Man created god upon his thoughts to externalize, to give form to his belief to give a reason for what they could do. The gods stole away the energies, let man believe he was ruled...

Frequently, people confront us who seemed to be egging the world into calling them on their miserable actions so they can have the pleasure of angry vengeance or an excuse to attract attention. Our compassion...

She could never understand why creatures of darkness had the slightest interest in spineless human girls.

She knew the power of bureaucracy well enough to be aware she had to sit and be admonished until this stranger felt she had expressed sufficient disappointment in a girl she would never have to...

Shane met him owing to the storybooks she studied to discover what attributes made one princessly—this wasn’t technically a word, but she felt there should be equity in adjectives if not in life.

She is so free with herself and so certain of her path, something I now cynically believe only comes from not being aware of the infinite multitude of right paths.

She was not the sort of woman guys settle for. She was the one they lust after and strive for. She was the one who ruins other people’s relationships simply by existing, but she will...

I have never tried to walk through a mall in the Christmas season dressed like a jolly old elf. You might as well dress up like a pork chop and walk into an alley full...

I reserve magick for necessities, a bit like the good china. It has a time and a place, but eating peanut butter sandwiches off it each morning chips and devalues it.

I cannot let my blood pressure rise because someone wishes to spread his or her bad day around, as if to dilute instead of multiply it.

Being a novelist is not the sort of thing we can shut off. It infests every bit of us until we lose the boundary between Person and Writer, like one of those color charts where...

As long as she persisted in her belief that bafflement justified her actions, she felt confident no one would contradict her.

A goddess does not need to eat and does so only for her pleasure.

I was pure, before you defiled me, and don’t you forget it. As though the concept of purity is anything more than the construct of selfish, competitive men stampeding toward the women to call dibs....

We are left at the brink of our future each day and the only real choice we have is not to jump but instead make our path through the briar.

I wanted a life of adventure. I wanted to travel. I wanted to work my way up to being Somebody. I wanted to leave a mark on the Earth and be remembered.

When I lay down on my deathbed, I want to know that I have done all I could to be a first rate human, not a third rate pawn of the gods.

Within you, within all human beings, is a seed of greatness that makes their kind quake with fear.

He had carte blanche to eat whatever he wanted. No amount of broccoli and vitamin D kills ten lung tumors and I know not how many brain tumors. Have the tiramisu.

But aliens? There are TV shows about them. There are books and movies and more. The media indoctrinates you to them until people are so desensitized they don’t flinch at seeing aliens on TV or...

You and me? We are never going to be just friends. The only time I’m not adoring you is when I am too busy hating you and wishing to God I never met you…

Well, what if you are wrong? What if the world doesn’t work the way you think? What would that mean?

Jasmine had endured enough parochial schooling before middle school to have a residual attachment to the beautiful parts of believing, the certainty of knowing one is loved by something beyond comprehension, but also a niggling...

As compassionate beings, we cannot harm others, not even through our inaction.

Sunlight dusts them; Water is damp; Crosses pain them; And beheadings cause cramps—

Like the discovery of most things – love and religion especially – she maintained the child’s arrogant wonder than no one had understood it before her and, even if they had, they could not embrace...

She closes my door behind her and all the petty stresses of life reappear, eager to make up for lost time. I’ve developed a phobia of that door closing for the last time, of losing...

Her beauty was enough to get her into most any situation she desired and her tongue—sharp and venomous—was enough to get her out again.

You kill by consent, every time you let something… pervert the balance when you have the power to stop it.

I do not want to credit my life to spells and rituals, cushioning me from the consequences of living.

As a man, I was a failure. A pathetic teacher lusting after Catholic school girls in short skirts. As a monster, I’m superb. It’s comforting to know my place in the world.

His kisses were so hungry and male, which isn’t bad. Every kiss said he could never have enough, but he wasn’t going to stop trying. They were so hormonal. I wanted his sugar roughness. Girl’s...

The psycho-babble lavished on her by her mother in a prior life found her, whispering of trauma and coping, how this was not her fault and blaming herself at all was useless. She would eventually...

It seemed inequitable at best that one could and did gain a reputation for things that left one both physically and emotionally unsatisfied.

It is difficult to process the sacred masculine when your closest example has been a man smacking you around, verbally degrading you, lording over you, or otherwise proving a poor demonstration of the use of...

You would be amazed by how I can torture the English language. I am an abusive lover.

You’re like this…this goddess pretending to be human… And I don’t know which one I love.

Modesty was hardly a priority in her mind until now. Now she had been cast from Hell and again knew shame.

My life edges out any sense of sanity I can have, and I come to realize there won’t be a point where things can be ordinary again, or as ordinary as I would have them.

Having spent all of my decision-making years as a Pagan of one stripe or another, I have long found it condescending at best to assume one cannot worship the old gods or believe in magick...

American culture enforces such rigid gender roles for male friendships that they are gay unless they materially resemble a beer commercial.

Loving her has become a part of my religion, a gentle mantra with every beating of my heart. I cannot imagine its Ragnarok without wilting.

Salem has become this… Mecca for Wiccans, but no witches died here. Aside from Tituba, no one practiced anything like witchcraft near here in colonial times. It was a bunch of bored Puritans who thought...

The stars glittered through the atmosphere, and he thought of the distances that light must take to hit his eye at exactly that moment. Without him here, those photons would have been wasted.

We’re all suicides. The tragedy is every day that we don’t die.

If you try to leave me like this, I will haunt you until the end of your days. I will drop out of classes and become a hobo and will leave you little garbage sculptures...

Were genuine aliens to find us… the chances were fairly good they would appear in a form beyond reckoning, shaped by the requirements of their environment. It was only for the convenience of the costume...

Which God is the forgiving one, exactly? Old Testament, where He got His rocks off by smiting? Or New Testament, once Our Heavenly Father got Prozac?

There might have been prettier women in the room but, when she turned those babies on, fluttered her eyelashes, I was hers. It had taken me nearly fifteen years to extinguish their light. Now, when...

Please do not say magic like you are discussing a bowel movement… Humanity expects the lights, so they are provided.