I mean, I am totally not one of those prudes who believe having sex as a teenager is some kind of mortal sin or social death. I don't have a problem with sex. I just don't happen to be having it. And if I having sex, I certainly wouldn't be getting i...
...We lost our faith and went around wondering what life was for. If art was no more than a frustrated out-flinging of desire, if religion was no more than self-delusion, what good was life? Faith had always given us answers to all things. But it all...
I said in a previous chapter that chastity was the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. But I am not sure I was right. I believe there is one even more unpopular. It is laid down in the Christian rule, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' B...
Stairs," Valkyrie said, disappointed. "Not just ordinary stairs," Skulduggery told her as he led the way down. "Magic stairs." "Really?" "Oh, yes." She followed him into the darkness. "How are they magic?" "They just are." "In what way?" "In a magick...
I had battled my own demons that day, facing down the thing that imprisoned me since the accident-a scar and the diffidence it created inside of me. But it was just a physical blemish, not something that made me who I am. It took a mentally disturbed...
The city defeated him. It refused to be bent into shape; it stayed a willful, sprawling, sinful place. It even told him as much. When he walked through the gutted wreck of old Saint Paul's, he tripped and fell over a piece of rubble -- a tombstone. W...
He'd changed since the last summer. Instead of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, he wore a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and leather loafers. His sandy hair, which used to be so unruly, was now clipped short. He look like an evil male model, showing of...
So what does forgiveness really do for you? Is it even a real thing? Or is it something humans just made up to make ourselves feel better? Or is it like the concept of time, something that actually exists, but our little brains can't really comprehen...
Waking up begins with saying am and now. That which has awoken then lies for a while staring up at the ceiling and down into itself until it has recognized I, and therefrom deduced I am, I am now. Here comes next, and is at least negatively reassurin...
You smell salty," he says. "Like the ocean." He leans closer to me and licks up the side of my face. "You taste salty too. Maybe I should grab a bottle of tequila and we should have some fun." He moves his eyebrows up and down. "What do you say? We'l...
The essential difference with Builders is that they've found something to do that matters to them and are therefore so passionately engaged, they rise above the personality baggage that would otherwise hold them down. Whatever they are doing has so m...
Someone once told me people write down stories because they would like to forget, and those who read are those who would like to remember. Maybe I’m not ready to forget, and maybe you’re not ready to remember. This is what I recall; I’m sorry i...
Douglas has more books- and comic books- than anyone I know. Still, if you wanted to borrow one, and took it down off the shelf and forgot to mention it to him, Douglas would notice right away it was missing, even though there are maybe a thousand ot...
Oh, please stop,” I said, moving to sit down beside her on the bed. “No. Nothing like that. It’s… it’s letting someone that close to me. Physically and emotionally. Randy and I got close a few times, but… I chickened out. I’m afraid of ...
Someday when you're twenty, maybe, I'll see you again. You'll be this hot soccer star at some great school, with a million guys more interesting than I am chasing you down. And you know what? I'll see you and I'll pray you want me still.
You off then, Da?” she asked. “Aye. Too old for all this killing.” And to prove that, her father turned and brought his axe down on the head of a traitor that had gotten too close. Spun once more and cut off the legs of another. He faced them a...
We thought everything would be forgotten, but I still remember your claws running down my back. I wonder if you still think about us, the way I do. How our legs would crash into each other in the middle of the night, and how we ended up creating the ...
But some nights, I must tell you, I go down there after everyone has fallen asleep. I swim back and forth in the echoing blackness. I sing a love song as well as I can, lost for a while in the home of the rain.
I cannot have chaos erupting around me until I am prepared for it. I am a collector. I am an observer. I don't participate. My resources, and my standing, must be secure before I can allow the uncertainty of war to crash down upon us.
I have a deep-down belief that there are folks in the world who are good through and through, and others who came in mean and will go out mean. It's like coffee. Once it's roasted, it all looks brown. Until you pour hot water on it and see what comes...
Byproduct of the circulation of commodities, human circulation considered as a form of consumption, tourism comes down fundamentally to the freedom to go and see what has become banal. The economic planning of the frequenting of different places is a...
