But I never just quite liked that ryhme.' 'Why not, child?' 'Because it seems to say one's as good as another, or two new ones are better than one that's lost. . . . Somehow, when once you've looked into anybody's eyes, right deep down into them, I m...
My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built. Life is commonplace; the papers are sterile; audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world. Can ...
Catching sight of himself in the long mirrors that ran along the walls, he stiffened in shock...His eyes were surrounded by black shadows, his shirt smeared with dried blood and filthy mud... "Admiring yourself?" The Inquisitor's voice cut through hi...
That seems like stealing, doesn't it?" Simon pulled a cup toward him. He drew the lid back. "Ooh. Mochaccino." He looked at Magnus. "Did you pay for these?" "Sure," said Magnus, while Jace and Alec snickered. "I make dollar bills magically appear in ...
The reflection was that of a putrefying corpse. By some trick of the light, her face seemed sallow and slipping, the patches of darkness giving the appearance of skin sloughing off in small pockets. I’d almost forgotten the knife in my panic; the w...
Henry successfully kept his mind on the game, which might seem strange for a boy who slept beside a wall of magic. But baseball was as magical to him as a green, mossy mountain covered in ancient trees. What's more, baseball was a magic he could run ...
LAW 4 Always Say Less Than Necessary When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-end...
LAW 25 Re-Create Yourself Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if...
You can't "let go". You can't "detach with love". You can't let them "hit bottom". You can't seem to implement the strategies you have learned when you are faced with your adult child's chaos and anxiety. When you try to do this, it makes you physica...
I had a head for religious ideas. They were the first ideas I ever encountered. They made other ideas seem mean....I had miles of Bible in memory: some perforce, but most by hap, like the words to songs. There was no corner of my brain where you coul...
... those selling abortion don't want them to have [the facts]," Virginia said heatedly. "Besides the Supreme Court doesn't agree with you. They judges seem to think we poor women would fall apart if we knew the facts, so they decided women don't hav...
I sat in the gradually chilling room, thinking of my whole past the way a drowning man is supposed to, and it seemed part of the present, part of the gray cold and the beggar woman without a face and the moulting birds frozen to their own filth in th...
It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and ...
What the mysterious is I do not know. I do not call it God because God has come to mean much that I do not believe in. I find myself incapable of thinking of a deity or of any unknown supreme power in anthropomorphic terms, and the fact that many peo...
Do you know what makes someone beautiful? Confidence. You don't have to have this shape eyes or that shape lips. No one seems to be able to decide which shape is best anyway. You can have every kind of blemish. It's confidence that attracts people. T...
I think how we are all broken over one thing or another, how we all limp about, dragging our sorrows & troubles, our failures & disappointments, our perfect loneliness, & how it is when we suddenly open our eyes & see someone next to us dragging thei...
I used to think all that game playing was par for the course and even kind of exciting. It just felt logical to pursue a boy the same way I applied to college—by expending exorbitant time and energy showing what a great catch I am and what a perfec...
It seems to me that the moralist is the most useless and contemptible of creatures. He is useless in that he would expend his energies upon making judgments rather than upon gaining knowledge, for the reason that judgment is easy and knowledge is dif...
The Imagination merely enables us to wander into the darkness of the unknown where, by the dim light of the knowledge we carry, we may glimpse something that seems of interest. But when we bring it out and examine it more closely it usually proves to...
Or has your dad changed his mind about that?" Alex sneered. "My father never changes his mind." "Oh, that's right. Your dad's the sort who'll bang his head into a brick wall over and over, convinced the wall will eventually collapse. But it isn't the...
I suggested she write down her thoughts" He said, "and, well, my daughter is a very thorough woman." "I can see that" Waxillium said. "I suggest that you never ask her to pass the milk" Wayne added under his breath, so only Waxillium could hear "She ...
