No one stands at the beginning of a race and then finds himself at the end having never taken a step forward. And if that were to happen—the sweat and struggle avoided—what stories would he have to tell? The goal includes the journey; it's all pa...
A name could be either a ghost or a portent depending on which side of time you were standing. The name Whaletown had become a mere specter of the past, a crepuscular Pacific shimmer, but the name Desolation Sound still hovered in the liminal space a...
I felt the presence of the night all about me: a living, breathing entity, whispering soft words against my flesh. I had never before felt the silken touch of the night caress me as I did now. It was a frightening, yet exhilarating experience. ...
My parents always said that knowledge was the best gift they could give me, probably because they were too cheap to buy me Christmas or Birthday presents.
...and often Lisa thought bitterly of the ideas she had held on "college life" before coming to Denton, ideas and images culled from a hundred magazine stories and as many movies. Where were the convertibles, the secret bottles of liquor, the gay you...
The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on ...
My choices, it seemed, were to be branded a sinner and live my life alone; to abandon my faith, the one thing I held most dear in the entire world; or to lie to everyone, pretend I was straight, and forget about it all.
Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?" "Yes." "All like ours?" "I don't know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound - a few blighted." "Which do we live on - a splendid one ...
Sometimes I wonder if I'm nothing more than the sum of who [my parents] were. Even worse, I worry that I don't add up nearly so well, that I'm just a shadowed reflection of them. Now that question hounds me a lot more often than I like to admit.
Worst of all were the accolades and thanks from people "for what you guys did over there." Thanks for what, I wanted to ask—shooting kids, cowering in terror behind a berm, dropping artillery on people's homes?
The Greeks used to say that gods and animals were born whole. It is only humans who need to develop, that they become complete only with the help of a community. It’s the state of that community that can turn a human into a god or a beast.” She d...
It’s important to have a buddy like that. Somebody who’ll stop you from doing that really stupid thing you were gonna do just because you couldn’t think of anything better. -- unidentified soldier, eulogizing his dead buddy
Big lots,' I said, seeing the eighty-year-old oaks and shady lawns. The houses were set way back and had iron fences and stone drives. The harder to hear your neighbors scream, my dear,' was David’s answer, and I sent my head up and down in agreeme...
My momma says we don’t need a man to do our chores for us, ’cause we are smart and capable and I believe her even though Sara’s mom says men were born to be our slaves, we just have to know how to manage them.
Before New York, the cracks were already there, but now they began to split open and gape, and the difference between how a thing or a place or a person appears and the reality becomes alarmingly visible, garish.
[Theseus] soon found himself involved in factions and troubles; those who long had hated him had now added to their hatred contempt; and the minds of the people were so generally corrupted, that, instead of obeying commands with silence, they expecte...
These things sensibly affected Theseus, who, thinking it but just not to disregard, but rather partake of, the sufferings of his fellow citizens, offered himself for one without any lot. All else were struck with admiration for the nobleness and with...
He pulled out handcuffs and snapped them around my wrists. "Where's your bag? You didn't bring your staff?" "I have it. It's hidden." Charlie was currently tucked inside the leg of my Harry Potter pajama bottoms, which were beneath my jeans, but that...
My father had a healthy disregard for social conventions: he once let me paint the house windows in rainbows with my watercolor set, to my mother's horror, and he'd clap for trees that he thought were doing a good job of exploding into red during the...
The morning I drove by and saw you alone, staring at the house. I told myself to keep on driving, but something told me to stop. And when I'd seen how lost and confused you were, something told me I was meant to be there.... I was meant to be there s...
She shook her head in perplexity. "I'll never know where you got the idea that you were destined for greatness." She dropped the rest of the rabbit in the pot and begun to clean the underside of its skin. She would use the fur. "You certainly didn't ...
