He himself, Anthony went on to think, he himself had chosen to regard the whole process as either pointless or a practical joke. Yes, chosen. For it had been an act of the will. If it were all nonsense or a joke, then he was at liberty to read his bo...
Look behind you now. Do you feel in your heart a slight hastening of its beat, and a powerful sense that something momentous is about to happen? ... Perhaps, then, this is the hour that Mary Hightower takes to the sky with thousands Afterlights headi...
…the rising movement of romanticism, with its characteristic idealism, one that tended toward a black-and-white view of the world based on those ideas, preferred for different reasons that women remain untinged by “masculine” traits of learning...
She was someone who heard each grain in the hour-glass, she felt the passing seconds like sandpaper against her softest skin. Time actually seemed to hurt her, and people helped her get through it. [..] Sometimes it seemed to Nathan that her life was...
Unfortunately for him he looked more like an innocent man on America’s terror watch-list rather than a gallant Viking possessing all the benefits of modernity. More like a villain in a Western fairy tale with his slicked-bouffant obsidian hair rath...
Wow,” Sussman said, “you look hot even with the slight disfigurement.” I stopped and turned toward him. “What did you say?” “Um, you look hot?” “Let me ask you something,” I said, easing closer. He took a wary step back. “When you...
I should go," I said thickly. "Let me know when you want to start practice again. And thanks for...talking." I started to turn; then I heard him say abruptly, "No." I glanced back. "What?" He held my gaze, and something warm and wonderful and powerfu...
Dimitri's voice snapped my attention back to him. "That's Adrian Ivashkov." He said the name the same way everyone else did. "Yeah, I know." "This is the second time I've seen you with him." "Yeah," I replied glibly. "We hang out sometimes." Dimitri ...
One retired pastor, who felt that he was being called to write a book about homosexuality, interviewed me. He said he wanted his book to be pastorally compassionate toward gay people while exhorting the church to remain firm in holding to a tradition...
Unconscious, perhaps, of the remote tendency of his own labours, he [Joseph Black] undermined that doctrine of material heat, which he seemed to support. For, by his advocacy of latent heat, he taught that its movements constantly battle, not only so...
A red-gold glow burst suddenly across the enchanted sky above them as an edge of dazzling sun appeared over the sill of the nearest window. The light hit both of their faces at the same time, so that Voldemort's was suddenly a flaming blur. Harry hea...
In this brief transit where the dreams cross The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying (Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things From the wide window towards the granite shore The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flyin...
In the end, Astrid couldn’t do anything about my . . . turning into light, but she made a prediction. She said the sun would help me and I would be cured thanks to its efforts.’ ‘The sun?’ ‘Yes. It was the symbol I drew from among the runes...
The denizens of Feyland find the absence of magic to be quite funny. I mean no offense. ” “None taken.” “For example – In the Land Over the Crystal River (for that's how we refer to humans), there was once a man and a woman. And the man was...
Like casinos, large corporate entities have studied the numbers and the ways in which people respond to them. These are not con tricks - they're not even necessarily against our direct interests, although sometimes they can be - but they are hacks fo...
Every once in a bestseller list, you come across a truly exceptional craftsman, a wordsmith so adept at cutting, shaping, and honing strings of words that you find yourself holding your breath while those words pass from page to eye to brain. You kno...
Why do we remember the Boys of Summer? We remember because we were young when they were, of course. But more, we remember because we feel the ache of guilt and regret. While they were running, jumping, leaping, we were slouched behind typewriters, sm...
One morning indeed, I felt a sudden misgiving that she not only had left the house but had gone for good: I had just heard the sound of a door which seemed to me to be that of her room. On tiptoe I crept towards the room, opened the door, stood upon ...
In North Carolina, I stopped to gas up at a Humble Oil station, then walked around the corner to use the toilet. There were two doors and three signs. MEN was neatly stenciled over one door, LADIES over the other. The third sign was an arrow on a sti...
Life is open to us all. No one will ever see life exactly the same as another. Some folks will argue that one who is on a focused path to expanding into the best they can be has changed or is changing. To that I say: I haven't changed I'm just growin...
I call these lessons ‘learned on the fly’ because the knowledge gained from the experiences connected with them were very much akin to the spirit of the centerfielder in baseball running backward at full speed, looking towards the heavens, trying...
