Heartbreak is the university diagnosis for the pain that accompanies the end of love. But this was an unusual breakup, in that Cillian's mind shattered first.
He tried to scrub children's vomit from the webbing of the Tongue in a way that suggested deep reservoirs of genius.
For the first time, I feel just as sorry for my ma as for my dad. Everybody wants to go home, and no one can agree on where that is anymore.
First love, first love, Sean murmured sadly, scratching his bubonic nose. Who are we to intervene, eh? It will die of natural causes.Natural causes!She was thinking that the poor girl had been garrote...
A scuola, Camp Dark picchiava i ragazzini come un quartetto. Lo facevamo in un silenzio animale. Trascinavamo un ragazzino isterico dietro l'edificio di scienze in mattoni rossi - di solito qualcuno p...
I think that different pleasures work for different readers - a friend of mine won't read anything that's not a cardiovascular sort of page-turner. I tend to care less about plot, but I'm a sucker for...
We met every morning, still bearded with toast crumbs from our continental breakfasts.
Uncle Fitzy! the girl yells. Gingersnap is being bad! Eisenhower hates it when she calls him Gingersnap. He complains about it with a statesman's pomp: Gentlemen, there exists no more odious appellati...
Touch me again, Bird Man, I thought urgently. Tell a joke, say anything -- because I was having the convection feeling. As if my skin were rippling, dissolving. Kiwi describes this phenomenon, convect...
This new happiness had angles. Happiness like his was real; it had a jewel-cut shadow, and he could lose it.
This is it, the geographical limit of how far I'll go for Ossie. We are learning longitude and latitude in school, and it makes my face burn that I can graph the coordinates of my own love and courage...
The past, with its monstrous depth and span, reached toward him, demanding an understanding that he simply could not give it. His mind was too young and too narrow to withstand the onrush of her life.
The krill are in a rebuilding year. The krill are always in a rebuilding year. Every year the whole franchise of 60,000,000,000 krill gets eaten. Team Whale sucks Team Krill into the primordial combs...
Some team! The Chief was doing so many jobs alone. I’d fix on the Chief’s raw, rope-burned palms or all the gray hairs collected in his sink, and I’d suffer this terrible side pain that Kiwi said was...
Only one or two lemons tumble from the branches each hour, but I’ve been sitting here so long their falls seem contiguous, close as raindrops.
Nal had begun to sense that his life had jumped the rails—and then right at his nadir, he’d agreed to an avant haircut performed by Cousin Steve.
Mr. Oamaru has taught me that loss isn't just limited to the present; it can happen in any direction. Even what's done and vanished can be taken from you. Other, earlier memories that we made of my fa...
March 1. DEAR BABY: I like the way you turn in half circles on the mattress, like a senile clock.
If they heard Death mounting the stairs at night, footsteps that the teenage Beverly swore she could feel vibrating through the floorboards at three a.m., nobody mentioned this intrusion at breakfast.
I wish I could say I gulp pure courage as I run, like those brave little girls you read about in stories, ... But this burst of speed comes from an older adrenaline, some limbic other. Not courage, bu...