fiction

All of fiction is truthful. What you create is your own truth and no one can take that away or change it.

... The use of your gift for good is your responsibility. You must decide for yourself.

Most stories are not about peoplebut about life, an addiction like the rest of themthat destroys you even as you love it,but you love it anyway and can never get enough.

In writing there is art - and in art there is craft ...

In this strife-torn valley, I have always been tormented by feelings of indefinite and eternal uncertainty. "The Half Mother" is an outcome of those feelings.

It was always this way: The more people talked, the more they obscured. You didn't need to argue for the truth. You could see it.

The destruction of something beautiful can appear so entertaining.

People in books were always so charming, and all their thoughts and actions so comprehensible. They all invariably had a clear, well-defined object in life, and strove through a few hundred engrossing pages to attain this object. They were all noble and generous, and their lives were bright and beautiful. What interesting and delightful moments Irene had passed in their society! They had made her laugh and cry and suffer and rejoice, and had entertained her with the brilliancy of their wit. How dull and colourless real people had appeared beside these heroes and heroines of fiction.

I__l find out who__ inside. Wait here and keep alert!_ Hallam rasped. He skirted the main path to skulk towards one of the shuttered windows on the building__ eastern wall. There was a crack in the wood and he gently inched closer to peer inside.There was a hearth-fire with a pot bubbling away and a battered table made of a length of wood over two pieces of cut timber. A small ham hung from the rafters, away from the rats and mice. He couldn__ see anyone but there was a murmur of voices. Hallam leaned in even closer and a young boy with hair the colour of straw saw the movement to stare. It was Little Jim. Thank God, the child was safe. Snot hung from his nose and he was pale. Hallam put a finger to his lips, but the boy, not even four, did not understand, and just gaped innocently back.Movement near the window. A man wearing a blue jacket took up a stone bottle and wiped his long flowing moustache afterwards. His hair was shoulder-length, falling unruly over the red collar of his jacket. Tied around his neck was a filthy red neckerchief. A woman moaned and the man grinned with tobacco stained teeth at the sound. Laughter and French voices. The woman whimpered and Little Jim turned to watch unseen figures. His eyes glistened and his bottom lip dropped. The woman began to plead and Hallam instinctively growled.The Frenchman, hearing the noise, pushed the shutter open and the pistol__ cold muzzle pressed against his forehead. Hallam watched the man__ eyes narrow and then widen, before his mouth opened. Whatever he intended to shout was never heard, because the ball smashed through his skull to erupt in a bloody spray as it exited the back of the Frenchman__ head.There was a brief moment of silence. _28th!_ Hallam shouted, as he stepped back against the wall. __ake ready!

My eyes refuse to let him leave, but he stands still holding my hand, lingering for as long as possible.

Why can__ I take you? Why is it so hard? You have the other half of my soul; with you I will be complete! So. Then. Why?_ Crispin murmured clenching his fists. Oh, he pitied the fool who would be in his way once he returned to his domain. __h, what suffering will befall them in her place,_ he smiled wickedly. ~Crispin~

Scripture trains us to listen to and learn from stories of all kinds, inside the sacred text and outside, and to discern patterns and meanings within them. Stories of all sorts form and shape the character of those who read them. We live within the narrative as creatures in search of an ending, in search of happiness.

To get girls he had figured out that all you had to do was talk little, the bare minimum, and listen much, without ever passing judgment. [Mister Gregory]

Can the child who is Dell; be the outer emoodiment of man's quest to save himself? To cure himself?...Or, to "be" himself?

And she knows then that she was right about her brother, that it takes an unbelievable strength to feel this kind of grief, and she doesn't know if she can handle it, because it really hurts, hurts her more than the razor ever could.

Not the least of the hardships to which the dying are subject is the visitation of their loved ones. The poor darlings, God bless them, may feel every impulse to condole and console, but their primary sensation is nonetheless one of embarrassment in the presence of the unspeakable and a guilty gratitude that it is not yet their fate.

She lives on the fumes of whiskey and the iron in the blood of her prey.

I was so drunk I couldn't tell a vagina from a bullet hole