People talk about books being an escape, but here on the tube, this one feels more like a lifeline...The motion of the train makes her head rattle, but her eyes lock on the words the way a figure skater might choose a focal point as she spins, and ju...
To choose to chew, rather than converse with my fellow dinner guests, was the choice I made when I chose the chewiest item on the menu. I wasn’t being rude. In fact, I was being polite. By ignoring them, I fulfilled and followed the aphorism: “It...
My family stood right in front of me, talking and smiling. I felt like I was viewing one of those cheesy ad shots for camera companies. The ones I looked at and thought, fake, because no one's family ever looked that happy. Yet, the perfect family mo...
Ew. Can you not talk about my dad ogling people? Scarlett Johansson may be gorgeous, but still.” “It’ll be a challenge, but I think I can refrain from licking the screen,” Brendan deadpanned, placing the wine bottle on the coffee table next t...
Oh, if I had had a friend at this moment, a friend in an attic room, dreaming by candlelight and with a violin lying ready at his hand! How I should have slipped up to him in his quiet hour, noiselessly climbing the winding stair to take him by surpr...
People talk about mainstream fiction and sf as though they were two quite different kinds of writing, and fantasy as well, as though it was quite different. But I think this a false distinction, that it is a labelling that helps librarians, and peopl...
Even those fortunate ones among us who get sex right don’t necessarily feel compelled to talk about it. For all they know, everybody else is having the same experience. Sex being a naturally private act, we don’t share experiences with others the...
I told Mama and Savannah about Ruben's proposal. That got us to talking about marriage and we laughed and cried some, and missed Papa, and it felt good to belong to each other. I don't feel as lonely today as I have in months. At least I know there a...
I really can't handle talking about this for too long because it hurts too much, but I want to say that there is one thing I've learned about people they don't get that mean and nasty overnight. It's not human nature. If you give people enough time, ...
Individuals who speak languages other than English, who speak patois as well as standard English, find it a necessary aspect of self-affirmation not to feel compelled to chose one voice over another, not to claim one as more authentic but rather to c...
She missed the built environment of New York City. It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. She missed people. She missed human intrigue, drama and power strugg...
has started you on this?" I asked. "We were talking about the holidays." "Los Angeles is not a safe place for a young woman alone. I feel it in my bones." "That's your arthritis, Aunt Sadie. Do you want me to get a gun? I'd probably shoot myself in t...
I'd heard that if you saw a Reaper, you saw what you expected to see, what you thought the agents of Death would look like. Personally, I wanted to see little, fuzzy pink bunnies, but apparently my subconscious visualized tall, scary, and skeletal. M...
He talked about terrible meetings in lonely places, of cyclopean ruins in the heart of the Maine woods beneath which vast staircases led down to abysses of nighted secrets, of complex angles that led through invisible walls to other regions of space ...
When he didn't answer, she didn't know if it was because he couldn't or if he was back to not talking to her. Back to pushing her out of his life. Men! Why was it that boys said girls were so hard to understand, when she hadn't known a single guy who...
When Mats came in the evenings, they would drink tea in the kitchen while reading their books and talking about them. If Katri came in, they were quiet and waited for her to leave. The back door would close, and Katri would have gone. “Does your si...
"What the hell was THAT?" I gasped. "Premature inflamulation," he replied. "Happens sometimes. Very embarrassing, I don't like to talk about it." A snort of amusement came from my right. I swung in that direction to see Bones bestow the most appro...
Much slower, I turned around to see Vlad examining his fingernails, as if his hands weren't still ablaze in the flames that had blasted the ghoul's head off moments before. 'what the hell was that?' I gasped. 'Premature inflammation,' He replied. 'Ha...
That night I slept badly, thrashing about in my bed, not quite asleep and not quite awake. At times I had the feeling there was someone else in my bedroom who was talking to me, but of course I could not deal with this perception in any realistic way...
Timothy bit the inside of his lip and pretended to nod sagely. Things were starting to sound a little far-fetched again. "Man," he said, "that's... that's rough. I've heard that being a dragon servant totally stinks. I think I saw a talk show about t...
No matter how much he talked, she never answered him, but he knew she was still there. He knew it was like the soldiers he had read about. They would have an arm or a leg blown off, and for days, even weeks after it happened, they could still feel th...
