From books, I winnowed the glue that held together my psyche as it struggled to stay whole. It was from stories and myths that I learned to dream, to imagine a different life, to realize potentials and probabilities other than those of the painful, p...
Maybe Laney's right. Maybe June did love me. But I'm far less certain that she knew I loved her. Did she realise how much I needed her around? It's not like I ever told her. I was too wrapped up in my own world to notice what was going on in hers. Ev...
Let me guess - you're Grumpy?' He let out a . ' And you would be too, if you'd just spent the last hour searching the forest for your wayward charge.' He walked even faster. 'We tell you to stay inside, we tell you not to talk to strangers. But oh no...
No, I'm serious," Frankie insisted, fed up with being silenced. "Why didn't you just make me a normie?" Viktor sighed. "Because that's not who we are. We're special. And I'm very proud that. You should be, too." "Proud?" Frankie spat out the word as ...
All night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying in his own aircraft to the stratospheric...
At night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look out over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying in his own aircraft to the stratosphe...
Is that all, sir? Only we've got stuff to finish before our knocking-off time, you see, and if we stay late we have to make more money to pay our overtime, and if the lads is a bit tired we ends up earning the money faster'n we can make it, which lea...
Picture this broad: 22 going on 18. Half the guys in my class would have given their left testicle to date her. This cupcake is the guidance counselor the principal has assigned me. Miss Boyle is her name. We all call her “Miss Bubbly Water.” Ima...
Finally, let me share a feeling of mine, I hope it will not be misinterpreted as pride. I am seventy four now. But still, if they give me a duty in the wooden hut where I used to stay when I was a mentor long years ago, I will gladly run there and tr...
I didn't leave right away. I stayed in the woods. I heard the faint voices of other people. I felt the cold against my skin. But mostly, I was aware of my own heavy breathing, my own thoughts, my own past, present, and future. I realized then, and wo...
What are you going to do with your life?" In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no neare...
I have heard them preach, when I sat in the pew and my feet did not touch the floor, about the final home of the unconverted. In order to impress upon the children the length of time they would probably stay if they settled in that country, the preac...
The Lady Amalthea beckoned, and the cat wriggled all over, like a dog, but he would not come near... She was offering her open palm to the crook-eared cat, but he stayed where he was, shivering with the desire to go to her"...[later, Molly asked the ...
Winter came in days that were gray and still. They were the kind of days in which people locked in their animals and themselves and nothing seemed to stir but the smoke curling upwards from clay chimneys and an occasional red-winged blackbird which r...
Monk worked on his remaining Intertect cases at his dining table while I tried to hone my detecting instincts by reading the Murder, She Wrote novel he bought in Mill Valley. I can't say that I learned much about investigative procedure but I discove...
He leaned in even closer until she could count the bristles on his poorly shaven chin. “But you’re pretty. You can stay. Turn around and spread your legs so I can fuck you up against the wire. I’ll get my cock in you so deep it’ll need a dire...
Because men are sentimental over women they will throw away military advantages, and hesitate and weigh the chances of failure when attack is their best or only hope, and lose their opportunity because they "have to think of the women and children". ...
And she imagined how things could be later. It was stupid, but the picture just appeared in her mind. Abel and Magnus shoveling snow together... in twenty years, in thirty. Magnus had grown old, his broad back still strong but bent from time, his hai...
What did you learn?” “Letting go of my past, because it’s all soot, nothing is left of it, if I wandered there for long I would be running in circles in the dark, no hope, no life. And if I chose to live in those places rebuilt from ashes, I ca...
And is not all of life material- based on the material- permeated by the material? Should not one learn, gladly, to utilize the beauty of the fine material? I do not speak of the gross crudities of soporific television, of loud brash convertibles and...
Joliffe, watching him over the rim of his own bowl, felt for his discontent. In his own life there were other things he could have been besides a player---several other things he been besides a player--but at least he had had choices and made them. H...
