep." I waited three seconds. "Are we there yet?" His smile widened, and the last of the usual tension melted from his face. For a smile like that, I'd...do anything.
You should really be more careful who you let put their hands on you.” A silky male voice hummed as hot, minty breath wafted around her ear and danced slowly across her nose. Sera inhaled deeply, her skin prickled with goose bumps.
Your cell phone is on the nightstand. Call me immediately if something changes. I don’t care if you are merely dizzy or if you start seeing pink dragons, do you understand?” I solemnly swear I will call you the second a pink dragon shows up.
A garden should make you feel you've entered privileged space -- a place not just set apart but reverberant -- and it seems to me that, to achieve this, the gardener must put some kind of twist on the existing landscape, turn its prose into something...
And oh she had been broken. She hid it well, but Ross knew from personal experience that once you had put the pieces together, even though you might look intact, you were never quite the same as you'd been before the fall
The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips in the seam of the dark... Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas - a whole grammar made of light, for words too hard to speak...
As the demands of the positions differed, and as I grew in age and experience, I found that I had changed as a leader. I learned to ask myself two questions: First, what must the organization I command do and be? And second, how can I best command to...
There are two things in life you cannot choose. The first is your enemies; the second your family. Sometimes the difference between them is hard to see, but in the end time will show you that the cards you have been dealt could always have been worse...
My last two girlfriends were named Anna, though the second one spelled her name backwards. So instead of Anna, it was spelled Anna, and that's how I came to tell the two apart.
The ordinary man is aware of his surroundings, first, by naming and labelling them; second, by linking them with past memory of them; and third, by relating them to his own personal self. The illumined egoless man is simply aware of them, without any...
Believing is not the same as knowing. Believing is second-hand knowledge, whereas knowing is first-hand experience. When your action comes from a level of belief, there is fear, doubt and restlessness behind such action. When your action comes from a...
For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous bu...
In the beginning was the word, and primitive societies venerated poets second only to their leaders. A poet had the power to name and so to control; he was, literally, the living memory of a group or tribe who would perpetuate their history in song; ...
When I near Charlie’s house, I notice she’s standing in the doorway with a spatula in her hand. Despite being on edge, I can’t stop myself from grinning. I feel like such a chick around her sometimes, like I’m seconds away from buying a tiara...
Even now, she wished she could write a note, push it across the table, and go away to her room. But she was no longer a Second Assistant Librarian of the Great Library of the Clayr. Those days were gone, vanished with everything else that had defined...
I can hear someone whispering, like a mother quieting her small child: shhh…shhh…shhh…a pregnant pause taking shape and growing between each whisper, bringing life to the next series of sounds. They last no more than a few seconds, these brief ...
When I began writing stories in exercise books I tried to put off all the things I really wanted to write about till at least the second page – I thought it would be like a grown-up book if it became interesting at once.