3,500 Voice Over Scripts for Practice, Demo, & Feedback

Becky DeGeorge, in the bloom of her first full day as Michael's wife, walked out of the hotel lobby holding her husband's hand. She breathed in the cool night air, the first fresh air she had inhaled all day. In the brief span of their marriage, she and Michael had made love several times and taken two steamy showers together. They had poked their heads out for an obligatory but, at last, final brunt with the families. They had begged

off the trip to Opus One, scurried back upstairs, and popped a last bottle of champagne. Michael had put on a sex video and as they watched the film they played out some unusual and exciting roles. He seemed to have fantasies about wearing women's clothes.

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time, Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. Every year during the month of March a family of ragged gypsies would set up their tents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes and kettledrums they would display new inventions.

My present to Helen at the time of our marriage was a modest gold watch, and this had depleted my capital to the extent that a bank statement at the commencement of our married life revealed the sum of 25 shillings standing to my credit. Admittedly, I was a partner now, but when you start from scratch, it takes a long time to get your head above water. But we did need the essentials, like a table, chairs, cutlery, crockery, the odd rug and carpet, and Helen and I decided that it would be most sensible to pick up these things at house sales.

Joan Murdoch helped me fill out the application. When we finished, I told her that if I were half as gifted as all my teachers raved I was, I had a shot. She agreed. Once Grandma Lil discovered she would still be my legal guardian and that my going away would not jeopardize her monthly income from the City of New York, she signed her name to my application in the rounded, overlarge letters of the semiliterate.

"What's the matter?" St. Nicholas asked "Oh, St. Nicholas," Harim said. "We aren't important enough for such a big occasion. Last year the Archangel made Heaven sparkle with gold and silver." "And the year before, the Heavenly Choir made Christmas with harps and trumpets, and hundreds of voices singing in a magnificent chorus. What could we do that would be good enough?" asked Petra, the Music Angel.

The first twigs are thin, green, and supple. They bend into a complete circle, but will not break. Their delicate, showy hopefulness shooting from forsythia and lilac bushes meant only a change in whipping style. They beat us differently in the spring. Instead of the dull pain of a winter strap, there were these new green switches that lost their sting long after the whipping was over. There was a nervous meanness in these long twigs that made us long for the steady stroke of a strap or the firm but honest slap of a hairbrush. Even now spring for me is shot through with the remembered ache of switchings, and forsythia holds no cheer.

Maggie and Ira Goldstein had to go to a funeral in Pennsylvania. Maggie’s girlhood friend had lost her husband. Deerlick lay on a narrow country road some 90 miles north of Baltimore, and the funeral was scheduled for 10:30 Saturday morning, so Ira figured they should start around 8. This made him grumpy. He was not an early morning kind of man. Also, Saturday was his busiest day at work, and he had no one to cover for him. Also, their car was in the body shop. It had needed extensive repairs, and Saturday morning at opening time, 8 o’clock exactly, was the soonest they could get it back. Maybe they’d just better not go, but Maggie said they had to, for she and Serena had been friends forever ... or nearly forever ...

In the Brazilian film "Central Station", Dora is a retired schoolteacher who makes ends meet by sitting at the station writing letters for illiterate people. Suddenly, she has an opportunity to pocket $1,000. All she has to do is persuade a homeless 9 year old boy to follow her to an address she has been given. (She is told he will be adopted by wealthy foreigners.) She delivers the boy, gets the money, spends some of it on a television set, and settles down to enjoy her new acquisition. Her neighbor spoils the fun, however, by telling her that the boy was too old to be adopted _ he will be killed and his organs sold for transplantation. Perhaps Dora knew this all along, but after her neighbor’s plain speaking, she spends a troubled night. In the morning Dora resolves to take the boy back.

Suppose Dora had told her neighbor that it is a tough world, other people have nice new TVs too, and if selling the kid is the only way she can get one, well he was only a street kid. She then have become, in the eyes of the audience a monster. She reems herself only by being prepared to bear considerable risk to save the boy.

