If it is perfectly acceptable for a widow to disfigure herself or commit suicide to save face for her husband's family, why should a mother not be moved to extreme action by the loss of a child or children? We are their caretakers. We love them. We n...
Sometimes in storm weather the shore had fluttered with disabled swallows. They crouched lower for his approach, without strength to escape. In his hands they pulsed with that same pulse. He had taken a bird and warmed it between his hands or inside ...
Basically, being alive means keeping yourself ready for the sky to fall in on you at any time. If you start from the assumption that existence is only an ordeal, a test we have to pass, then you’re equipped to deal with its sorrows and its surprise...
I love him, and I love us together more than I love myself. I will do what you ask, but if," Kara swallowed hard, "...if I lose him, I'll join him in death." Vena resisted the urge to stroke the fine mass of dark curls away from the heart-shaped face...
Mr. Upchurch,” she fumbled. “I . . . I must take my leave directly. But before I go, allow me to say how sorry I am for the callous way I treated you in the past. I regret it most keenly.” His heart squeezed even as he felt his brows rise. �...
Lady Dance's music wasn't a magic charm. I'd misunderstood. We had all failed to understand. The song and dance didn't stop us dying. It just stopped the fear of death swallowing us up while we were still alive. 'Rejoice,' came the soft voice of Lady...
Sometimes we make being happy so difficult.And being thankful such a chore. Starting the day like a job we hate. Beginning it like swallowing ten tablespoons of devil made cough syrup. Because, somehow, along the way, we forget that being alive and h...
Barth was the first theologian to begin the criticism of religion...but he set in its place the positivist doctrine of revelation which says in effect, 'Take it or leave it': Virgin Birth, Trinity or anything else, everything which is an equally sign...
Children being children, however, the grotesque Hopping Pot had taken hold of their imaginations. The solution was to jettison the pro-Muggle moral but keep the warty cauldron, so by the middle of the sixteenth century a different version of the tale...
I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and re...
God, you mean I lost my virginity to the apocalypse?" Morgan sighed again. "The whole thing was really embarrassing; my parents sent me to Brooklyn when they found out." She shrugged. "I thought I’d be safe in a gay bar, okay? What were you doing i...
This is what it's all been about with you," he said in an even tone. "All the fear, all the running. The nightmares." When she nodded, he said, "You called him the devil." "He is." "But you... married him?" "Basically? Yes." "Ceremony and everything?...
I'll be a son of a bitch," Patrick said. Aidan could barely make his eyes move, forcing them from the papers onto him. "What?" “I make a living, even life and death judgments, by reading peoples' body language, their raw reactions to situations. An...
PART 2 I felt doomed to death, But in a flash, Before I could reduce my thoughts To an emotion, I felt a mass leave my body: Departing. Then my mind becomes anonymous As is each night. Just unfinished thoughts, and a deep sickness inside, As I was fo...
I think it was a sense of being completely swallowed up by nature that gave the prairie its powerful attraction.There is nothing like it in all of Europe. Even high up on a Swiss glacier one is still conscious of the toy villages below, the carefully...
My whole life is out here-the whole of my life...I'd come here naked, as a boy-straight from that river out there-throw my clothes on the floor and climb into that loft and lie there dreaming in the hay...All those summer days-scouring the banks of t...
Faith, is the road that goes straight past the gravel, and cloud-mesh dirt into a mirage, where still you believe to go straight, and when you finally catch up with it, it ends at a lake where you stretch your eyes across, but unable to glimpse the o...
Saying that “life is short” is such a cliche. And it’s true. In fact, we only have five minutes to be here. In the really big scheme of things, not even that long. We humans don’t even have the lifespan of fruit flies if you look at the bigge...
George Bailey: What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary. Mary: I'll take it. Then what? George Ba...
Dae-su Oh: Please. Don't tell Mido. What has she done wrong? You know it was all my fault... I have committed an unforgivable sin, against your sister. And I also... Did you wrong. But, please leave Mido alone... If by any chance Mido finds out the t...
I was not much afraid of punishment, I was only afraid of disgrace.But that I feared more than death, more than crime, more than anything in the world. I should have rejoiced if the earth had swallowed me up and stifled me in the abyss. But my invinc...
