The programme into which Cheryl was inducted combined all the different ways the intelligence community had learned could cause intense psychological change in adults and children. It had been learned through the use of both knowledgeable and 'unwitt...
From what I know of you already, you have quite a reputation for providing customer satisfaction." Julie's cheeks burned. For Kate's benefit she said, "I try." "Oh, I'm certain you do more than try. You go all out." He paused for several beats. Then,...
When I was five and Sarah seven, my mother went on a trip. She was gone from our home in Rochester, New York, for several days. But she was often gone — not always from the house but missing from our lives nonetheless. Then one day Sarah and I retu...
I peer through the spectral, polluted, nicotine-sodden windows of my sock at these old lollopers in their kiddie gear. Go home, I say. Go home, lie down, and eat lots of potatoes. I had three handjobs yesterday. None was easy. Sometimes you really ha...
The person who hurt you--who raped you or killed your family--is also here. If you are still angry at that person, if you haven't been able to forgive, you are chained to him. Everyone could feel the emotional truth of that: When someone offends you ...
About some books we feel that our reluctance to return to them is the true measure of our admiration. It is hard to suppose that many people go back, from a spontaneous desire, to reread : there is neither reason nor need to, no one forgets it. The u...
Ruric clung to me and shouted, "Your father." Looking down below I saw my father running after us, several alarmed guards trailing him. As I watched, the High Lord's slight demon shape began to shimmer in a remarkable transformation that stretched hi...
His OFELLUS in the Art of Living in London, I have heard him relate, was an Irish painter, whom he knew at Birmingham, and who had practiced his own precepts of economy for several years in the British capital. He assured Johnson, who, I suppose, was...
I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within somet...
What is needed is this, and this alone: solitude, great inner loneliness. Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours – that is what one must arrive at. Loneliness of the kind one knew as a child, when the grown-ups went back and forth boun...
Society reaps what it sows in the way it nurtures its children, because stress sculpts the brain to exhibit several antisocial behaviors. Stress can set off a ripple of hormonal changes that permanently wire a child's brain to cope with a malevolent ...
However, on one occasion, several years ago, I was idiot enough to take a dose of LSD. (I did it to please a woman.) I had what is known as a 'bad trip'. It was a very bad trip. I shall not attempt to describe what I experienced on that dreadful and ...
Everyone was always hungry. The poorer you were, the hungrier you were, and with the hunger came weakness and irritability. It became difficult to think clearly and you needed to think clearly to work out how to survive the next day, how to get food....
When he returned, Edith was in bed with the covers pulled to her chin, her face turned upward, her eyes closed, a thin frown creasing her forehead. Silently, as if she were asleep, Stoner undressed and got into bed beside her. For several moments he ...
Her Majesty to the theatre. The performance took place on a stage erected in the courtyard, and Her Majesty closed in one part of her veranda for the use of the guests and Court ladies. During the performance I began to feel very drowsy, and eventual...
When tadpole was born, I spent a sleepless night on the maternity ward gazing intently into her inky, newborn eyes, grappling to come to terms with the indisputable fact that this was an actual person looking back at me, not just a version of Mr Frog...
A long time ago, there was a little girl called Mary. Now Mary, she was warned several times not to go to her neighbor’s house. Her neighbor was a grandmother. But Mary hardly listened, so she snuck off one night to spy on her. She tried the front ...
There, there, best to bring it all up,' she said. My memory was in shreds. Imagine a photograph cut into narrow strips then jumbled up. Everything is there, but you can't see the whole picture and even the strips have no bearing on reality. I did kno...
The mental health system is filled with survivors of prolonged, repeated childhood trauma. This is true even though most people who have been abused in childhood never come to psychiatric attention. To the extent that these people recover, they do so...
When one is sitting in his bedroom and, happening to glance out the window, sees his little brother walking slowly down the driveway, he immediately jumps up, knocks over a stack of magazines piled up beside him, and runs through the doorway and down...
I felt I was in the loneliest place in the world, and I was apprehensive. Nothing could be heard except the occasional crash of an unknown creature in the forest, and, once in awhile, a deep thrumming similar to the lowest barely audible sound of a s...