A bloated vampire moon drained all life and color from the world. The snow-covered land came speeding past the train. It was gray and ill-defined, marked only by a few livid cottages and limitless black forest grizzled with snow. No roads; the railway did not follow any road, it cut through the land like a knife.

p. 45

After months of very little repose, my wife and I grew irritable, barking at each other about everything from whose turn it was to sing, “I See the Moon” to our daughter at 3am to who – in our sleepwalking states, had placed the baby monitor in the fridge next to the long-forgotten bottle of white wine. We bought a crib from a couple we knew and tried to relocate our daughter from our bed into the new digs, but as soon as she saw her new gated community of one, she wailed like a banshee. Since my wife and I were both sleepy and cowardly, we moved her back in with us.

“Mamaaaaa,” our daughter yelled. We crouched down even lower, as if she had one of those thermal-imaging machines the cops use to see through the walls of homes rented by violent felons. She abandoned what little speech she possessed and regressed to primal screams and cries, the kind we hadn’t heard for months. Below the wails, we listened to her rattle the bars of her wooden cage. My wife, eyes closed, whispered softly to herself. Even though she was raised Catholic among Mormons in Utah, my wife is usually not someone who speaks freely to the Lord.

“Should I pray, too?” I asked her in what I believed what a spousal bonding moment.

She opened her eyes. “Pray? I’m swearing, you idiot,” she said, and I could recognize the mother tongue clearly now.

Any desire of the heart is there for you to discover and manifest. Whatever inspires you is an aspect of yourself. Be precise about what you admire in someone and find that part in yourself. If you have the aspiration to be something, it's because you have the potential to manifest what you are seeing.

One evening, a platoon of soldiers arrived at a small village after a long hike. The next morning, being Sunday, several of the men went to church. A sergeant commanded the boys to kneel and after the chaplain had read the prayer, the text was taken up next. Those who had prayer books took them out, but this one soldier had only a deck of cards. So he spread them out. The Sergeant saw the cards and said, “Soldier, put away those cards!” After the services were over, the soldier was brought before the provost marshal. The marshal said, “Sergeant, why have you brought this man here?” “And what have you to say for yourself, son?” “Much sir,” replied the soldier. The marshal said, “I hope so, for if not, I will punish you quite severely.”

Art class was over but Vashti sat glued to her chair. Her paper was empty. Vashti’s teacher leaed over the blank paper. “Ah! A polar bear in a snowstorm!” she said. “Very funny!”, said Vashti. “I just CAN’T draw!” Vashti thought for a moment. “Well, maybe I can’t draw, but I CAN sign my name.”

A great bat came flapping into the room. It drove the weird women away. Poor Renfield fell down, fainting from fright. In an instant, the bat disappeared. In its place was the smiling figure of Count Dracula! He was ready to claim his victim! Once bitten by the vampire, Renfield became Dracula’s slave. The evil Count wanted to go to England. Coffins, filled with Transylvanian earth, were taken to a ship and loaded on board. One of the coffins contained something else as well as dirt. Renfield guarded it well. When the ship landed in England, the horrified people at the dock found that the entire crew was dead. Only Renfield, now a raving madman, was left alive.

Someone coming toward her. It was going to happen again. Helpless. Helpless. Helpless. The scream that tore from Melis's throat jarred her awake. She jerked upright in bed. She was shaking, her T-shirt soaked with sweat.

Only a dream. She wasn't helpless. She'd never be helpless again. She was strong now.

#1: Origin of Space and Time From Einstein’s work on general relativity came the recognition that there must be an origin for matter and energy. From Penrose, Hawking, and Ellis’ work came the acknowledgement that there must be an origin for space and time, too. With the knowledge that time has a beginning, and a relatively recent beginning, at that, all age-lengthening attempts to push away the creation event, and thus the Creator become absurd. Moreover, the common origin of matter, energy, space, and time proves that the act(s) of creation must transcend the dimensions and substance of the universe -- a powerful argument for the biblical doctrine of a transcendent Creator.

