I need to be casual but not too casual. Dressy but not too dressy. I need him to think I just threw on the first thing I found and that I'm not taking this too seriously or overthinking it or even that I was thinking about it at all. Because I'm not....
I live alone," he said simply. "I live in the open. I hear the waves at night and see the black patterns of the pine boughs against the sky. With sound and silence and color and solitude, of course I see visions. Anyone would." "But you don't believe...
Depression is not dramatic, but it is total. It’s sneaky - you almost don’t notice it at first. Like a cat burglar, it comes in through an open window while you’re sleeping. It takes little things at first; your appetite, your desire to return ...
Though he slay me, yet I will praise him," he began softly, his voice a little tremulous at first. "I will rise up in the morning with the dew and praise his name. He has given me a place to serve him, a name with which to be known. He has called me ...
Another grave limitation of language is that it cannot, like music or gesture, do more than one thing at once. However the words in a great poet's phrase interinanimate one another and strike the mind as a quasi-instantaneous chord, yet, strictly spe...
It's natural for a man to defend what's dear to him: his own life, his home, his family. But in order to make him fight on behalf of his rulers, the rich and powerful who are too cunning to fight their own battles-in short to defend not himself but p...
Sitting cross-legged on her bed, I watch her take out her gear. She’s been smoking so much the room stinks of it. Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen her do it so often I’ve resisted the urge. It’s surreal, like I’m watching me from outside ...
Before I lost my father, I never understood the rituals surrounding funerals: the wake, the service itself, the reception afterward,the dinners prepared by well-meaning friends and delivered in plastic containers, even the popular habit of making pos...
Heaven, such as it is, is right here on earth. Behold: my revelation: I stand at the door in the morning, and lo, there is a newspaper, in sight like unto an emerald. And holy, holy, holy is the coffee, which was, and is, and is to come. And hark, I ...
First, however, I must deal with the matter of Jesus, the so-called savior, who not long ago taught new doctrines and was thought to be a son of God. This savior, I shall attempt to show, deceived many and caused them to accept a form of belief harmf...
He had laid his head back until his scalp had contacted his spine, that far back, and opened his throat, and a sound rose in the auditorium like a wind coming from all four directions, low and terrifying, rumbling up from the ground beneath the floor...
The questions that we have to ask and to answer about that procession during this moment of transition are so important that they may well change the lives of men and women forever. For we have to ask ourselves, here and now, do we wish to join that ...
I'm not ill like that," she groaned. He sat on her bed, peeling back the blanket. A servant entered, frowning at the mess on the floor, and shouted for help. "Then it what way?" “I,uh..." Her face was so hot she thought it would melt onto the floor...
In a sermon entitled “God’s Providence,” C. H. Spurgeon said, “Napoleon once heard it said, that man proposes and God disposes. ‘Ah,’ said Napoleon, ‘but I propose and dispose too.’ How do you think he proposed and disposed? He propos...
Yes and no. I thought maybe there could be something more, but I couldn’t deny that I still wanted you in the dirtiest ways.” He ran his thumb along the seam of my jeans. “Then I watched you crumble. I never expected you to get that call from t...
Quoting geneticists, Guy Murcia says we’re all family. You have at least a million relatives as close as tenth cousin, and no one on Earth is further removed than your fiftieth cousin. Murcia also describes out kinship though an analysis of how dee...
And for God's sake, if you need to shoot make sure to release the safety ,” he murmured, as we moved across the front, careful to stick to the shadows as often as we could. So far, I hadn't seen anyone, not even zombies. It wasn't uncommon for a st...
Life was taking its vengeance on me, and that vengeance consisted merely in coming back, nothing more. Every case of madness involves something coming back. People who are possessed are not possessed by something that just comes but instead by someth...
Headache!" Zeus bellowed. "Bad. bad headache!" As if to prove his point, the lord of the universe slammed his face into his pancakes, which demolished the pancakes and the plate and put a crack in the table, but did nothing for his headache. "Aspirin...
There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets `things' with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns `my' and `mine' look innocent enough in print, but their constant and u...
Friends are a strange, volatile, contradictory, yet sticky phenomenon. They are made, crafted, shaped, molded, created by focused effort and intent. And yet, true friendship, once recognized, in its essence is effortless. Best friends are formed by t...