Yet it is true—skin can mean a great deal. Mine means that any man may strike me in a public place and never fear the consequences. It means that my friends do not always like to be seen with me in the street. It means that no matter how many books...
Her accent's funny, different from mine, different from anyone in Prentisstown's. Her lips make different kinds of outlines for the letters, like they're swooping down on them from above, pushing them into shape, telling them what to say. In Prentiss...
Television wasn't getting rid of animals, but they were no longer cast as creatures that were omniscient and heroic. They were talking horses like Mr Ed or an absurdist pig like Arnold Ziffle...Just like the heroic animals in silent films became come...
[E]verywhere I'm looking at kids, adults mostly don't seem to like them, not even the parents do. They call the kids gorgeous and so cute, they make the kids do the thing all over again so they can take a photo, but they don't want to actually play w...
My grandmother and my two aunts were an exhibition in resilience and resourcefulness and black womanhood. They rarely talked about the unfairness of the world with the words that I use now with my social justice friends, words like "intersectionality...
Why couldn't Rachel be a little more specific about the type of person she was? Goodness knew; if she were a hippie I'd talk to her about her drug experiences, the zodiac, tarot cards. If she were left-wing I'd look miserable, hate Greece, and eat ba...
What's wrong?" His voice was loud, so sharp that he sounded angry. I knew I should be careful, keep the secret, but I was too far gone to talk around it. My chest was working in huge spasms and I could barely breathe. "I kissed her." "And then you we...
Everywhere we went, every step we took, girls stopped talking and turned to stare. I'd never seen anything like it. But then, I don't suppose they'd ever seen anything like Reason. We found two seats together in the middle of the room and sat down wh...
Let’s talk about adoration, people love adoration but they should not love it so much, because it can make them turn from the righteousness of God and His Holy Word to receive adoration from sinners who don’t believe and want their own way, so it...
Gus and I talk about girls a lot, but we can't figure them out. They are so confusing. Like, if you look at them, they get mad. And if you don't look at them, they get mad. And if you're nice to them, they think you like them. And if you're mean to t...
I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes; in hospit...
With Pollution, emotion is irrelevant, it is not their nature,” Mearth sighed, making a face as if she were talking to an ignorant small child. “I didn’t create them, humans created the Pollution. Cheryl Nobel, Alecto Steele, Albert Sanders, Ol...
He shakes his head and his mouth is quirked at one corner. I can't tell if he thinks I am sort of amusing or truly pathetic. It's especially hard to tell because we are both looking resolutely at the teacher so she can't accuse us of not paying atten...
I talk. Jim runs. I tilt stones, Jim grabs the cold junk under the stones and -lickety-split! I climb hills. Jim yells off church steeples. I got a bank account. Jim’s got the hair on his head, the yell in his mouth, the shirt on his back and the t...
Like many people whose lives had formed around a particularly painful incident, she had grown used to providing ellipses around the event of her brother's death to keep conversations comfortable. At some point the subconscious logic of this had sprea...
... They paid some madman who thought he was a decorator a lot of money to make the place look hip and unique. May be it's my lack of fashion sense talking, but I thought they should have held out for one of those gorillas who has learned to paint. T...
- What’s there to talk about? I love you, you love me. Nothing else matters, love is the most important thing. The rest will come by itself. - No, Elida. You’re mistaken. Everything is important while sharing a life together. Love, honesty, habit...
A cold wind raced across the surrounding fields of wild grass, turning the land into a heaving dark-green ocean. It sighed up through the branches of cherry trees and rattled the thick leaves. Sometimes a cherry would break loose, tumble in the gale,...
It feels weird, being out in the real world again. Around people just living their lives like normal. Their presence is oppressive. The very fact that the world is going on as usual, like nothing ever happened, makes me want to scream. I know it's ir...
Truly, more than removing the partition between vectors and values, we would have needed to talk about strengthening crisscrossed lacings: an intertwined kind of understanding that would de-ideologize 'ideologies,' desanctify sanctities, but also men...
It seems almost oxymoronic to believe that this new idealism has led to a new pessimism about marriage, but that is exactly what has happened. In generations past there was far less talk about "compatibility" and finding the ideal soul mate. Today we...
