Francie always remembered what that kind teacher told her. “You know, Francie, a lot of people would think that these stories that you’re making up all the time were terrible lies because they are not the truth as people see the truth. In the fut...
I make a joke of it, but... but I'm afraid of death." He straightened up and turned to look into Joseph's eyes. Joseph saw the fear there and was shocked by the intensity of it. "Are you afraid to die, Joseph?" Joseph considered for a moment, then sh...
In a way, it's nice to know that there are Greek gods out there, because you have somebody to blame when things go wrong. For instance, when you're walking away from a bus that's just been attacked by monster hags and blown up by lightning, and it's ...
A valise without straps. A hole without a key. She had a German mouth, French ears, Russian ass. Cunt international. When the flag waved it was red all the way back to the throat. You entered on the Boulevard Jules-Ferry and came out at the Porte de ...
We have inhabited both the actual and the imaginary realms for a long time. But we don't live in either place the way our parents or ancestors did. Enchantment alters with age, and with the age. We know a dozen Arthurs now, all of them true. The Shir...
For once in my life, I wished Mr. Bradshaw had slipped a tracker into my shoe or my coat pocket. I wished that he was still keeping tabs on me, even when I told him that I didn’t need him to, or that I could take care of myself. Because the truth w...
Why would you tell us the truth? If Christina really wasn’t here, you’d tell us she was, to stall us from finding her. If James taught us one thing, it’s how to detect a lie. You just want us to leave so you can get her to talk. By the way, goo...
I understand that you are under a lot of pressure and that it's hard being a bride. That is all well and good. But it does not, ever, entitle you to be rude, selfish, uncaring, and generally obnoxious to me or Haven or anyone else. We've been very pa...
It is unearned love--the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It's the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed ...
It’s funny how our desires often tend to circle around the whims and fancies of others rather than the self. One school of thought has a convincing explanation that this is because we live in a society that makes us want to be pleasing to others mo...
The Spirit of God draws or leads the sinner from one phase to another, gradually, in proportion as one is found having a disposition to responsive hearing. Grace flows ordinarily from prevenient grace through the grace of baptism through the grace of...
I figured this staying up meant something. Maybe it was loss or love or some other word that we say when it's too fucking late but the boys weren't into melodrama. They heard that shit and said no. Especially the Old Man. Divorced at twenty, with two...
What sets you apart from everyone else is your ability to dig deep when you’ve got nothing left. When you are broken, lost, exhausted. When you want to pack it all in and call it a day. That’s when you will find your strength. Find out who you ar...
While the primary function of formal Buddhist meditation is to create the possibility of the experience of "being," my work as a therapist has shown me that the demands of intimate life can be just as useful as meditation in moving people toward this...
When we criticize the suicidal for being selfish, we are actually criticizing them for not enduring their pain with grace and good manners. These are nice qualities; we may be correct to reproach average citizens for not having them. But to expect ev...
People conceptualize conditioning in different ways," he said. "Some think it's a ladder straight up. Others see plateaus, blockages, ceilings. I see it as a geometric spiraling upward, with each spin of the circle taking you a different distance upw...
I’d forgotten how enlivening it could feel, seeing clearly and far. Aridity frees light. It also unleashes grandeur. The earth here wasn’t cloaked in forest, nor draped in green. Green was pastoral, peaceful, mild. Desert beauty was “sublime”...
Octopuses are tough--and not just in the sense that they can take out sharks (both real and computer generated, as in ). They're almost pure muscle. With tridirectional muscles in the arms, they're a tad less supple than a well-marbled sirloin, to sa...
Divide and conquer. That’s the global elite’s proven strategy when it comes to its treatment of Third World countries in Africa and indeed throughout the world. Or, to put it another way, order out of chaos is the global elite’s favored tactic....
Ryan couldn't believe his eyes. Gran wearing leather chaps in a Harley shop, talking about her ass. It was a living nightmare. "What am I doing here?" he asked Gran. Before he could read her the riot act on safety, Liz stepped in front of him. Her pi...
The real bottleneck is software. Creating software can be done only the old-fashioned way. A human -sitting quietly in a chair with a pencil, paper and laptop- is going to have to write the codes... One can mass-produce hardware and increase it's pow...