#2: The Earth as a Fit Habitat

About a dozen more parameters, including several atmospheric characteristics, currently are being researched for their sensitivity in the support of life. However, the twenty listed in Table 12.1 in themselves lead safely to the conclusion that much fewer than a trillionth of a percent of all stars will have a planet capable of sustaining advanced life. Considering that the universe contains only about a trillion galaxies, each averaging a hundred billion stars, we can see that not even one planet would be expected, by natural processes alone, to possess the necessary conditions to sustain life. No wonder Robert Rood and James Trefil, among others, have surmised that intelligent physical life exists only on the earth. It seems abundantly clear that the earth, too, in addition to the universe, has experienced divine design.

"Freedom is participation in power," said the Roman orator Cicero. By this deep definition, freedom is in short supply for tens of millions of Americans, a scarcity with serious consequences. This absence of freedom breeds apathy. Average citizens do not fight for change, even about the conditions and causes that mean the most to them. Our lack of civic motivation is the greatest problem facing the country today. Our beloved country is being taken apart by large multinational commercial powers. Over two thousand years ago, in ancient Athens, a fledgling democracy challenged the longstanding plutocracy, using politics as it instrument.

Laurent saw the barrel of the gun coming up, felt the madman tense against her. He was trying to lift her up with him as he shot Nicholas. Then she heard the screech of tires on the gravel outside the door. Was it Tommy? Oh, God no. Whoever came through the doorway was going to get killed.

My mother’s hands are veiny and strong. Her neck has veins. Her back has freckles. She used to do a trick where it looked like she would be pulling off her thumb, when in fact she was not. Do you know this trick? Part of one’s right thumb is made to look like part of one’s left hand and then is slid up and down the index finger of the left finger – attached then detached. It’s an unsettling trick and more so when my mother used to do it because she did it in a way where her hands sort of shook, vibrated, her necks veins protruding with the strain plausibly attendant to pulling off one’s finger. As children we watched with both glee and terror.

The Century of Change is the story of Americans who combined their native skills with the growing torrent of new knowledge to improve the quality of life for themselves and their children. Like the sewing machine, countless other inventions and techniques appeared to help this determination become a reality. The story is not a routine report of smooth progress toward the perfection of life. There have been hardships, yes -- even injustice among Americans. The balance between laws and social progress is the critical element in George Washington’s “Great Experiment.” It is the people -- each new generation of Americans -- who must improve and maintain this balance within their Constitution.

The vast lands of the west attracted pioneers who brought new techniques of agriculture. People everywhere needed the products and services of an educated industrial nation. By 1870, there were 563 colleges and universities in the United States. By 1910, almost a thousand. The tradition of literacy established among colonial Americans raced to keep pace with the dynamics of progress. The teaching of science and engineering gave the nation vital technological ability.

A faint interest dawned inside her gaze, as if the amber light had won out and was turned reluctantly on me. She slumped slightly in her chair, relaxed into something like masculine ease, without taking her hands off her book. “What are those letters, exactly?” she asked, in her quiet foreign voice.

“Stoichev looked as if he had something else to say, but at that moment we heard vigorous footsteps on the stairs. He tried to rise, then shot me a pleading look. I snatched up the dragon folio and plunged into the next room with it, where I hid it as well as I could behind a box. I rejoined Stoichev and Helen in time to see Ranov open the door to the library.

Stanley was not a bad kid. He was innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. He’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was all because of his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather! He smiled. It was family joke. Whenever anything went wrong, they always blamed Stanley’s no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather!

