Appearances are not reality; but they often can be a convincing alternative to it. You can control appearances most of the time, but facts are what they are. When the facts are too sharp, you can craft a cheerful version of the situation and cover th...
Somewhere, on the long road that wound through those four years, the girl with her sachet & dancing slippers had slipped away & there was left a woman with sharp green eyes, who counted pennies & turned her hands to many menial tasks, a woman to whom...
We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than the one who believes. You can be almost as stupid as a cabbage, as long as you doubt. The fashion of the age has identified mental ...
The sunrise was the colour of bad blood. It leaked out of the east and stained the dark sky red, marked the scraps of the cloud with stolen gold. Underneath it the road twisted up the mountainside towards the fortress of Fontezarmo - a cluster of sha...
I rose swiftly and struck him across the cheek, hard enough to make my palm sting. He gaped at me. 'I do not want your damned money. I want you to answer me.' Carefully, he fingered his jaw. There was something new and strange in his gaze, sharp, int...
Kessa ran her fingers over her stomach. Flat. But was it flat enough? Not quite. She still had some way to go. Just to be safe, she told herself. Still, it was nice the way her pelvic bones rose like sharp hills on either side of her stomach. I love ...
Isabelle looked at him thoughtfully. "Did you seriously jump thirty feet out of a Malachi Configuration? Did he, Alec?" "He did," Alec confirmed. "I've never seen anything like it." "I've never seen anything like this." Jace lifted a ten-inch dagger ...
Shadowhunter.” The creature on the left spoke in a hissing whisper. “We did not know of you in this situation.” Isabelle raised a delicate eyebrow. “And what situation would that be?” The second subjugate pointed a long gray finger at Simon...
Beyond the late Fifties everything faded. When there were no external records that you could refer to, even the outline of your own life lost its sharpness. You remembered huge events which had quite probably not happened, you remembered the details ...
I’ll never let you go is scrawled three inches long down the side of my ribcage. The skin is still an angry red color, puffy and irritated looking. My gaze drifts up to Colin’s in the mirror. I suck in a sharp breath as I’m caught up in a torna...
this creature moved on all fours. Long, pointed ears lay flat against the monster's head. The long, tapered snout was wrinkled into a snarl, lips pulled back to reveal two rows of razor-sharp fangs. Muscles moved like liquid beneath the layers of coa...
An ache filled my chest, so sharp that I gasped out loud. Was this what a broken heart felt like? Was it possible to die from the pain? I’d always thought the girls at school so dramatic; when they broke up with their boyfriends, they cried and car...
In the mirror I stand, an injured deer in headlights, or maybe high beams, judging by the way my eyes water. I measure my wrists with my fingers, and I clutch at my rib cage, fingering it languidly, tracing the rise and fall of sharp bones until my h...
Human?' The girl cocked her head the other way. I caught a glimpse of pink gills under her chin. 'My sisters told me stories of humans. They said they sometimes sing to them to lure them underwater.' She grinned, showing off her sharp needle-teeth. '...
The instant before something comes into focus is more exciting than any sharp certainty. Photography, child, is about the passing of time. Capturing is the goal of literature. Timelessness is the task of music and painting. But a good photograph hold...
New York had saved him, in a very real way. It had pushed and prodded him with its impatient and sharp fingers, reminding him on a daily basis during that jittery first year that it didn't really give a goddamn whether he sank or swam. He liked its s...
Grief was dagger-shaped and sharp and pointed inward. It was made of fresh loss and old sorrow. Rendered and forged and sometimes polished. Irene Finney had taken her daughter’s death and to that sorrow she’d added a long life of entitlement and ...
The statesman received us with that old-fashioned courtesy for which he is remarkable, and seated us on the two luxuriant lounges on either side of the fireplace. Standing on the rug between us, with his slight, tall figure, his sharp features, thoug...
I was recently living more comfortably surrounded by secrets... Like dozens of luxurious satiny pillows, they were embracing me from all directions into safe lulling warmth, thus isolating me from the sharp dead-cold edges of the truth hiding behind ...
She was a keen observer, a precise user of language, sharp-tongued and funny. She could stir your emotions. Yes, really, that's what she was so good at - stirring people's emotions, moving you. And she knew she had this power...I only realized later....
You haven't seen a thing until you've seen this man fight. My sword is sharp. My heart strong. My spirit ferocious - and I am going to live. Let the swords clash. Let the fight begin.
