You think you know how this story is going to end, but you don't.

Who are you? Her eyes snapped open, and her voice held a hysterical edge. Do I even know who you are?He stepped over Walker’s battered corpse and grabbed her by the shoulders, leaned downso that his n...

What a dichotomy she was! She seemed timid until he spoke derisively of her title, and then she spoke in an icy ferocity. A few minutes later, with a few words artfully couched to sound like a threat,...

Using names with respect and consideration tells a person that you care, are present and engaged, and that you are genuinely interested in making a connection. You make them feel remembered!

The stairs aren't challenging enough anymore? he asked.Antonio laughed. Challenge has nothing to do with it, Jer. I'd say it's the big bad wolf huffing and puffing at her door up there.

The moon went slowly down in loveliness; she departed into the depth of the horizon, and long veil-like shadows crept up the sky through which the stars appeared. Soon, however, they too began to pale...

The Sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the globe . . . The sea is only a receptacle for all the prodigious, super-natural things that exist inside it. It is only movement and love; it is the...

StagesAs every flower fades and as all youthDeparts, so life at every stage,So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,Blooms in its day and may not last forever.Since life may summon us at every ageBe re...

She turned the next several pages and found a black-ink drawing on a slip of typing paper, a nude woman holding a round fruit to her mouth. Jess plucked it out and read the collector's tiny caption: D...

Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nine...

People are only what they think of themselves.

I’m not one to despise other people for their sins. I haven’t found one yet, that I didn’t say to myself, I’ve done worse than this.

In short, it became possible - never easy, but possible - in the poet Auden's phrase to find the mortal world enough.

In Paris the cashiers sit rather than stand. They run your goods over a scanner, tally up the price, and then ask you for exact change. The story they give is that there aren't enough euros to go arou...

I was out on a lonely road that stretched forever into the darkness. I wanted to run, to get away from him, but it was so dark, I was afraid of where I was going.

I was born to be your rival,' she [Anne] said simply. 'And you mine. We're sisters, aren't we?

I think the skin revolution for women, I will call it, really all started with Mariah Carey. Madonna was pretty risqué too, but she was pretty much always known as a bad girl. Mariah was a good girl,...

I remember clearly the deaths of three men. One was the richest man of the century, who, having clawed his way to wealth through the souls and bodies of men, spent many years trying to buy back the lo...

He opened his mouth. The words were there. He was about to say them when a jolt of terror went through him, the terror of someone who, wandering in a mist, pauses only to realise that they have stoppe...

Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches.