I can't stand quitters. My mother is a very strong, determined woman. I was peeling onions when I was seven, but I walked off when my eyes began to sting. She said to me, 'You start something and you finish it', and that stuck with me. I'm persistent...
I can think of no other writer who so thoroughly embodies the Jamesian spirit as Alison Lurie. Like him she can excavate all the possibilities of a theme. Like his, her books seem long, unbroken threads, seamless progressions of effects.
In my day, when you called on a girl, her mother was always hollering down to see if she was still unraped, the maid would look in, her father would shuffle his feet in another room. Today the boy calls up, says, 'Meet you at the back door of Stern's...
But she forgot nothing, and he sometimes forgot much too quickly, and, often that same day, encouraged by her composure, would laugh and frolic over the champagne, if friends stopped by. What venom must have been in her eyes at those moments yet he n...
The growth of my love story had been gradual but my success had always existed and both coupled together formed a deadly combination that was detrimental to our love. I wanted people to love me. She wanted them to leave her alone.
Are you a Christian? she said. I answered: I am a Christian, I am a Jew, I am a Catholic, I am Muslim. I am each and everyone of you my child, look into the mirror and you will see me, as i see you..
My heart broke a little at her unblemished view of life: She still believed in innocent secrets, the heady rush of a good mystery, and happily ever after... (I wasn't about to disabuse her of those sweet notions.)...Little girls should be allowed to ...
When I first found out that Superman wasn't real, I was about maybe eight. And I was talking to my mother about it. And she was like, 'No, no, no. There's no Superman.' And I started crying. I really thought he was coming to rescue us. The chaos, the...
There came to port last Sunday night the queerest little craft, without an inch of rigging on; I looked and looked - and laughed. It seemed so curious that she should cross the unknown water, and moor herself within my room - my daughter! O my daught...
At morn we buried Melanippus; as the sun set the maiden Basilo died by her own hand, as she could not endure to lay her brother on the pyre and live; and the house beheld a two-fold woe, and all Cyrene bowed her head, to see the home of happy childre...
Monica Besra, a Bengali woman from a remote Indian village, was reportedly suffering from a malignant ovarian tumor when she went, in 1998, to a hospice founded by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity. Nuns at the mission reportedly placed a medal...
Because if it is to spite her,' Biddy pursued, 'I should think -but you know best- that might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think -but you know best- she was not worth g...
Kylie flopped back against the seat again, enjoying the look of disbelief on the vampire’s face a little too much. “Would you like a name of a good doctor who will schedule your little snip-snip operation?” she bit out.
John and I were lucky because our mother was a strong woman with high expectations and a strong sense of values. She encouraged us to pursue things we were interested in and not think about what other people wanted us to do.
Well, I used to have a sister, but I never got to meet her because she died after two days, I think. So if I got a tattoo, it would probably have to be something to do with my sister. I actually want to get a tattoo when I'm older of something about ...
Care for her. He was unworthy of such a gift. Unworthy of her blind trust and her sparkling, slightly crooked smiles, let alone her heart. But he wanted her, selfish fool he was and had always been. Care for her? Ah, God, she consumed him.
He’d thought it would be the right thing to say, but she scoffed a little… and that, more than anything—more than the prospect of having his ribs crushed in or his face pulled off or his neck stretched on a rope—scared him out of his wits.
He felt, rather than saw, her chin lift toward him. But instead of pulling her hand from his grip and turning away, she tightened her own fingers and unceremoniously, unexpectedly, threw herself down the incline, dragging him with her. Dragging him w...
Miss Marshall looked up at that moment and made his decision for him. She looked at him and then her whole face lit up. He almost staggered back under the force of her smile. It made him feel…reckless. A man couldn’t disappoint a smile like that.
We had two black ski masks in the glove compartment. Why my wife owned a shotgun, I had no idea. Or ski masks. Neither of us had ever skied. But she didn't explain and I didn't ask. Married life is weird, I felt.
Previously, when I began to write this tale, I set out by saying that Mlle. Claude was a whore. She is a whore, of course, and I'm not trying to deny it, but what I say now is--if Mlle. Claude is a whore then what name shall I find for the other wome...
