Natural Prozac

by Dr. Joel Robertson, with Tom Monte

As every adult knows, goodness and weakness exist in everyone; similarly, every situation--no matter how good or bad--contains difficulties and opportunities, Moreover, each of us helps to create--by our own efforts, behaviors, and attitudes--the outcome and the quality of every situation we find ourselves in.

The Widow and the King

by John Dickinson

[Ambrose] could see, through a square window behind the Widow's chair, the brown lines of hills he had travelled to come here. Out there were the comfortless places where barns stood ruined and fields all run to seed. That was where he had seen his mother fall, crumpling under the blow at the clifftop. That was where Wastelands was going, where enemies still roamed with steel in their hands. The walls between there and here were deep, hard stone. He could measure the casement of the window with his eye. The depth of it was longer than his arm's reach -- maybe twice as long. And now these people had taken his name, and put it beyond the walls with all the rest.

They had made him into someone else. He could still feel his sadness, but it had moved a little further from him.

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They were pulling her away, murmuring in her ear. [Sophia] let herself be pulled, because she had no strength to stay. She could not see. There was something wrong with her eyes. She put up her arm to wipe them, and found they were stinging with tears.

We've gone wrong, she thought. We made a mistake. Can't we go back to where we were? Can't we make a little change, so that he could be alive again?

And now the world crumbled, silently. Its floor gave way in a pouring of dust and left her hanging in its void -- empty colors, empty flowers, empty sky. Faces that came and went and spoke without meaning. Her eyes blinked, and opened again, and the colors were still there. A bee the color of soot rattled lightly among the thorn flowers a yard away. And none of it was worth anything any more, because Chawlin would never be again.

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And what was that, away to his right where the cleft opened into a broader valley? At first he thought it must be a boulder, strangely shaped, but otherwise the same as any in that land. Then he wondered if it was an old man, sitting in a cloak and hood with his back to them. But it did not have a hood.

He could see what he thought was long, dark hair falling to the figure's waist as it sat. He supposed it must be a woman. It seemed to be weeping.

"Don't look," came the word down the column of armed men. "Orcrim says, don't look."

Ambrose looked, and kept on looking as they straggled past.

It was impossible to guess how large she was, or how far away. At one moment he thought she must be no taller than his own mother, sitting at a distance of a hundred paces from them. The next he imagined himself walking and walking towards her, mile after mile and watching her grow as he approached until she was the size of a mountain. And whichever way he walked around her, she would always have her back to him.

And she would never see him. And she would never listen. And she would never, ever, cease from weeping.

"Don't look," said Hob.

Weeping, weeping. A lost child, and all the loss of all the world. Mar and Develin and Bay. Aunt Evalia, dead with her arms around him. And Adam diManey. And he must make peace with the killer.

"Don't stop," said Hob urgently, beside him.

He had made peace. Why?

Because he must. Because if he did not, he must make a corner in his heart that would be like that, like that. That endless rage and weeping.

He looked at the creature that was Beyah. He could hear her: that unending cry that shook the world. But it did not shake his heart. He had made his peace. He would hold to his purpose.

Funny Business: Conversations with Writers of Comedy

by Daniel Handler, edited by Leonard S. Marcus (via First Milk)

The primary advantage of a large vocabulary when you're young is entirely different from the primary advantage of a large vocabulary when you're an adult. When you're an adult it's so you can describe things with precision, and when you're a child it's mostly so that you can insult people without their knowing it or otherwise baffle them. A child with a large vocabulary is a trusted child. The idea is that a bookworm is not the kind of child who would ever get into any trouble. If, however, you are the kind of bookworm that I was, and you're reading Confessions of an Opium Eater, you are probably somewhat likelier to get into trouble than a child who knows fewer words.

A Song for Summer

by Eva Ibbotson

She followed Sophie into the castle. The rooms, with their high ceilings, gilded cornices and white tiled stoves, were as beautiful and neglected as the grounds. But when she reached the top floor and Sophie said: 'This is your room,' Ellen could only draw in her breath and say: 'Oh Sophie, how absolutely wonderful!'

The child looked round, her brow furrowed. The room contained a broken spinning wheel, a rolled up scroll painting of the Buddha (partly eaten by mice) and a pile of mouldering Left Book Club paperbacks -- all left behind by various housemothers who had not felt equal to the job.

