For many years I have regarded the Pentateuch simply as a record of a barbarous people, in which are found a great number of the ceremonies of savagery, many absurd and unjust laws, and thousands of ideas inconsistent with known and demonstrated fact...
It was the kind of promise a father makes easily and sincerely, knowing at the same time that it will be impossible to keep. The truth of some promises is not as important as whether or not you can believe in them, with all your heart. A game of base...
Yes, and our sister's sons are candid now about a creepy business which used to worry them a lot: They cannot find their mother or their father in their memories anywhere - not anywhere. The goat farmer, whose name is James Carmalt Adams, Jr., said t...
To Vic and other kids his age, the past didn't exist except as a quick, oversimplified Wikipedia snippets, that ultimately didn't matter because they weren't now. Dolores wonders if that is all she really is, a little piece of now, relentlessly pushe...
Who are you anyway? What are you even doing here?” “Haven,” she said quietly, peeking at him. He gazed at her peculiarly. “Heaven? No, this definitely isn't Heaven. But I get why you’re confused, since I'm standing in front of you.” She s...
The way he said her name made my heart cramp. In all my years of word collecting, I've learned this to be a tried and true fact: I can very often tell how much a person loves another person by the way they say their name. I think that's one of the be...
You know, if you ain't poor, you might think it's the folks in them big ole fine brick churches that's doin all the carin and the prayin. I wish you coulda seen all them little circles a'homeless folks with their heads bowed and their eyes closed, wh...
I stepped closer still. He closed his eyes again and covered my hand with his own. 'You smell of violets. You always smell of violets,' he said. 'You've no idea how many times I have walked these moors and smelled them and thought you were near. On a...
This was the move that was supposed to sweep me away. She seemed a little out of practice. I guess life with Charley Royce hadn’t exactly been the third reel of The English Patient. It had to be bad if Mickey Dolan was your back-up. Not to put Mick...
A gray V-neck T-shirt hugged his wide shoulders and broad chest, then hung loose over his tight abdomen. a pair of worn Levi's lovingly cupped his generous package, embraced long legs, and broke across the tops of well-worn cowboy boots. Jackson had ...
No matter how hard you try looking for love, Orafoura once told me, the last place you’ll find it is in another man’s ass. But that may not be true, because the last time I lost my boxing gloves, that’s exactly where I found them.
When those lips engulfed my head, I said to myself later, ‘nothing else will ever touch this scalp again’. I couldn’t help it, though. I lathered sunscreen on it unthinkingly the next day before I went out. But it was the first time in the subu...
I didn’t think you were real for a long time,” I confess. “I thought you were someone I’d dreamed up.” “A dream worth reliving every night for ten years?” he asks, chuckling and slowly loosening his hold. “For eternity,” I whisper, ...
Even today, some opt for the comforts of mystification, preferring to believe that the wonders of the ancient world were built by Atlanteans, gods, or space travelers, instead of by thousands toiling in the sun. Such thinking robs our forerunners of ...
Did she ever feel nostalgia for any of her girlhood dreams? But life was made up of a succession of dreams, some few to be realized, most to be set aside as time went on, one or two to persist for a lifetime. It was knowing when to abandon a dream, p...
You know what I want? I just want you to be open to the fact that I am a woman. I’ve got emotions. I’ve got expectations. I cry. I laugh. And I was drawn to you because, first, you are a handsome man. But, secondly, after spending the time that w...
Good gods, you look like cold shit.” Ghleanna gazed at her brother and again wondered why she hadn’t smashed his bloody egg when she had the chance. Her mother would have eventually forgiven her. “Thank you, brother. And you look fat and happy....
When Josey woke up and saw the feathery frost on her windowpane, she smiled. Finally, it was cold enough to wear long coats and tights. It was cold enough for scarves and shirts worn in layers, like camouflage. It was cold enough for her lucky red ca...
Know your load. That’s rule numero uno in this business, which is why I make them count the penguins out in front of me one at a time. I’m not going to be the schmuck who shows up in Orlando two birds short of a dinner party....I know I’m pulli...
But I couldn't have brought the child here, I never identified it as mine; I didn't name it before it was born even, the way you're supposed to. It was my husband's, he imposed it on me, all the time it was growing in me I felt like an incubator. He ...
What made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting small things first... it's amazing how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until you could finally endure i...