Supposedly, he had a great-great-grandfather who had stolen a pig from a one-legged Gypsy, and she put a curse on him and all his descendants. Stanley and his parents didn’t believe in curses, of course, but whenever anything went wrong, it felt good to be able to blame someone. Things went wrong a lot. They always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Why do we call it rush hour when no one goes anywhere? Like rush hour takes only one hour. Maybe we should have a slow hour -- 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. except weekends. Last week, I merged into traffic so hairy that people were actually backing off the freeway. And while I, myself, suffer from gridlock claustrophobia, once you're physically on the freeway ... that's pretty much a done deal. Do not pass Go; do not collect $200. "Freeway." Good place for a "rush hour." The only difference between a freeway and side streets is that the streets have a fast lane -- for bicyclists. I've sat on the 101 so long that we could have used a Las Vegas yo-yo girl... "Cigarettes? Soda? Candy?" For those of you in the market, these conga-line cars are the same ones that advertise "freeway miles only." So it goes. Problem with gridlock is that people are overheating. Road rage is worst in Arizona, which is -- coincidentally, I'm sure -- the hottest place to live outside the surface of the sun. I've never understood why people move to Arizona. They always say the same thing: "My home was so cheap." Yes, but when you walk outside, YOU'RE IN ARIZONA. I myself don't carry a car gun, but I can see it. Once you've breathed someone's fumes for an hour, you start to wonder why they're out in the first place. Is their reason good enough? During "rush hour," traffic should be limited to women whose water has broken. And me. While awaiting legislation, we could phase in car horns that reflect varying degrees of emotion. The first horn will be polite, as in, "Hellooo? Excuse me." The second will be more condescending like a foghorn. "Jaaack-hole." Then, when someone really gets in our grill, we pull the chord and release the flatulent cargo vessel "HOOOOONK." Or maybe we'll go with car-tones to match our cell phone ringtones. I've always wanted a horn on the back of my car to play this riff from C&C Music Factory: "Chill, baby, baby, baby, chill, baby, wait." The point is that that something must be done to relieve gridlock tedium before we all go Arizonan. People everywhere are coming home and collapsing by their spouses...

“In Germany, the Nazis first came for the Communists... and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews... and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists... and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics... but I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.”

So ends the story of the strange and evil experience of the Invisible Man. And if you would learn more of him you must go to a little inn near Port Stowe and talk to the landlord. The sign of the inn is an empty board save for a hat and boots, and the name is the title of this story. The landlord is a short and corpulent little man with a nose of cylindrical protrusion, wiry hair, and a sporadic rosiness of visage. Drink generously, and he will tell you generously of all the things that happened to him after the time, and of how the lawyers tried to do him out of the treasure found upon him.

The velociraptor sniffed. It jerked its head, and looked right at Tim; Tim nearly gasped with fright. Tim’s body was rigid, tense. He watched as the reptile eye moved, scanning the room. Another sniff. He’s got me, Tim thought. Then the head jerked back to look forward, and the animal went on, toward the fifth steak. Tim thought, Lex please don’t move, please don’t move, whatever you do, please don’t ... The velociraptor sniffed the steak, and moved on. It was now at the open door to the freezer. Tim could see the smoke billowing out, curling along the floor toward the animal’s feet. One big clawed foot lifted, then came down again, silently. The dinosaur hesitated. Too cold, Tim thought.

WHY TRAGEDY HAS HAUNTED AMERICA'S FIRST FAMILY FOR 150 YEARS: THE KENNEDY CURSE (Edward Klein, St. Martin's Press, July 8, 2003)

The marriage made front-page news everywhere, and a new Kennedy myth was born. The man who could have had any woman in the world had chosen as his bride one who was not rich or famous or ennobled by family background or distinguished by any professional accomplishment. What Carolyn had were certain charismatic qualities- exceptional beauty, a unique sense of style, and a shrewd, sharp, hard intelligence.

The media played the marriage as a Cinderella story, casting Carolyn as the commoner who had found true love with Prince Charming. But it turned out to be a doomed fairy tale, a nightmare of escalating domestic violence, sexual infidelity, and drugs - a union that seemed destined to end in one kind of disaster or another.

My dear mother, I am very sorry to tell you that it will not be in our power to keep our promise of spending the holiday with you, and we are prevented that happiness by a circumstance which is not likely to make us any amends. Lady Susan in a letter to her brother, has declared her intention to visiting us almost immediately, and as such a visit is in all probability merely an affair of convenience, it is impossible to conjecture its length. I was by no means prepared for such an event, nor can I now account for her Ladyship’s conduct. Langford appeared so exactly the place for her in every respect, as well from the elegant and expensive stile of living there.

