A suburban pastor maintained services appropriate for his respected, professional parish. His father, an excitable traveling evangelist, visited and challenged the congregation to confront pride and sing out loudly with the windows open. The next day...
Science and industry, and their progress, might turn out to be the most enduring thing in the modern world. Perhaps any speculation about a coming collapse of science and industry is, for the present and for a long time to come, nothing but a dream; ...
No matter how many years passed or how much responsibility each assumed, they still managed to bicker like bitchy teenagers on a regular basis. In some way, though, each found it comforting; it reminded them how close they really were: Acquaintances ...
I was pure, before you defiled me, and don't you forget it. As though the concept of purity is anything more than the construct of selfish, competitive men stampeding toward the women to call dibs. I'll be damned if I'm not worth stampeding toward, b...
Teaching isn’t rocket science. It’s about being engaged, listening, paying attention. Despite conventional wisdom, you don’t need to talk a lot to teach well. You do need to care, though. Not so much about what people think of you or whether or...
For several days, I slept. Whether this was a necessary part of physical recovery, or a stubborn retreat from waking reality, I do not know, but I woke only reluctantly to take a little food, falling at once back into a stupor of oblivion, as though ...
I'm sorry,' said the shopkeeper. 'I can't understand your ridiculous accent.' 'My accent?' 'It is quite silly.' 'So you can't understand me?' 'Not a word.' 'Then how did you understand that?' 'I didn't.' ''You didn't understand what I just said?' 'Th...
I didn't know you had a cat!' she exclaimed. I am always surprised how many people make this observation-though not all are as bold as the American in giving voice to their astonishment. Why should His Holiness have a cat-if indeed, 'having a cat' is...
But if you cross me again Akil, so-help-me, I’ll find a way to kill you this time.” His eyes lit up at the prospect, as though he’d accepted a challenge I didn’t even know I’d laid down. “I’d expect nothing less.” Demons; only they ca...
Behold me - a Sophomore! I came up last Friday, sorry to leave Lock Willow, but glad to see the campus again. It a pleasant sensation to come back to something familiar. I am beginning to feel at home in college, and in command of the situation; I am...
[describing Aaron, hero's brother] His hair was shorter and lighter, and his eyes were more green than blue. And even though he was tall, he wasn’t quite super-sized. He was more sculpted, more … elegant. more slender and beautiful and less raw-b...
He thought he was walking along a dusty road that showed white in the gathering darkness of a summer night. Whence and whither it led, and why he traveled it, he did not know, though all seemed simple and natural, as is the way in dreams; for in the ...
He just wanted to stop thinking. It was easier that way. The numbness hadn't left him; if anything it was spreading. When he looked at the pictures, there was no emotion, even though he knew there should be. He should be sad. But he wasn't. He felt n...
I have tried to tell him in a dozen different ways that I am only six inches tall. I've told him I am as tall as his heart, that he could hold all of me in his hand, that I am shorter than I appear. Every time, he's acted as though I'm saying somethi...
She's elegant," Olivia stated. "I would kill to have her figure." "Really?" "Of course. I have always wished to look precisely like her. Though obviously, not enough to avoid food," she added. "That's madness. You have everything she doesn't." Olivia...
There will be stars over the place forever; Though the house we loved and the street we loved are lost, Every time the earth circles her orbit On the night the autumn equinox is crossed, Two stars we knew, poised on the peak of midnight Will reach th...
My purpose, my whole life, had been to love him and be with him, to make him happy. I didn’t want to cause any unhappiness now—in that way, I decided it was probably better than he wasn’t here to see this, though I missed him so much at that mo...
I feel obligated to point out, though, that I have always been a sucker for ideas I find aesthetically pleasing. The cosmic sweep of the thing - an interstellar kula chain - affirming the differences and at the same time emphasizing the similarities ...
This is what I chose. This is it." I look over Robert's shoulder. The Dauntless guards seem to have finished examining the truck. The bearded man gets back into the driver's seat and closes the door behind him. "Besides, Robert. The goal of my life i...
As he had once said to someone in England, though he did not care to remember whom, he had liked the sight of the sea because it represented his escape from England. And he had escaped. But she had said that perhaps it was from himself he wished to e...
The ego isn't a bad thing. If we didn't develop a strong ego, a strong sense of self, we wouldn't be able to relate to and engage with the extremely powerful and archetypal forces (both dark and light) of the unconscious. If we don't have a strongly ...
