One detaches oneself. One describes.
Once in a while, Jimmy would make up a word but he never once got caught out. ... He should have been pleased by his success with these verbal fabrications, but instead he was depressed by it. The mem...
On the other hand, she had an uncanny resistance to physical pain: if she burnt her mouth or cut herself, as a rule she didn't cry. It was ill will, the ill will of the universe, that distressed her.
Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it. There were stories in the newspapers, of course, corpses in ditches or the woods, bludgeone...
Nevertheless, blood is thicker than water, as anyone knows who has tasted both.
My letters! All dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering Against my tremulous hands which loose the string.… —ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING,Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1850.
Most of us will. We'll choose knowledge no matter what, we'll maim ourselves in the process, we'll stick our hands into the flames for it if necessary. Curiosity is not our only motive: love or grief...
Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. [...] Maybe it's about who can do what to whom an...
Many believed what they were told: that the welfare of the entire kingdom depended on their selflessness.
Lying, says MacKenzie. A severe term, surely. Has she been lying to you, you ask? Let me put it this way—did Scheherazade lie? Not in her own eyes; indeed, the stories she told ought never to be subje...
Love was merely a tool, smiles were another tool, they were both just tools for accomplishing certain ends. No magic, merely chemicals. I felt I'd never really loved anyone, not Paul, not Chuck the Ro...
I’m not used to girls, or familiar with their customs. I feel awkward around them, I don’t know what to say. I know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I sense that I am always on the verge of...
It's kind of shocking to hear Toby called a babe; sort of like calling God a studmuffin.
It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because of what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too...
It was as if they could read each other’s minds. No, not minds: each other’s mindlessness.
I would never blame a human creature for feeling lonely.
I wish I was ignorant, so I didn't know how ignorant I am
I was taking something away from her, although she didn't know it. I was filching. Never mind that it was something she apparently didn't want or had no use for, had rejected even; still, it was hers,...
I want, I don’t want.How can one live with such a heart?
I used to jog but it's bad for the knees. Too much beta carotene turns you orange, too much calcium gives you kidney stones. Health kills.