But Ellen had gone straight to the window.

She was part of the sky, inhabiting it. One could ride these not very serious clouds, touch angels or birds, meet witches. White ones, of course, with functional broomsticks, who felt as she did about the world.

Lost in the light, the infinity of space that would be hers each day, she lowered her eyes only gradually to the famous view: the serrated snow peaks on the other shore, the climbing fir trees above the village, the blue oblong of water with its solitary island across which the steamer was chugging, returning to its base.

Sophie waited. Her own view was the same -- the room she shared with two other girls was only just down the corridor -- but when she looked out of the window something always got in the way: images of her warring parents, the terror of abandonment, the letters that did not come. Now for a moment she saw what Ellen saw.

When Ellen spoke again it was to ask a question. 'Are there storks here, Sophie? Do you have them at Hallendorf?'

'I don't think so.'

'We must get some,' said Ellen decidedly. 'We must make them come. Storks are lovely; they bless a house, did you know?'

Sophie considered this. 'It could be difficult about the blessing,' she said, 'because we don't have anybody to do it here. We don't have God.'

'Ah well,' said Ellen, turning back into the room. 'One thing at a time.'

Swan Lake

by Mark Helprin

I was sitting on one of our former tutorial benches, under an overhanging eave in the kitchen courtyard. It was raining heavily, as it must in spring to melt the snow so that summer can blaze across the steppes in green and blue. Watching the rain collide at an angle with a brick wall and then run down it in a tight embrace, I was trying to determine why at a certain volume and force the water bounced off, and why, if neither was sufficient, it didn't. I came to the conclusion that the gross mechanics were directly attributable to the molecular structure of the water, and that the thresholds of adhesion were determined by group particle affinity.

I believe I was slightly ahead of my time.

Secret Heart

by David Almond

Joe felt the lark singing inside him and the tiger prowling inside him. he looked at the teacher, and knew that Bleak Winters was never anything except Bleak Winters. He looked at the children. He knew that they, like him, might have larks and tigers inside them, but they kept them hidden, and one day their larks and tigers might disappear, just as Bleak Winters' had. He wanted to tell them this, he wanted to draw them away from Winters and toward the tent and the wasteland, but he didn't have the words.

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They wandered across the stony earth.

"Maybe you are Tomasso," said Corinna. "Maybe you are and you don't know it. Maybe we're all something else and we don't know it."

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Joe closed his eyes. He felt Nanty's hands cradling his head, and he felt how tender they were.

"How can a thing like a head be held within a lady's finger?" she whispered. "Here's dreams and memories and ancient tales that's being told and told. Here's stars that shine a billion miles away and deep dark caves and forests and Helmouth and teachers and mothers and horns of unicorns and the stripes of tigers. Here's a thing that's bigger than the world and all the worlds there ever was. And look. All held within a little tent of tender bone and skin and cradled in a lady's fingers. How can this be so?"

Joe licked his lips, attempted no answer.

"There's them that say they know how it is so. They look inside the tender bone and skin and tell us what's inside and how it came to be there and what's right in there and what's wrong in there." She sighed. Her fingers shifted, and it was as if they melted and began to mingle with the bone and skin of his skull. "There is them that has already tried to tell you this, Joe Maloney. Isn't there?"

"Y-y-"

"Do not believe them when they tell you, Joe Maloney."

He heard the squeak of the lid as she opened the box.

"What would happen if Joe Maloney's head was lifted open? What would happen if they looked inside to take something out? What would happen to Joe Maloney's worlds?"

"Dun-dunn-"

"Nor does Nanty. Where does the dreams go when the tent of bone is broke?"

An American Childhood

by Annie Dillard

Late at night on Christmas Eve, she carried us to our high bedroom, and darkened the room, and opened the window, and held us awed in the freezing stillness, saying--and we could hear the edge of tears in her voice--"Do you hear them? Do you hear the bells, the little bells, on Santa's sleigh?" We marveled and drowsed, smelling the piercingly cold night and the sweetness of Mother's warm neck, hearing in her voice so much pent emotion, feeling the familiar strength in the crook of her arms, and looking out over the silent streetlights and the chilled stars over the rooftops of the town. "Very faint, and far away--can you hear them coming?" And we could hear them coming, very faint and far away, the bells on the flying sleigh.