We look at each other for a moment and for once I feel awkward. It's not that I'm not into humility; I've just never had to practise it.

Sit back and get some sleep. Oh great. So if we have an accident and I'm asleep my resistance toward fighting death will be down and I'll wake up in a morgue.

And through all the misery, she said that some of us in this lifetime experience a moment of beauty beyond reckoning. I asked her what that was, and she said, "If you're one of the lucky ones, you'll know it when you see it. You'll understand why the gods have made you suffer. Because that moment's reward will make your knees weak and everything you've suffered in life will pale in comparison.

The string slices into the skin of his fingers and no matter how tough the calluses, it tears. But this beat is fast and even though his joints are aching, his arm's out of control like it has a mind of its own and the sweat tat drenches his hair and face seems to smother him, but nothing's going to stop Tom. He;s aiming for oblivion.

Sometimes I feel like a junkie. One minute something happens in my life and I'm flying. Next minute I take a nose-dive and just as I'm about to hit the ground with full force something else will have me flying again.

My mother, unlike yours, never exchanged sexual favors for a piece of silver," he said, addressing the first insult by banging the boy's head against the trunk of the tree. "And," he said with another resounding thump, "although I'm very familiar with that part of the female body, I take offense at being labeled one.

And at that moment Jude thought something that he would never forgive himself for. He wished that he had never met any of them.