Short Fiction

After that your mother and grandma came into the room, pretending to look for something. Then they would shake their heads and begin to talk of the bad boys who grow up without minding their elders, and whom nobody loves because of that

The Messenger of Death heeds neither the prayer of a shepherd nor the outcry of a sovereign.

“Ye men of folly! Slaves, tormented by heat, may be forgiven for raising their arms toward the sun, and supplicating it as God. But the sun is not God. None may behold God. He is beyond our comprehension. He may only be sensed. There is but one God. He hath no offspring.”

the protecting shadow of the Creator exists since the start of time.

You begged me for at least a drop of that happiness

Happiness, happiness!
You were full of longing for happiness when you opened your eyes in the morning. Confiding, like every child, your heart frank and open, you came to Life and said, “Hurry! Hurry!”
“Be patient,” answered Life.
“Please! Please!” you exclaimed passionately.
“Be quiet, or you won’t get anything!”
“Just wait, then,” you cried in fury.
For a time you were silent. Your heart was seething. You overturned chairs, rushed from room to room, struck the floor with your feet, shouted as if pouring your whole thirst for happiness into that shout … Then Life struck your heart with the dull knife of pain and humiliation. And you began to cry, and shriek, and call for help.
Not a muscle twitched in the face of Life … Give in, give in! And you gave in.

The more inaccessible is a dream, the more fascinating it is—and the more fascinating it is, the more inaccessible it seems.

You were suddenly filled with an ambition to taste of pleasures heretofore unknown: to own your own books with pictures, your own pen-case, your own colored pencils—there was no question about their being colored—to learn how to read, draw, make figures

you were too young then to be a hypocrite