The people they had been last summer, the person she had been--Dicey guessed she'd never be afraid again, not the way she had been all summer. She had taken care of them all, sometimes well, sometimes badly. And they had covered the distances. For mo...
That night, when SanJuanna had cleared the main course and brought dessert in, my mother called for quiet and said, "Boys, I have an announcement to make. Your sister made the apple pies tonight. I'm sure we will all enjoy them very much." "Can I lea...
Beware, Underlanders, time hangs by a thread. The hunters are hunted, white water runs red. The Gnawers will strike to extinguish the rest. The hope of the hopeless resides in a quest. An Overland warrior, a son of the sun, May bring us back light, h...
Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one – more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty-three More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilog...
But I'm learning it's human nature to want the things you can't have. What changes is how you go about pursuing the things you want. When you're a little kid and you're told no, you scream and throw a temper tantrum. When you're a teenager and your p...
This was a respect in which he paid due homage to the wise old spirit of the late Emiel Kroger, that romantically practical Teuton who used to murmur to Pablo, between sleeping and waking, a sort of incantation that went like his: Sometimes you will ...
When I was a young philosopher, I asked a senior colleague, Pat Suppes (then and now a famous philosopher of science and an astute student of human nature), what the secret of happiness was. Instead of giving me advice, he made a rather droll observa...
My essay had evolved into thinking about fucking. You could be raped a thousand times and still be a virgin. I was writing about fucking by a master and fucking as a slave, about Hegel, the comfort women and teenage porno stars. Ms. Bain and Mr. Roto...
Secrets have power,” Widget begins. “And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, bec...
He has a very nice face and style, really," said Mrs. Kenwigs. "He certainly has," added Miss Petowker. "There's something in his appearance quite--dear, dear, what's the word again?" "What word?" inquired Mr. Lillyvick. "Why--dear me, how stupid I a...
I was hungry when I left Pyongyang. I wasn't hungry just for a bookshop that sold books that weren't about Fat Man and Little Boy. I wasn't ravenous just for a newspaper that had no pictures of F.M. and L.B. I wasn't starving just for a TV program or...
What kind of knife is this?” Locke held a rounded buttering utensil up for Chains’ inspection. “It’s all wrong. You couldn’t kill anyone with this.” “Well, not very easily, I’ll grant you that, my boy.” Chains guided Locke in the pl...
The myth that if you don't start early, you might as well not start, tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The music-making world that young people confront reminds me a lot of the world of school sports. After a lot of weeding out, in the end you'...
Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, its because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital, like bales of cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were commanding, cruel capitalists, and the memory of this so stron...
Much of our food system depends on our not knowing much about it, beyond the price disclosed by the checkout scanner; cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing. And it's a short way from not knowing who's at the other end of your food chain to...
You are all talking a bit too much, said Armando, who had cautioned them from the beginning to stay out of popular culture and in their own interior worlds. When you are caught up in the world that you did not design as support for your life and the ...
The confusion of love with abuse is what allows abusers who kill their partners to make the absurd claim that they were driven by the depths of their loving feelings. The news media regrettably often accept the aggressors’ view of these acts, descr...
I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of...
Mrs. Mills: [to Anne, who is crying after being punished] No crying now. No crying. Stop that. Here. [uses her apron to wipe away Anne's tears] Mrs. Mills: Look what an awful face you've got when you cry. Anne: [crying] I don't care! Mrs. Mills: Ther...
Larousse: Hey, boss, look who it is! Alfredo Linguini! Renata's little boy! All grown up, eh? You remember Renata. Gusteau's old flame? Skinner: Ah, yes. How are you, uh... Larousse: Linguini. Skinner: Yes, Linguini, so nice of you to visit. How is, ...
Stan Gursky: Alonzo, heard you had an expensive weekend in Vegas. How did you ever screw up so bad? Alonzo: Hey, I didn't know. It's not my town. I'm not omniscient. Lou Jacobs: The Russians don't care if you have a badge. They'll whack you. You ough...
