Sometimes there is a thin line separating orthodox zeal from apostasy, said Father Lenar Hoyt. So began the priest’s story.
Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principle which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil...
Sacrifice and the agreement to sacrifice had written human history in blood.
Red and blue shadows stretched across the amber lawn toward us. Keats, I said.
Pain is the curl and foam of a wave that does not break.
Pain is an interesting and off-putting thing. Few if any things in life concentrate our attention so completely and terribly, and few things are more boring to listen to or read about.
Natalie’s father had a saying for that behavior—Stupidity has a price and it always gets paid.
My days were but heartbeats to you. I hated you for that.
More frail and illusory Than numbers written on water, Our seeking from the Buddha Felicity in the afterworld. Archbishop Breque cleared his throat and joined in the conversation. That seems cle...
Meaning no disrespect, sir, says the other man, but there’s no way in the Good Lord’s fucking universe that anyone can bar accidents or the unexpected.
Martin Silenus strides back to the dying fire. Worse, he says. He could be twisting on the Shrike’s steel tree. Where we’ll be in a few— Brawne Lamia rises suddenly and grasps the poet by his shirtfro...
Mark Twain once opined in his homey way: The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
Kassad reparó en las inquisitivas cejas arqueadas, las pequeñas orejas que había besado tantas veces. La blanda garganta donde había apoyado las mejillas para escuchar sus palpitaciones. Kassad la apu...
I’m a childish fellow, responded Silenus with his satyr’s smile. Ambassador—he nodded toward the Consul—could I borrow that gilded pillow you’re wearing for a hat? The
It was late morning when Kassad finished his story.
It was a wet and chilly late October morning in A.D. 1415. Kassad had been inserted as an archer into the army of Henry V of England.
Is there another Life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be, we cannot be created for this sort of suffering. Oh, Fanny, if only you knew! We are created for precisely this sort of s...
In the end, it is all we are, these limpid tide pools of self-consciousness between crashing waves of pain.
In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.
In an interstellar society where the Church ruled all but absolutely, news awaited not only independent confirmation but official permission to exist.