Libba Bray

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.

Any good world would allow for us to have free will, yes?" he continued. "Can we agree to this point? But once human beings have free will, they also have the ability to make choices - and commit evil. Thus, this very good thing, free will, allows the possibility of evil into our fine world.

I love you for who you are, not who the world thinks you should be.

The wind swoops over the tenements on Orchard Street, where some of those starry-eyed dreams have died and yet other dreams are being born into squalor and poverty, an uphill climb. It gives a slap to the laundry stretched on lines between tenements, over dirty, broken streets where, even at this hour, hungry children scour the bins for food. The wind has existed forever. It has seen much in this country of dreams and soap ads, old horrors and bloodshed. It has played mute witness to its burning witches, and has walked along a Trail of Tears; it has seen the slave ships release their human cargo, blinking and afraid, into the ports, their only possession a grief they can never lose.

...I do have to wonder what sort of childhood the Grimm brothers endured. They are not a merry bunch of storytellers, what with their children roasted by witches, maidens poisoned by old crones, and whatnot.

Writers are also sort of like vultures, but with fewer ethics.

If you would understand the present, you must come to know the past.

Travel opens your mind as few other things do. It is its own form of hypnotism, and I am forever under its spell.

To each his own magic.

The world expected girls to pluck and primp and put on heels. Meanwhile, boys dressed in rumpled T-shirts and baggy pants and misplace their combs, and yet you were suppose to fall at their feet? Unacceptable.

What is the French word for rain? Le rain? La rain? Is the rain masculine or feminine? It__ such a bother that it must be masculine.

You don't know me, dude," he says, not smiling this time. Gonzo examines his cards, prepping for his next move. "People always think that they know other people, but they don't. Not really. I mean, maybe they know things about them, like they won't eat doughnuts or they like action movies or whatever. But they don't know what their friends do in their rooms alone at night or what happened to them when they were kids or if they feel ****ed up for no reason at all.

As a kid, I imagined lots of different scenarios for my life. I would be an astronaut. Maybe a cartoonist. A famous explorer or rock star. Never once did I see myself standing under the window of a house belonging to some druggie named Carbine, waiting for his yard gnome to steal his stash so I could get a cab back to a cheap motel where my friend, a neurotic, death-obsessed dwarf, was waiting for me so we could get on the road to an undefined place and a mysterious Dr. X, who would cure me of mad cow disease and stop a band of dark energy from destroying the universe.

He smiles sadly. "Now I know my destiny.""What is it?""This."He draws me in to him in a kiss. His lips are warm. He pulls me tighter in his embrace. The roots sigh and release their hold on my waist and the wound in my side is healed. "Kartik," I cry, kissing his cheeks. "It's let me go.""That's good," he says. He makes a small cry. His back arches, and every muscle in his body tightens.

There is much asked and only so much I think I can or should answer, and so, in this post I would like to give a few thoughts on what seemed to be the overwhelming question: __HY?__nd here is the best answer I can give: Because.Because sometimes, life is damned unfair.Because sometimes, we lose people we love and it hurts deeply.Because sometimes, as the writer, you have to put your characters in harm__ way and be willing to go there if it is the right thing for your book, even if it grieves you to do it.Because sometimes there aren__ really answers to our questions except for what we discover, the meaning we assign them over time.Because acceptance is yet another of life__ __ere__ a side of hurt_ lessons and it is never truly acceptance unless it has cost us something to arrive there.Why, you ask? Because, I answer.Inadequate yet true.

I stare at the pile of discarded remnants and think of my mother. Did she touch that pillar there? Does her scent still linger in a fragment of glass or a splinter of wood? A terrible emptiness settles into my chest. No matter how much I go about living, there are always small reminders that make the loss fresh again.

What did I do to make Mommy leave?___ou didn__ do anything. This isn__ your fault.___hen why?_ she__ wailed.__ don__ know,_ her daddy had said, and he looked so sad.__t isn__ fair!___o, it isn__, baby. Not by a mile. The world__ only as fair as you can make it. Takes a lot of fight. A lot of fight. But if you stay in here, in your own little cave, that__ one less fighter on the side of fair.

I'm Sorry,' he says. It's simple and direct, with none of the nonsense about God calling home an angel too young and who are we to question his mysterious ways.