Are you prepared?" she asked when the other Valkyries had their passengers in place. "Sure," Matt said. "But we could use a soundtrack this time. Maybe a little Wagner. Da-da-da DUM dum." Hildar looked back at hiim blankly. "Wagner? Ride of the Valky...
Conversation, to take another example, is one of the common pleasures of life, but not all conversation is pleasurable. The stutterer finds talking painful, and the listener is equally pained. Persons who are inhibited in expressing feeling are not g...
The quest for this unwearied inner peace is constant and universal. Probe deeply into the teachings of Buddha, Maimonides, or a Kempis, and you will discover that they base their diverse doctrines on the foundations of a large spiritual serenity. Ana...
Louis was often struck by Gage's speech, not because it was cute, but because he thought that small children all sounded like immigrants learning a foreign language in some helter-skelter but fairly amiable way. He knew that babies make all the sound...
Shall I tell you what rock and roll is, Johnno, from someone who doesn't perform, but observes? It's restless and rude. It's defiant and daring. It's a fist shaken at age. It's a voice that often screams out questions because the answers are always c...
Our heroes have arrived, then," the stranger said, his voice a soft, bubbly murmur. "Excuse me?" Poison queries. The odd creature put down his rod in a little wooden cradle that rested next to him and got up from the edge of the jetty. He looked them...
Lily slumped, putting her shaking hands on his shoulders. "But you will, won't you?" Pansy's voice broke into a sob. "Yes, Pan," Galen said quietly. "I don't like that," Pansy said. Galen stood and put his arms around the fine-boned girl, while Rose ...
I stopped in front of a florist's window. Behind me, the screeching and throbbing boulevard vanished. Gone, too, were the voices of newspaper vendors selling their daily poisoned flowers. Facing me, behind the glass curtain, a fairyland. Shining, plu...
As one tends to the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. I clean them, do minor repairs, keep them in good order. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. ...
You've got the wrong girl." "On the contrary..." the voice murmured, "I've got exactly the girl I want." Her body turned to ice. Her mind fought for calm. There were people only yards away, yet she was alone... "You're bleeding." Lips closed over her...
I hated you,” she continued, “because you have done nothing more than abide by rules that every gentlewoman follows every day of her life. Yet for this prosaic feat, you are feted and cosseted as if you were a hero.” She felt nothing as she spo...
Amid the worry of a self- condemnatory soliloquy, his demeanour seemed grave, perhaps cold, both to me and his mother. And yet there was no bad feeling, no malice, no rancour, no littleness in his countenance, beautiful with a man's best beauty, even...
And then heard Detective Ryan’s pleased voice talking about Eli, about killers who’ve gone free: “They have to tell,” he’d said Well, apparently so. But why? What is it that comes from the telling? Some of it must be relief, of course. A se...
I often think that at the center of me is a voice that at last did split, a house in my heart so invaded with other people and their speech, friends I believed I was devoted to, people whose lives I can simply guess at now, that it gives me the impre...
She stood in his kitchen, watching him toy with the ring in his lip. It wasn't quite that he was biting it, but sucking it into his mouth. He did that when he was concentrating. It isn't sexy. He's not sexy. But he was, and she was staring at him lik...
The man’s rights and the woman’s rights are the same size. They have the right to have their opinions and desires respected, to have a 50 percent say in decision making, to live free from verbal abuse and physical harm. Their children’s rights ...
The plane had lost power in all three engines, dropped from thirty-four thousand feet to twelve thousand feet. Something like four miles. When the steep glide began, people rose, fell, collided, swam in their seats. Then the serious screaming and moa...
no, no, it's not all random, if it really was all random, the universe would abandon us completely. and the universe doesn't. it takes care of its most fragile creations in ways we can't see. like with parents who adore you blindly. and a big sister ...
The cyclone had set the house down gently, very gently – for a cyclone—in the midst of a country of marvelous beauty. There were lovely patches of green sward all about, with stately trees bearing rich and luscious fruits. Banks of gorgeous flowe...
Real loved one's aren't afraid, and will suggest to you, what's in your best interest because they wouldn't want too see you suffer the consequences of, sideways, emotional impulse(s). To see you crash and burn, time after time, is the gratification ...
Men never fail to dwell on maternity as a disqualification for the possession of many civil and political rights. Suggest the idea of women having a voice in making laws and administering the Government in the halls of legislation, in Congress, or th...