Go to Zillicks down the block. It has three booths at the back. Go in the middle one and wait. When you lamp me turning the pages of the directory outside, shove your money in the return-coin slot and walk out. Take it easy. Don't let the druggist se...
O'Shaughnessy is hitting Denholt on the side of his head with his free arm, great, walloping, pile-driver blows. The two of them stagger together, like partners in a crazy dance. Glass is breaking all around them. Gray smoke from the six shots, pink-...
The thing, whatever it was - and no one was ever sure afterwards whether it was a dream or a fit or what - happened at that peculiar hour before dawn when human vitality is at its lowest ebb. The Blue Hour they sometimes call it, l'heure bleue - the ...
The car drives through, stops while the man closes and fastens the prickly gate behind it. The bell shuts off; the stillness is deafening by contrast. The car goes on until the outline of a house suddenly uptilts the searching headlight-beams, log-bu...
It must be dawn, and the last breath went out of this body on the table - how long before? Irretrievably gone from this world, as dead as though she had lived a thousand years ago. Men have cut the isthmus of Panama and joined the two oceans; they ha...
A scattering of pinpoint lights shows up in the blackness ahead. A town or village straddling the highway. The indicator on the speedometer begins to lose ground. The man glances in his mirror at the girl, a little anxiously as if this oncoming town ...
It takes will power and nerve to hold the stick that way, to keep his eyes open and watch the rocky face of the cliff, pine-bearded, rush up at them. O'Shaughnessy's mouth flattens, his face goes white. And then in that final fraction of a moment, he...
Right there in that room, listening to the tape Laura gave me, I decided that I wanted something more than what I’d allowed myself to become. Listening to the voices and piano notes fade in and out, I decided that I wanted to be happy. If I had to ...
What is whiter than snow?' he said. 'The truth,' said Grania. 'What is the best colour?' said Finn. 'The colour of childhood,' said she. 'What is hotter than fire?' 'The face of a hospitable man when he sees a stranger coming in, and the house empty....
There, too, she would sit for hours gazing seawards. No tiniest speck of sail that crossed the waters could escape her watchful eyes, and as she watched she dreamed that some day one of these distant sails should bear down towards her, and one should...
In the course of this story, and very soon now, it will be necessary to make some disclosures about Mr. Krupper of a nature too coarse to be dealt with very directly in a work of such brevity. The grossly naturalistic details of a life, contained in ...
But as much as this is a soldier's reason d'etre, it is not often that you hear a soldier explicitly talk about 'killing'. The k-word as a verb is instead often disguised and supplanted by any number of other euphemisms. In precise and technical mili...
A memory came to me. One time, in middle school, a famous author came to talk to our class and give a writing workshop. One of the things she told us about writing a novel was that the story should be about what the main character wants. Dorothy want...
These are just stories, you know. They are part of what we are, but they are not the real thing. All this year I’ve been thinking, What would White Raven do? And today, every time I thought it, I just didn’t care what White Raven would do. So tod...
I had a book of Bible stories when I was a kid. There was a picture I'd look at twenty times every day: Jacob wrestles with the angel. I don't really remember the story, or why the wrestling --just the picture. Jacob is young and very strong. The ang...
Every story is an act of trust between a writer and a reader: each story, in the end, is social. Whatever a writer sets down can help or harm a community of which he or she is a part. When I write I can imagine a child in California wishing to give a...
The story of the angel announcing what the church calls the immaculate conception, is not so much as mentioned in the books ascribed to Mark, and John; and is differently related in Matthew and Luke. The former says the angel, appeared to Joseph; the...
It is also true that memory sometimes comes to him as a voice. It is a voice that speaks inside him, and it is not necessarily his own. It speaks to him in the way a voice might tell stories to a child, and yet at times this voice makes fun of him, o...
Can writing ever be taught? The best answer to that was given obliquely by the rock musician David Lee Roth. When asked if money could buy happiness he said, no, but with money you could buy the big boat and go right up to where the people were happy...
Oh, what can you do with a man like that? What can you do? How can you dissuade his eye in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; how can you teach him to respond to the inestimable greatness of the race, the harsh surface bea...
Miss Morstan and I stood together, and her hand was in mine. A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we two, who had never seen each other until that day, between whom no word or even look of affection had ever passed, and yet now in an hour o...