I first laid eyes on Lake Superior and the big country around it more than a decade ago. I drowned myself in its pleasures: fishing for trout, hunting for mushrooms, picking berries in its pine-scented air. On my frequent returns to the lake country, I have been heartened to find that it remains as I first knew it, uncommonly clear, still heavily forested, and bathed in exquisite stillness. You can hear a lynx scream, follow the tracks of wolves hunting deer, or sail along rock-strewn beaches without seeing a soul. And you may be awakened in the night, as I was in my sleeping bed, by a woodland caribou...

Sam moved forward and reached for the young man’s forearms. He hoped to subdue him quickly without any fighting and escort him from the playground; there was no point in provoking a riot. The tormenter, all slum muscle and grace, recoiled; Sam had barely touched him. The playground instructor saw the white arms and dirtied fists spring into position; a second later it was as if someone had exploded an electric light-bulb in his face. He was stumbling backward on his heel, feeling a thousand needles stinging his offended chin. Numbness radiated through his teeth and cheeks, and a little bath of salty blood was forming inside his lower lip. He had not fallen, however, and as his head cleared he saw the gatecrasher bouncing professionally, fists in the classic boxer’s pose, the abysmal face aglow with hoodlum joy.

Maybe feeling my hands on her face would make her understand what I was trying to say to her. But as I moved toward her, I could see in her eyes that nothing I said was going to change anything. I left them at the table and went back home to my room.

When the lights disappeared, her hand went to the automatic she carried inside the belt of her slacks. She fingered its butt, trigger guard, and safety for perhaps the fifth time in the past half hour. It was the only visible sign of her nervousness. Their bedroom was directly ahead, the door open.

The street was empty and it was a cold night, a light rain was falling where he was driving to, but I guessed we were going down all the time toward the lower city. In the end he pulled up in a little side street, stopped the engine and got out of the car, telling me to wait inside. He disappeared for a moment and then came back and told me to get out. I followed him and he seemed tense now, looking from side to side like a thief or something.

They returned to Yonville along the river. The summer weather had reduced its flow and left uncovered the river walls and water steps of the gardens along its bank. It ran silently, swift and cold-looking; long fine grasses bent with the current, like masses of loose green hair streaming in its limpid depths. Here and there on the tip of a reed or on a water-lily pad a spidery-legged insect was poised or crawling. Sunbeams pierced the little blue air bubbles that kept forming and breaking on the ripples; branchless old willows mirrored their gray bark in the water in the distance the meadows seemed empty all around them.

At the sudden impact of those words, crashing into her mind like a leaden bullet into a silver dish, Emma felt herself shudder; and she raised her head, straining to understand what he had meant by them. They looked at each other in silence, almost wonderstruck, each of them, to see that the other was there, so far apart had their thoughts carried them. Charles stared at her with the clouded gaze of a drunken man; motionless in his chair, he was listening to the screams that continued to come from the hotel.

There is a feeling of absolute finality about the end of a flight through darkness. The whole scheme of things with which you have lived acutely, during hours of roaring sound in an element altogether detached from the world, ceases abruptly. The plane noses groundward, the wings strain to the firmer cushion of earthbound air, wheels touch, and the engine sighs into silence. The dream of flight is suddenly gone before the mundane realities of growing grass and swirling dust, the slow plodding of men and the enduring patience of rooted trees. Freedom escapes you again, and wings that were a moment ago no less than an eagle's, and swifter, are metal and wood once more, inert and heavy.

And I asked myself, frightened and rapt, who was she who rose before me like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, radiant as the sun. Then the creature came still closer to me, throwing into a corner the dark package she had ‘til then held pressed to her body; and she raised her hand to stroke my face, and repeated the words I had already heard. And while I did not know whether to flee from her or move even closer, while my head was throbbing as if the trumpets of Joshua were about to bring down the walls of Jericho, as I yearned and at once feared to touch her, she smiled with great joy, emitted a stifled moan of a pleased she-goat, and undid the strings that closed her dress over her bosom, slipped the dress from her body like a tunic, and stood before me as Eve must have appeared to Adam in the garden of Eden.

