None of them, not even what he suspected should have been little boys, were small. He’d always thought that the James boys were freakishly large, but the men that were beating the shit out of each other over food had been much, much bigger. Most ev...
We could endlessly reminisce, live in the past to an unhealthy degree, then politely kill each other some winter night before bedtime, stirring poison into our cups of whiskey-spiked chamomile tea, wearing party hats. Then, nervous about our double h...
I realized then what had happened. She had turned us--all of us, except for Mouse--into great, gaunt, long-legged hounds. Wonderful!" Lea said, pirouetting upon one toe, laughing. "Come, children!" And she leapt off into the jungle, nimble and swift ...
To call the population of strangers in the midst of which we live "society" is such a usurpation that even the sociologists wonder if they should abandon a concept that was, for a century, their bread and butter. Now they prefer the metaphor of a to ...
88. People wonder why so many writers come to live in Paris. I’ve been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it’s the best place to pick ideas. Just like Italy, Spain.. or Iran are the best places to pick saffron. I...
Could you just imagine? If every suicide rose--think of Faulkner's Quentin Compson as a vampire. I don't hate the South I don't I don't. She wondered how they'd have worked it out in Cambridge when Quentin threw himself off the Andersen bridge into t...
So all night long the storm roared on: The morning broke without a sun; In tiny spherule traced with lines Of Nature’s geometric signs, In starry flake, and pellicle, All day the hoary meteor fell; And, when the second morning shone, We looked upon...
He is not my focus," Diana told writer Rodney Tyler of Arne. "He’s my husband, my companion, my lover, my confidant. But not my focus. I wasn’t lost, then found by Arne. I was single and met a wonderful man and we enjoyed each other’s company a...
Perhaps one central reason for loving dogs is that they take us away from this obsession with ourselves. When our thoughts start to go in circles, and we seem unable to break away, wondering what horrible event the future holds for us, the dog opens ...
[Jess]"... you were wonderful. Magnificent. Incomparable. Unparalleled. Incredible." "Oh, stop it!" Addie grinned and blushed, and backed a step with each word, as Jess advanced toward her with each accolade. But on the third step, her back made cont...
It was not till I experimented with seeds plucked straight from a growing plant that I had my first success...the first thrill of creation...the first taste of blood. This, surely, must be akin to the pride of paternity...indeed, many soured bachelor...
Barbee had wondered about insanity, sometimes with a brooding dread - for his own father, whom he scarcely remembered, had died in the forbidding stone pile of the state asylum. He had vaguely supposed that a mental breakdown must be somehow strange ...
Declan and Regin: "Kiss ?" As he waited for the revulsion to seize him, he found himself wondering how she would react. Would she moan into his mouth? "It will help you remember me. Kiss me. Come on, you know you want to so bad. You want so bad." "Ne...
Imagine in vibrant, wonderful detail your heart’s desire—a reality only you can envision, an adventure only you can direct. Then cradle your creation. Caress it. Mold it. Coddle it until it comes to life. And when your precious treasure grows so ...
Any human companionship, even the dearest and most perfect, would have been alien to her then. She was sufficient unto herself, needing not love nor comradeship nor any human emotion to round out her felicity. Such moments come rarely in any life, bu...
Perhaps soul mates don’t exist, I thought. Maybe they were only a way to get over a loss that couldn’t be forgotten, a way to mend a heart that was unredeemable—an aberrant remedy that dissolved long before the healing began. A way to love a nu...
Running efficiently demands good technique, and running efficiently for 100 miles demands great technique. But the wonderful paradox of running is that getting started requires no technique. None at all. If you want to become a runner, get onto a tra...
Sometimes callers from a distance invade my solitude, and it is on these occasions that I realize how absolutely alone each individual is, and how far away from his neighbour; and while they talk (generally about babies, past, present, and to come), ...
I’ve often wondered why the Protestant Reformation took place in Germany, rather than in Poland. Then I realize that Luther had to nail his 95 theses to the church door, and the Poles didn’t know how to operate a hammer.
This afternoon I sat at my window and alternately wrote at my new serial and watched a couple of dear, amusing, youngish maple-trees at the foot of the garden. They whispered secrets to each other all the afternoon. They would bend together and talk ...
The curse of mortality. You spend the first portion of your life learning, growing stronger, more capable. And then, through no fault of your own, your body begins to fail. You regress. Strong limbs become feeble, keen senses grow dull, hardy constit...
