Both the two of us knew it. We watched the lie go up big and slow between us, then it burst like a spit bubble. They always burst before too long.

To prove to [her friend, Swedish diplomat Count] Gyllenborg that she was not superficial, Catherine composed an essay about herself, “so that he would see whether I knew myself or not.” The next day, she...

Creativity is the catalyst to the future.

And the One will take the Sword of the Western Sun and triumph over the enemy with boldness and insight. The arm of the One is steady and heads will roll. Snow Giants will battle

94 was a good year to be twelve. Star Wars still had two more years as Box Office King, cartoons were still hand-drawn, and the Disney “D” still looked like a backwards “G.” Words like...

Perhaps friendship doesn’t divert sound judgment.

This town of churches and dreams; this town I thought I would lose myself in, with its backward ways and winding roads leading to nowhere; but, I found myself instead. -Magic in the Backyard (excerpt...

I met a boy whose eyes showed me that the past, present and future were all the same thing.

In the old days, when travelers would get lost, they would follow the stars and I love that idea. I wish that I could rely on something as simple and magnificent as a star for...

Zachary smiles, and I wonder if he’s felling different. Because standing out here waist deep in Gossimer Lake, next to my best friend, I’m feeling different-light and good and maybe even holy.

If I were to lock you up in a dungeon, I guarantee you would not be bored.

Don’t think about that. Just believe I’ll be okay.

Cry your guts out because nothing is sadder than an adult who forgets how to be a child.

When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead”When you see millions of the mouthless deadAcross your dreams in pale battalions go,Say not soft things as other men have said,That you’ll remember. For you need not...

Are you the right person?” Lachlan wondered, as he took a half step forward.Cormag took a deep breath and brushed at a strand of hair that was sticking out at a funny angle from behind...

A motorcycle is a vehicle of change, after all. It puts the wheels beneath a midlife crisis, or a coming-of-age saga, or even just the discovery of something new, something you didn’t realize was there....

In Venice, things not always as they first appear. I contemplate this observation from my post on the aft deck of one of Master Fumagalli’s gondolas, taking in the panorama of bridges, domes, bell towers,...

Everything hurts right now and nothing is helping because as the pain is getting worse — so is the love.

His body had almost no hair and his naked little circumcised johnson was nearly as pale as the rest of him, white as a boy’s – perhaps over time one’s genitals emerge from the pots...

I fall in love with Paraíso. It’s like a giant playground where I’m never scolded for running around recklessly, where I’m almost overwhelmed with the amount of attention and love I receive from Mami’s family....

He tilted my chin up and I swear those lips are magic. Witchcraft. Sorcery. Whatever it is in those lips, it’s addictive. Unassailable. I had to have more. More of this feeling of being wanted.

I was the ref. I was the ref they didn’t know about. Deaf and dumb. Invisible as a wall. I wanted no one to win

I wanted to have a good relationship. One that’s romantic and dramatic, like in the movies. But I finally became a woman at 17 and learned that men aren’t really that simple.

This very easy divorce had become very difficult. I thought I was in the express lane and it was all fast tracks from there. Think again.

Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with ‘I love you, I love you’– like father’s page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn’t warrant a waste of...

Ribs closing on his heart, Will battled internal sirens whose song he couldn’t yet decipher. During his childhood, ‘sin’ had been such an abstract word. It denoted getting your Sunday best dirty and torn, or...

I guess this means we’re uck-fayed, don’t it Mikee?

I could watch him do this until morning — never asking questions and never interrupting his work. I worship quietly — his intense focus and attention to detail and then, out of no where, I...

I write letters to you that you’ll never see.

And I envy you. You have the one thing that matters. You have all your discoveries before you.

Tomorrow, I need you to die.

It’s good if you can accept your life—you’ll noticeYour face has become deranged trying to adjustTo it. Your face thought your life would lookLike your bedroom mirror when you were ten.That was a clear river...

Almost everyone first realized they were becoming a grown woman when some dude did something nasty to them. …It was mostly men yelling shit from cars. Are they a patrol sent out to let girls...

I’ve come to realize that love is tragic, somewhere down the line it’s inevitable. Fight for it.

And the One will reveal the Bow of the Southern Star and conquer the enemy with courage and fine judgment. The sight of the One is true and the enemy cannot hide. Griffon will fly

She had a woman’s swagger at twelve-and-a-half. Hair: strawberry-blonde, and I vaguely recall a daisy in the crook of her ear. She was an inch taller than me, two with the ponytail; smooth cheeks and...

We can change in one day. We can fall in love in one day. Anything can happen in one day.

Unfortunately, I am only myself. I am scared and alone and unsure, but I am practicing. I am scared and alone and unsure, but that doesn’t mean I always will be.Like AJ repeating words, I...

I’ve grown up defined by this desperate, undeniable, ‘can’t breathe’ kind of space inside of myself and I’m afraid that the diagnosis is fatal.

I ruin everything. I think that a bullet must have passed through my heart when I was very young, causing me to bleed out slowly, over things and people and every white surface that I’d...

You ain’t that strong.

The last declaration he’d made to me hung between us. The L word. The one that had nothing to do with like.

But when she looked at Prue tonight, she saw this was not now quite true of her. She was just beginning, just moving, just descending.

I journeyed alone for almost ten years before I found home. Adoptions are like very delicate gardening with transplants and grafts. Mine took hold, rooted, and bloomed, even though there were inevitable adjustments to the...

To be honest, I’ve always made films and I never really stopped, starting with little stop-motion experiments using my dad’s Super 8 camera. In my mind, it’s all one big continuum of filmmaking and I’ve...

when we grow up”. Some are already at that stage early on, some are not. We learn the ways of the world all in good time, but being vulnerable is to be human. We never...

Dear God, please help me to be the kind of person who my dogs think I am.

When a child first catches adults out — when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true,...

I just want your voice aimed at me again. I want to absorb the direction of your eyes…

The next thing Jordana says makes me realize that it’s too late to save her. “I’ve noticed that when you light a match, the flame is the same shape as a falling tear.” She’s been...