It must be murder to be an aging beauty, a former Tadzio, to see your future as an ignored spectator rushing up to meet you like the hard pavement. What a small sip of gall to be able to time with each passing year the ever-shorter interval in which ...
Europe had fallen back into the barbarity of the first ages. People from this part of world, so enlightened today, lived a few centuries ago in a state worse than ignorance. Some sort of learned jargon much more despicable than ignorance had usurped ...
I love books, by the way, way more than movies. Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself. Movies show you the pink house. A good book tells you there's a pink house and lets you paint some of the finishin...
By and large, the kind of science fiction which makes tomorrow's headlines as near as this morning's coffee has enlarged popular awareness of the modern, miraculous world of science we live in. It has helped generations of young people feel at age wi...
jock; Back off Royd; Are you threatining me?? Jock; Not if you back off!! Royd: You look like shit go to bed. Sophie: Take your hands off me Royd: Better mine than sanbornes. Sophie; Take your hands off me or so help me ill make a unic of you! Royd; ...
If you're putting that energy into performance," he said, "you're also getting it back out again, right? You're giving so you can receive." He spread his arms wide. "If you were writing songs with it, you'd be holed up in your room in the middle of t...
Do you think they have ice cream here?” Lanie asked. Kyle cocked his eyebrow, obviously surprised by her question. “I have no idea. Why do you ask?” “Because I like ice cream when I’m stressed,” she replied, thinking she wasn’t just str...
She reached out, her fingers hesitant. The deer—Knox—tilted his head down, letting her touch his antlers. Her hand trembled slightly as she caressed the boney protrusion. The ivory tines were warmer than she thought they’d be, a living extensio...
They are so caught up in their happiness that they don't realize I'm not really a part of it. I am wandering along the periphery. I am like the people in the Winslow Homer paintings, sharing the same room with them but not really there. I am like the...
Cathy's lies were never innocent. Their purpose was to escape punishment, or work, or responsibility, and they were used for profit. Most liars are tripped up either because they forget what they have told or because the lie is suddenly faced with an...
Sam responded to my mental request, his leg tensing and relaxing, and then coming up against my sex, repeatedly, pounding, as I dropped onto him with furious desire. I pulled Sam to me, as I tensed every muscle in my body in one last spasm of agony, ...
My birthday is coming up. I was born on March 5th, 1982. Humans have come a long way since then—nearly 30 years, if my math is good. And my math better be good, because if my math’s no good, what’s that leave? I mean aside from English, art, sc...
This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down...
It is no coincidence that precisely when things started going downhill with the gods, politics gained its bliss-making character. There would be no reason for objecting to this, since the gods, too were not exactly fair. But at least people saw templ...
My lips parted his to absorb even more energy. My stomach rumbled in praise as the Whisperers laughed at the sight. Luke’s tongue danced against mine, but I am too focused on the feed to feel the unreadable emotion that came with kissing my best fr...
It is well known that stone can think, because the whole of electronics is based on that fact, but in some universes men spend ages looking for other intelligences in the sky without once looking under their feet. That is because they've got the time...
So the gods must mean something else,” said Jix. “God, not gods!” insisted Johnnie. Nick threw up his hands. “God, gods, or whatever,” said Nick. “Right now, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Jesus, or Kukulcan, or a dancing bear at the ...
So they all went home afterwards. My sisters and I sat on the veranda and cried until a storm drove us inside. We agreed to meet in the barn loft for crying once a week but after a while we forgot. Once we did but nobody could work up a cry and we st...
When David Markson wrote in June to complain about an author's getting an award he though should have been his, Wallace gently warned him away from the pitfall of envy: "Mostly I try to remember how lucky I am to be able to write, and doubly, triply ...
I was cyber-bullied before all those Myspace-related suicides, so my school principal wasn't really impressed when my mom complained about what was happening to me on my Xanga blog and on AIM chat. “Get your life sorted out, you fucking scitzo [sic...
If you have the power to hit people over the head whenever you want, you don’t have to trouble yourself too much figuring out what they think is going on, and therefore, generally speaking, you don’t. Hence the sure-fire way to simplify social ar...