…She wants to know what I study, what I plan to do in the future, what I think of private schools in Manhattan, what my parents do. I answer with as much filigree and insouciance as I can muster, trying to slightly cock my head like Snow White listening to the animals. She, in turn, is aiming for more of a Diane-Sawyer-pose, looking for answers which will confirm that I am not there to steal her husband, jewelry, friends, or child. In that order. Nanny Fact: in every one of my interviews, references are never checked. I am white. I speak French. My parents are college educated. I have no visible piercings and have been to Lincoln Center in the last two months. I’m hired.

Even in these enlightened days when women are CEOs and Cabinet Members, many still feel uncomfortable with blatant displays of power. Women are often afraid to ask for what they want because they tend to confuse assertion with aggression. Aggression implies violation. When you act aggressively, the other person will feel angry or taken advantage of. Assertion, on the other hand, means going after what you want without demeaning or intimidating the other person.

I listened, but if a wolf was broadcasting from those hills he was not on my wavelength. George, who had been sleeping on the crest of the esker, suddenly sat up, cocked his ears forward and pointed his long muzzle toward the north. After a minute or two he threw back his head and howled; a long, quavering howl which started low and ended on the highest note my ears would register. Ootek grabbed my arm and broke into a delighted grin. “Caribou are coming; the wolf says so!”

The small boys came early to the hanging.

It was still dark when the first three or four of them sidled out of the hovels, quiet as cats in their felt boots. A thick layer of fresh snow covered the little town like a new coat of paint, and theirs were the first footprints to blemish its perfect surface. They picked their way through the huddled wooden huts and along the streets of frozen mud to the silent marketplace, where the gallows stood waiting. The boys despised everything their elders valued. They scorned beauty and mocked goodness. They would hoot with laughter at the sight of a cripple, and if they saw a wounded animal they would stone it to death.

Once again the queen learned that holding the throne was harder than winning it. She spent the days after the uprising struggling with her conscience, faced with the agonizing question of what should be done with the rebels who had come against her and been so dramatically defeated. Clearly, God would protect this Mary on her throne, but God was not to be mocked. Mary must also protect herself.

So your school is having a science fair! Great! The science fair has long been a favorite educational tool in the American school system, and for a good reason: Your teachers hate you. Ha ha! No, seriously, although a science fair can seem like a big “pain,” it can help you understand important scientific principles, such as Newton’s First Law of Inertia, which states: “A body at rest will remain at rest until 8:45 p.m. The night before the science-fair project is due, at which point the body will come rushing to the body’s parents, who are already in their pajamas, and shout, “I just remembered the science fair is tomorrow and we gotta go to the store right now!”

p. 42

The suit is definitely the universal business outfit for men. There is nothing else that men like to wear when they’re doing business. I don’t know why it projects this image of power. Why is it intimidating?

“We’d better do what this guy says. His pants match his jacket.”

Men love the suit so much, we’ve actually styled our pajamas to look like a tiny suit. Our pajamas have little lapels, little cuffs, simulated breast pocket. Do you need a breast pocket on your pajamas? You put a pen in there, you roll over in the middle of the night, you kill yourself.

p. 70

People will kill each other for a parking space in New York because they think, “If I don’t get this one, I may never get a space. I’ll be searching for months until somebody goes out to the Hamptons.” Because everybody in New York City knows there’s way more cars than parking spaces. You see cars driving in New York all hours of the night. It’s like musical chairs except everybody sat down around 1964.

The problem is, while car manufacturers are building hundreds of thousands of new cars every year, they’re not making any new spaces. That’s what they should be working on. Wouldn’t that be great – you go to the auto show and they’ve got a big revolving turntable with nothing on it.

“New from Chrysler, a space.”

I came to Shawshank when I was just twenty, and I am one of the few people in our happy little family who is willing to own up to what he did. I committed murder. I put a large insurance policy on my wife, who was three years older than I was, and then I fixed the brakes of the Chevrolet coupe her father had given us as a wedding present, except I hadn’t planned on her stopping to pick up the neighbour woman and the neighbour woman’s infant son on the way down Castle Hill and into town.

