You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.
The Air Loom, if Matthews revealed its existence under questioning, would now be recognised immediately as a classic paranoid delusion. But in 1797 it was something that had never been encountered before, and would emerge as the baffling leitmotif of...
I love opera. Si. But I am old. No passion in my life, you know? I work, I walk slowly now through my years...but opera! I see, I hear that passion, Eva. Is like the passion of youth. And I live again. I feel something.
The way I see it, the difference between farmers and suburbanites is the difference in the way we feel about dirt. To them, the earth is something to be respected and preserved, but dirt gets no respect. A farmer likes dirt. Suburbanites like to get ...
What are you doing?” “What does it look like? I’m getting down on my knees.” His head butted against her stomach. Her muscles clenched, shocked at the touch, even through the layer of cotton. “I’ve never begged a woman for anything before...
Let me love you, he said I want to mould that broken heart, To feel the pain the others before I have caused, Walk down the darkness that you walked through, Understand how something so broken can be so beautiful, I need to understand how you manifes...
So that’s your sister?” asks Dee in a quiet voice. “Yeah.” “The one you risked your life for?” “Yeah.” The twins nod politely in that automatic way that people do when they don’t want to say something insulting. “Your family any b...
I was awakened by a tremendous earthquake, and though I hadn ever before enjoyed a storm of this sort, the strange thrilling motion could not be mistaken, and I ran out of my cabin, both glad and frightened, shouting, "A noble earthquake! A noble ear...
I took a deep breath. 'For you I've got something better than love.' What's that?' I...trust you.' Why?' You'll never hurt me.' Thank you.' But...' But, what?' I said, 'That means I'll hurt you.' Why?' 'Cause, like I said, you'll never hurt me back.
We let them help because they needed it, not us. We didn't let them help us because we needed it, we let them help us because inside of humans is this thing, this unnamed need to feel as if we are usefel in the world. To feel as if we have something ...
Reading literature is a way of reaching back to something bigger and older and different. It can give you the feeling that you belong to the past as well as the present, and it can help you realize that your present will someday be someone else’s p...
I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affair...
Life is a brief shot at something incredible
His dear face, dear to her, dearer still. how could she love his face more for its damage? What kind of person saw someone's suffering and felt her heart crack open even wider, even more sweetly than before? There was something wrong with her. It was...
Colm was a good sleeper. But if there was one sound at night that should wake him, and any sensible man who loved his family, it was the barking of dogs. The noise was coming from the village. It was not just one or two dogs, but surely every mangy c...
It's something I imagine occasionally: waking up to discover civilisation has ended, leaving nothing but empty streets and silence. I don't actually want that to happen, but I ponder what I'd do, and how I'd stay alive. How it would feel to be alone,...
I killed little Esmerelda because I felt I owed it to myself and to the world in general. I had, after all, accounted for two male children and thus done womankind something of a statistical favour. If I really had the courage of my convictions, I re...
Not to sound like a jerk, but Jane isn't really my type. Her hair's kinda disastrously curly and she mostly hangs out with guys. My type's a little girlier. And honestly, I don't even like my type of girl that much, let alone other types. Not that I'...
Do you want to be with Dave for the rest of your life?” Then he rips off a piece of paper and picks up the smallest charcoal stick from my set. He writes something. He passes it over to me. It says: Time will tell. “And while you’re waiting,”...
Friendship, true friendship is a curious dance. Why does one recognize and embrace one soul and yet not another. What is that? That something unspoken. Perhaps it is a long ago remembrance of another time, another place, those same familiar eyes shin...
He's dead Duncan, killed himself when I was 13. In all those years he forgot something vital. He taught me when he was learning for himself. I know how to inflict pain; the scary thing is it doesn't bother me, a trait I'm sure I inherited from him." ...
