Jack Skellington: Forgive me, Mr. Claus. I'm afraid I've made a terrible mess of your holiday. Santa: Bumpy *sleigh*-ride... Jack. Next time you get the urge to take over someone else's holiday, I'd listen to *her*. [points to Sally] Santa: She's the...
I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! T...
He checked out his surrounding. More books. A drinking fountain. A poster showing a guy slam-dunking a basketball with one hand and holding a book in the other, urging kids to READ! Weird, thought Steve. How can he even see the hoop? ... You see, Ste...
My mom's coming home soon," I said. "We should go to your place." Patch ran a hand across the shadow of stubble along his jaw. "I have rules about who I take there." I was getting really tired of that answer. "If you showed me, you'd have to kill me?...
Can you taste it Bruce? Can you taste the filth, the dirt, the oily blackness of that fossil fuel in our mouth as you choke and gag and spit it out? Do you still hear his voice in your head urging you to eat? Eat, eat eat. Your mother's cries. Do you...
We should not conclude from this that everything depends on waves of irrational psychology. On the contrary, the state of long-term expectation is often steady, and, even when it is not, the other factors exert their compensating effects. We are mere...
As the Protestants celebrate a goal, they're egged on by the team captain, a long-haired Italian called Lorenzo Amoruso, who has the look of a 1980s male model. Flailing his arms, he urges them to sing their anti-Catholic songs louder. The irony is o...
In 2006 I had begun the discernment process for locating my rightful geographic home. By the time my corporate pink slip arrived I had spent two years researching and taking recon trips to five different cities in southern California. Having crossed ...
Self-denial can lock women into a smug and critical condescension to other, less devout women. According to Appel, cult members develop..."an attitude of moral superiority, a contempt for secular laws, rigidity of thought, and the diminution of regar...
In the kitchen, her family nibbled Helen’s lemon squares. Melanie urged brownies on the nurses. “Take these,” she told Lorraine. “We can’t eat them all, but Helen won’t stop baking.” “Sweetheart,” Lorraine said, “everybody mourns ...
I am very much out of my element here. There are moments, listening to the conversations going on around me, when I feel I am going to lose my mind. Earlier today, I heard someone say the words, "I felt at one with the divine source of creation." Mar...
Through all his years of roving, even on nights like this, he had remained blind to the beauty of the sea, and now his feeling toward it had settled into weary hatred. He knew its effects of blended color, its wide gradations of sound and action, the...
Lisa was thinking, as she climbed the apparently unending staircase, the she had taken pretty long odds. She had not hesitated to buck the Tiger, Life. Simon Iff had warned her that she was acting on impulse. But--on the top of that--he had merely ur...
Jane: "Look, Dave Chandler left me on the ninth floor of our university research library without my panties after we lost our virginity together. He never called me again and actually turned on his heel and walked in the opposite direction whenever h...
Hey, suit guy!" The man bellowed. Chris bit back the urge to yell. He turned, expecting to be confronted by a hand held out for money. What he saw was a pair of enormous eyes, the same color as the spring sky, set in a face with high cheekbones and a...
Those were the best days in the life of Tancredi and Angelica, lives later to be so variegated, so erring, against the inevitable background of sorrow. But that they did not know then; and they were pursuing a future which they deemed more concrete t...
The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that moves one of...
The attitude of uncompromising heroism is attractive, and appeals especially to the dramatic instinct. But the purpose of the serious revolutionary is not personal heroism, nor martyrdom, but the creation of a happier world. Those who have the happin...
The prophet engages in futuring fantasy. The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. The imagination must come before the implementation. Our cultu...
In those pamphlets that they give at mental health centers where they list the ten or so symptoms that would indicate a clinical depression, 'suicide threats' or even simple 'talk of suicide' is considered cause for concern. I guess the point is that...
Don't let reading make you arrogant. It can happen-believe me. Maybe you've even met a person or two like this, someone who thinks that being an English literature major or particularly well read puts them above the crowd. Take my advice:even if it's...
