He chuckled. "Come here." She hesitated. "We don't have to do anything. Just ... sleep." She let out her breath on a heavy sign. "You don't want to just sleep." Then she moved in next to him, and he wrapped his arms around her. "Do you?" "Hell no." H...
Then he holds her and for a moment I hear total silence; that totally silent part of a cry that announces that the most horrible grief is going to follow. And it does, and he's muffling it, but I can hear and I want someone to come over and jab her w...
Not just a name but a state of mind I never want to revisit, although I do keep him at the back of my mind for those times I get my hopes raised about something. So then I can slap myself into reality and remind myself of what happens when you let so...
Your wedding completely changes the direction of your life, you know, no matter how greatly you desire it. I think that moment of doubt and faintness comes from all those imagined and now impossible futures all pressing in on you at once. It is your ...
Sometimes fate or life or whatever you want to call it, leaves a door a little open and you walk through it. But sometimes it locks the door and you have to find the key, or pick the lock, or knock the damn thing down. And sometimes, it doesn’t eve...
Take a moment and think of something small but significant that you've wanted for decades. Dream about it. Wish for it. Let the dreaming and wishing sink deeply into your being. Add some memories of disappointment just for a little flavor. At some po...
As Aristotle said, 'Excellence is a habit.' I would say furthermore that excellence is made constant through the feeling that comes right after one has completed a work which he himself finds undeniably awe-inspiring. He only wants to relax until he'...
If you try anything, if you try to lose weight, or to improve yourself, or to love, or to make the world a better place, you have already achieved something wonderful, before you even begin. Forget failure. If things don't work out the way you want, ...
Many are never satisfied. They always want more ; and then when they get more, they are still not content. I think mostly because they are trying to keep up with others. You have to live within your means or you'll find yourself trying to dig your wa...
When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational...
I remembered that Johnson had declared portrait painting to be an improper employment for a woman. “Public practice of any art and staring in men’s faces is very indelicate in a female,” he had said. Well I’d seen Dr. Johnson’s face in the ...
You see, there's some blues for folks ain't never had a thing, and that's a sad blues ... but the saddest kind of blues is for them that's had everything they ever wanted and has lost it, and knows it won't come back no more. Ain't no sufferin' in th...
As long as Nelson was socked into baseball statistics or that guitar or even the rock records that threaded their sound through all the fibers of the house, his occupation of the room down the hall was no more uncomfortable than the persistence of Ra...
We came here because no place would take us after our momma died. They all said go away, come back when you're older, when you know better, when you've learned. Only no one wants to teach how to be older or to know better - not even Devin. They just ...
If you didn't want to know things, you didn't have to know them. Things didn't become facts until someone actually spoke them. Until then, you could just go on acting just the way you had been acting and even if you suspected there was something that...
You'll wake up one day and find you're almost forty, and you haven't done any of the things you wanted. That you let in so many voices when you were trying to make decisions, instead of listening to the One voice that mattered, that you never decided...
Yet even in the loneliness of the canyon I knew there were others like me who had brothers they did not understand but wanted to help. We are probably those referred to as "our brother's keepers," possessed of one of the oldest and possible one of th...
I wanted to save myself from that drug that contaminates the body and veins and not from the other drug, you know that drug that enters through your eyes and your private area, the one that settles into your heart to screw it up, that damn drug that ...
Who doesn't want a Bad Boy? Hmm... I prefer to let them bake for a while. Those misbehaving boys will rise to irresistible, dominant, and controlling men. When cooked at the right temperature they'll still taste disobedient but with the right amount ...
You want me to lie for you?" Aidan asked, watching them. " in me, the way you did in my mama." Aidan wheezed and sputtered. What did she know 'bout him and Miz Garnett? "Please." She sounded like a young gal and a grown woman too. " in me." "That's t...
I loved taking off. In my own house, I seemed to be often looking for a place to hide - sometimes from the children but more often from the jobs to be done and the phone ringing and the sociability of the neighborhood. I wanted to hide so that I coul...
