Not having any drink about ain’t the same as not understanding the need for one. Times like these change a body’s perspective.

Katherine of Aragon was speaking out for the women of the country, for the good wives who should not be put aside just because their husbands had taken a fancy to another, for the women...

happy is the nation without a history

My dear boy, in Ireland the midwife uses one hand to hold the baby’s best fighting arm from the font water, and grips its jaws with the other lest the goes to litigation about it....

She gently bit his bottom lip, his ear. Worked her way down his body until she reached the inside of his thigh, then bit hard, breaking the skin, drawing blood. “My mark,” she said, looking...

I guess I’d rather have a truthful neighbor who says he hates me than a lyin’ one who claims he loves me.

Rumors are the children of truth.

I doubt very much we will have to worry about that after today!

Next time — we will roll out the red carpet for you in the United States of Arabia, my brethren!

She’s got a big belt around her hips. It has a shiny buckle with PRADA on it, which is Italian for insecure.

The curtains were not yet drawn and with the moonlight spreading across the room, I could see clearly. I undressed and slipped a soft cotton gown over my naked body. I pulled the blanket off...

Most of [her ashes] fell into the river in a long gray curtain. But some was caught by the wind and blown upward toward the blue spring sky where it swirled a moment in the...

I do not need to understand words to know he is disappointed I am not a boy. Some things need no translation. And I know, because my body remembers without benefit of words, that men...

It’s history as it should have happened. It’s history made better.

It was so cold. In the monastery. Sometimes the wind came from the sea with ice in it… It could freeze the skin off your face. Once the snow was so deep we couldn’t get...

You must regard this deviation from your plan as part of the adventure that you sought when you decided to embark on it in the first place…Absence of certainty is its essence. People…who choose to...

The reader may ask how to tell fact from fiction. A rough guide: anything that seems particularly unlikely is probably true.

9 November 1989. A day nobody would forget. She had heard rumours about the wall.

Last night I dreamt Moses and I were rowing underwater.We could breathe and talk to one another.We rowed past schools of fish and sea anemones and Moses named them for me.”—Jules Finn

Did you ever hear the one about how every living woman dies three times? Once when she is seduced of her virginity, once when she is seduced of her freedom (I believe they call it...

Auctus took the initiative again, eyeballing his foe as he strode towards him. Indavara bounced up and down on his toes and waited. His options were limited; he needed time to see what Auctus could...

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,...

How can one fight for a love that acts as the enemy?

To those of you who are enslaved by your past, may my story set you free. For youth is innocent and its beauty is to always be cherished.

Messages continued to arrive from the Earl of Warwick, urging Londoners to hold firm for King Harry. Marguerite d’Anjou and her son were expected to land at any time, while from St Albans, Edward sent...

There is an arch supported by four vast columns. Etched over hundreds and hundreds of yards of stone, furlongs of stone, there are names: “Who are these, these? The men who died in this battle?””No....

This is the average age of my Hunters, and all young maidens for whom I am patron, before they go astray.””Go astray?””Grow up. Become smitten with boys. Become silly, preoccupied, insecure.

Moron, your bus is leaving-from Groundhogs Day Bill Murray

Some ghosts are so quiet you would hardly know they were there.

He draws a line under his conclusions. Says, ‘Gregory, what should I do about the great worm?’ ‘Send a commission against it, sir,’ the boy says. ‘It must be put down.’ He gives his son...

But just then, for that fraction of time, it seems as though all things are possible. You can look across the limitations of your own life, and see that they are really nothing. In that...

It seemed the heavens themselves conspired to cover up our crime.

Sometimes time can play tricks. One moment it idles by, an hour can seem a lifetime, such as when sitting by the river at dusk watching the bats snatching insects above the limpid waters; the...

Helen mi prese la mano, come se fosse impaurita. Mi ricordava lo sguardo di una bambina in cerca del proprio padre. Scossi la testa e la abbracciai. Lei era sola almeno quanto me, la comprendevo.

I have found that those who try to shield us from the truth, regardless of the reason, end up doing the greatest harm. Truth alone sets you free, not lies and omissions.

The empire long united must divide, long divided must unite; this is how it has always been.

Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells ’em off for a coupla stones.

Good to see you too, Otto.” -Sydney Rose

I offer you your life, friend, and recommend you take it.

I was born to be your rival,’ she [Anne] said simply. ‘And you mine. We’re sisters, aren’t we?

‘We cannot save everyone, can we?’ I said to her as we continued walking on our way. I turned my head back only to find the spot the beggar had occupied empty. ‘Not everyone,’ she...

At the edge of the still, dark pool that was the sea, at the brimming edge of freedom where no boat was to be seen, she spoke the first words of the few they were...

He didn’t know what he was anymore – not truly Chinese, for he had spent too long in the West, adopted too many Western ideas, but neither did he feel truly Westernised. There had been...

And once you’ve been to this Center, this Truth, you’ll know your way everywhere. You are never lost again.

She was as lovely as ever, my Jessie Anne. I paused for a moment, taking her beauty in, laying up this vision of her in the deepest and most secret place of my mind, allowing...

God I am looking for the one thing I have never felt but once, and I would walk through heaven and earth to find it, if he would but let me find him, so that...

There is a little bit of everybody in everybody.

Beautiful people don’t need coats. They’ve got their auras to keep them warm.

It was not an unusual site to see Negro tenant farmers crossing the intersection of Spring and Barbrick on the way to the cotton warehouse

Love, I think, is by necessity constructed of a ladder of lies you climb together.