I’ve told you as well as I can how it is to be an institutionalized man. At first you can’t stand those four walls, then you get so you can abide them, then you get so you can accept them ... and then, as your body, and your mind and your spirit adjust to life on an HO scale, you get to love them. You are told when to eat, when you can write letters, when you can smoke. If you’re at work in the laundry or the plate-shop, you’re assigned five minutes of each hour when you can go to the bathroom.

I don’t know how long it had been observing me, but now it peered at me with some alarm. Then the little animal--only slightly larger than a house cat--threw back its head, gave a single, shrill bark, and disappeared in a trot over a ridge. I chased after it over the hummocky tundra, but when I got to the top of the ridge, the fox was nowhere to be seen. The polar desert stretched out for miles in front of me--no trees, no shrubs, no deep valleys, just the gently rolling land, tufts of arctic grasses, and scattered wildflowers. Yet the fox was gone.

She rolled over and blinked him into focus. "What?, Who?" "The FBI Guys." She threw back the covers, scrambled from the bed and lunged toward the window, all in one motion. She raised a louver and peered through the blinds. A navy blue sedan was parked at the curb. Two suited men, one black, one white, were alighting. Turning back into the room, she looked at the clock on the nightstand. She had set her alarm for 8:30. It was 8:25. "They're early."

The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.

The wind whined. A few leaves blew, scraping across the floor. The air was damp and cold. They stood silently.

“I wonder if he thought of us.” Chris said, looking at the stone face. “I wonder if he ever missed us.”

“Of course he did,” the professor said. “Don’t you miss him?”

Chris nodded. Kate sniffed, and blew her nose.

“I do,” Johnson said.

They went back outside. They walked down the hill to the car. By now the rain had entirely stopped. But the clouds had remained dark and heavy, hanging low over the distant hills.

From Better Homes and Gardens

In 1960, 5.8 million American kids lived in single-parent families. Today, that number has more than tripled, to an astonishing 18 million. Another figure is equally startling: nearly 40 percent of our children don't live in the same home as their biological father. Today, the number of kids whose parents are divorced is nearly equaled by the number of children in homes where there never has been a dad. One out of three babies in America today are born to unmarried women--a 600 percent increase since 1960. "Children need both a mom and a dad." Why both? In his recently published book, Life Without Father, Rutgers University sociologist David Popenoe details the unique yin and yang generated by a woman-man parenting team. "Mothers tend to be responsive and fathers firm. Mothers stress emotional security and relationships while fathers stress competition and risk-taking. Mothers typically express more concern for the child's immediate well-being, while fathers concentrate on a child's long-term autonomy and independence," Popenoe says.

As the late November winds cut across her legs and blew under her coat, Mattie shivered violently and realized that she had rushed from the house without any slip or stockings. She pulled her tweed coat closer to her neck to cut off the wind and stop her body from trembling with cold, and moved on toward the police precinct. The brick and glass building threw out a ghostly light against the thin morning air. She paused a moment to catch her breath before the iron lettering engraved over the door, and then pushed the slanted metal bar and went in.

By itself, good writing is no guarantee of success. But words are more than words and business writing does not exist in a vacuum. What you write will always have a purpose and if you write well you are more likely to achieve it, and to succeed.

ALL RIGHT. THE STORY OF JERRY AND THE DOG! What I am going to tell you has something to do with how sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly; or maybe I only think that it has something to do with that. But, it's why I went to the zoo today, and why I walked north ... northerly, rather... until I came here.

All right. The dog, I think I told you, is a black monster of a beast: an oversized head, tiny, tiny ears, and eyes ... bloodshot eyes, infected, maybe; and body you can see the ribs through the skin. The dog is black, all black; all black except for the bloodshot eyes, and yes... and an open sore on it's .... right forepaw; that's red, too. And, oh yes; the poor monster, and I do believe it's an old dog.......