How dare I presume to say: He is my friend, or even, more cautiously, I think I know him? At the very most we are like two strangers meeting in the white wintry veld and sitting down together for a while to smoke a pipe before proceeding on their sep...
Have you ever seen Russian nesting dolls?” Thrown by the questions, she opened her eyes. Why would he suddenly speak about a child’s toy? “I own a few of them.” “Then you must understand that undressing you is like playing with one of those...
In the candle's flickering light, the library's thousands of books emerged from the shadows, and for a moment Nicholas could not help admiring them again. During free time he had almost never looked up from the pages he was reading, but now he saw th...
I feel too much. That's what's going on.' 'Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel in the wrong ways?' 'My insides don't match up with my outsides.' 'Do anyone's insides and outsides match up?' 'I don't know. I'm only me.' 'Maybe that's what...
It's like a bunch of hookers advertising their cellulite/ stretch- mark infested bodies to the highest bidder, and then claiming they deserve respect. Crawling on their hands and knees, pupils dilated on the high of greed, licking their lips almost t...
...the place I was bound for on my latest pilgrimage was filled with living, first-hand memories of all the enchanted years that lie between two and eighteen. How enchanted those years are is made more and more clear to me the older I grow. There has...
I wondered if I'd ever get over the pain of it. It hurt so much I wanted to scream. But I didn't scream. What I feel now is that the pain is still there but it isn't keeping me from walking or talking, it's a feeling of complete helplessness and absu...
I haven't heard anything new that I've liked on the show. A lot of the bands we play with are just bad, especially those alternative rock bands. They can do it in the studio but they can't play live... I see the audience applauding while they're play...
There was rarely an obvious branching point in a person's life. People changed slowly, over time. You didn't take on step, then find yourself in a completely new location. You first took a little step off a path to avoid some rocks. For a while, you ...
I do not particularly like the word "work.” Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think this is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they h...
The thing is, that when you're young, you always think you'll meet all sorts of wonderful people, that drifting apart and losing friends is natural. You don't worry, at first, about the friends you leave behind. But as you get older, it gets harder t...
Since she seen Fortune head in that big pot Miss Lydia say that room make her feel ill, sick with the thought of boiling human broth. I wonder how she think it make me feel? To dust the hands what use to stroke my breast; to dust the arms what hold m...
Only in sleep I see their faces, Children I played with when I was a child, Louise comes back with her brown hair braided, Annie with ringlets warm and wild. Only in sleep Time is forgotten -- What may have come to them, who can know? Yet we played l...
It is Autumn, as you know, and things are beginning to die. It is so wonderful to be out in the crisp Fall air, with the leaves turning gold and the grass turning brown and the warmth going out of the sunlight and big hot fires in the fireplace while...
It occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs, as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of...
(Erin) 'What do you think gave you this interest?' Yep. There it was. 'I’m not saying anything bad about it. I just wonder what makes one person want to hit another. Did I not give you enough contact when you were young? Should I have breast-fed?' ...
I don't know why I feel so wounded with Kartik's obvious infatuation with Pippa. There's no romance between us. There's nothing that tethers us but this dark secret neither of us wants. It's not Kartik's longing that hurts. It's my own. It's knowing ...
Mmm," said Ares, without turning his head. "This war on terror isn't producing enough casualties. Bringing in Iran is the obvious choice, but I don't think they've got enough fire power yet. I wonder if I could somehow antagonize Japan." ... "There's...
One of my own stray childhood fears had been to wonder what a whale might feel like had it been born and bred in captivity, then released into the wild-into its ancestral sea-its limited world instantly blowing up when cast into the unknowable depths...
Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up together like a stack of cards. That is what it is like, the awful, wonderful brightness of Fairy colors. Try to smell the hard, pa...
The sun hitched up her trousers and soldiered on up into the sky. September squinted at it and wondered if the sun here was different than the sun in Nebraska. It seemed gentler, more golden, deeper. The shadows it cast seemed more profound. But Sept...
