The Silent Corner

reason must rule over emotion,

the rash actions of an ordinary narcissist incapable of imagining that he might fail.

He gave her that pellucid gray call-of-the-wild stare, and she imagined that in battle he’d be brutal without being cruel, dealing swift death without hesitation, for he knew there was a profound difference between killing and murder

his memory, previously a palace of brightly lighted chambers, seemed to have collapsed into a small and shadowy apartment.

This particular Gurkha offered all the amenities of a luxury sedan, including a first-class music system. But Jane deferred to Trahern’s preference for brooding silence.

Only assholes do that. I don’t Facebook. Don’t tweet.

If the corruption was of the heart, the culture could think its way to health with great effort. If the corruption was of the mind, it was more difficult to feel a way toward recovery, for the heart was a deceiver.

Narcissists were usually spineless cowards, but some of them were so extravagant in their self-regard that they believed themselves untouchable.

At a measured pace, she crossed the lawn and followed the sidewalk uphill under trees that whispered above her and trembled leaf shadows across the lamplit sidewalk

His baby-smooth face paled with fear, but his gray-eyed stare glinted like a pair of ice picks.