When the bet is placed, he said, a moment is carved away from the past and the future. In that enchanted moment, anything is possible. A man's debts and regrets and limitations disappear. He is buyin'...
What he experienced was not so much the beginning of love as a cessation of pain.
There are a thousand ways for a boy of fifteen to go wrong. The most gently reared will lash out, battered by gusts of mindless fury. The brightest can be swamped by black despair. The sweetest may tu...
The mission, he thought, probably failed because of a series of logical, reasonable, carefully considered decisions, each of which seemed like a good idea at the time. Like most colossal disasters.
The dachshund is a perfectly engineered dog. It is precisely long enough for a single standard stroke of the back, but you aren't paying for any superfluous leg.
The Jewish sages also tell us that God dances when His children defeat Him in argument, when they stand on their feet and use their minds. So questions like Anne’s are worth asking. To ask them is a v...
She was held in the tension just before movement, about to walk back toward the house. Later she would think, If I had turned away, I'd have missed the moment he fell in love.He would not remember it...
Only here had he come to understand that he was not a battleground—to be divided and conquered by his grandparents—but a garden, where each person who’d contributed to his existence longed to see that...
Marc was in charge of the Wolverton tube plant colony and the tilapia tank, which would produce fresh food to supplement the packaged stuff they were bringing.
Lemme tell ya something, sweetface. I have been married at least four times, to four different men. She watched him chew that over for a moment before continuing, They’ve all been named George Edwards...
In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
I would not have voted for the man, Doc admitted, but this— He lifted a fine-boned hand toward the street, where small groups of Cow Boys were now tearing down Allen on horseback, shooting at the sky...
I know this will sound glib, but don’t pretend you aren’t feeling what you feel. That’s how things slide into hell. Feelings are facts, she said, her voice a little hard, as she began to walk again. L...
I am where I want to be, they each thought. I am grateful to be here. In their own ways, they all gave themselves up to God’s will and trusted that whatever happened now was meant to be. At least for...
Horses are mirrors. They'll show you back whatever you show them. Watch a man with a horse, and you'll see what's inside his own self.
Honey, Bessie’s mamma used to say, politicians and judges and coppers are money-grubbing thieves. They’ll screw you, and rob you, and win elections for doing it, but there’s no way around them. Smile...
He had also discovered the outermost limit of faith and, in doing so, had located the exact boundary of despair. It was at that moment that he learned, truly, to fear God.
For five weeks, the Associated Press had provided the world with lurid coverage of the attack on Virgil Earp, which was labeled Cow Boy revenge for what was being called the Gunfight at the O.K. Corra...
Every one of them has a story, and every story begins with a man who failed her. A husband who came home from the war, good for nothin' but drink. A father who didn't come home at all, or a stepfather...
Even if he hadn’t spent the past three years in the field and more than a decade before that studying for the priesthood, he would have felt a stranger among these students—the young men in brilliantl...