Can't it be stopped?" said Lina. She shifted around under her blanket, trying to find a place to sit where rocks weren't digging into her. Maybe it can be stopped at the beginning," Maddy said. "If someone sees what's happening and is brave enough to...
I always thought of it like you said, that all the strings inside him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we’re grass—our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as lo...
To be honest, it was pretty hard to leave. I desperately wanted to turn around, and tell him everything would be okay. That I adore him and I trust him and that I'll stand by him while he goes through this tough time. But I'm just too tired. I'm thir...
Seemed to me a phone was an impersonal instrument. If it like it, it let your personality go through its wires. If it didn't to, it just drained your personality away until what slipped through at the other end was some cold fish of a voice, all stee...
It may be a cat, a bird, a ferret, or a guinea pig, but the chances are high that when someone close to you dies, a pet will be there to pick up the slack. Pets devour the loneliness. They give us purpose, responsibility, a reason for getting up in t...
Osama, baah!" Bashir roared. "Osama is not a product of Pakistan or Afghanistan. He is a creation of America. Thanks to America, Osama is in every home. As a military man, I know you can never fight and win against someone who can shoot at you once a...
I don't know where this pressure came from. I can't blame my parents because it has always felt internal. Like any other parent, my mother celebrated the A grades and the less-than-A grades she felt there was no need to tell anybody about. But not ac...
I have always enjoyed kissing the girls I've kissed in the past but only because I was attracted to them. It didn't really have anything to do with them in particular. When I kissed all the other girls, I felt pleasure. That's why people enjoy kissin...
I hear Warner laugh. I see him smile. It's the kind of smile that transforms him into someone else entirely, the kind of smile that puts stars in his eyes and a dazzle on his lips and I realize I've never seen him like this before. I've never seen hi...
When you're having an asthma attack, you don't have any breath. When you don't have any breath, it's hard to speak. You're limited by the amount of air you can spend from your lungs. That's not much, something between three to six words. It gives the...
There is no living being on earth at this moment except myself. I could walk down the halls, and empty rooms would yawn mockingly at me from every side. God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of 'partie...
I knew that I was in better shape than she was because I was the one who pushed for the split. Still, even a year later I was still very vulnerable to her actions. If I saw her at the supermarket, or someone brought her name up, or if she called abou...
I lied, but by his reaction I think he liked what I had said. I had told Shreya about Sudeshna and she was okay with our relationship, but there were a few things that I hadn’t told even her…..secrets. I wasn’t proud to keep it away from her bu...
Am I cured?” “No. You’re someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that, in my view, is a serious illness.” “Is wanting to be different a serious illness?” “It is if you force yourself to be the same a...
If God wants something from me, he would tell me. He wouldn't leave someone else to do this, as if an infinite being were short on time. And he would certainly not leave fallible, sinful humans to deliver an endless plethora of confused and contradic...
We've come a long way from the time when the crowning achievement in a woman's life was her youthful marriage. And many would agree that this represents progress for women. But when did the search for someone to marry become self-absorbed and patheti...
When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions; you should just listen to him, just observe what his way is. We put very little emphasis on right and wrong or good and bad. We just see things a...
The nation has been turned upside down and inside out. The country that was once discovered by people seeking religious freedom is now oppressing religious rights. It has been a slow train rumbling down the track of destruction since the 1960's. It s...
They had pulled me from the hemorrhaging, dying body of my mother and turned me over to the care of the man who was not my father. He had taken me home to their tiny apartment above the old hardware store and done what little he knew to take care of ...
Ironically for someone who had so long asserted his own individuality as his first and best defense against insults of any kind, I discovered that faith in myself proved to be the least formidable strength I possessed when confronting alone organized...
I don’t think that I’ve been in love as such Although I liked a few folk pretty well Love must be vaster than my smiles or touch for brave men died and empires rose and fell For love, girls follow boys to foreign lands and men have followed women...
