I,” I start, and she turns to look at my lips moving, rehearsing for some grand proposal. “I think it’d be good idea if you brought a few books over and left them on my shelf.” I’m a writer, and this is as good as it gets. She didn’t need...
A human doesn't have a heart like mine. The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I'm always finding humans at their best and wors...
I was beginning to see fewer of our weaknesses and more of our strengths; the events of the day were a reminder of how each of us had certain abilities that the rest did not. It was as if we were each a part of a whole body- one the hands, another th...
In places where government priorities and market imperatives create a world so capricious that to help a neighbor is to risk your ability to feed your family, and sometimes even your own liberty, the idea of the mutually supportive poor community is ...
Power. What do we mean? 'The ability to determine another man's luck.' ...how is it that some men attain mastery over others while the vast majority live and die as minions, as livestock? The answer is a holy trinity. First: God-given gifts of charis...
We have within us the power to choose how we respond to a hurtful situation. We cannot control the actions of others, but we can control how we will respond. As we understand our power to choose, we see that we are in control. Our life is not a resul...
Exposition is a mode of thought, a method of learning, and a means of expression. Almost all of the characteristics we associate with mature discourse were amplified by typography, which has the strongest possible bias toward exposition: a sophistica...
To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense...
I’d been kissed before. Many times. There were awkward and sloppy kisses, those tension-fraught moments of fumbling intensity as a teenager. There were more skilled kisses, passionate and intentional. There were kisses that stole my breath, kisses ...
Anxiously attached Codependents demonstrate the ability to maximize the attention they get from their partner, regardless of whether it is positive or negative (i.e., "I'd rather be screamed at than ignored"). Manipulation is used to keep the inatten...
She'd made life poignant for the Irish. The terror she inspired gave peace its serenity; the pain she caused gave health its lustre; her failure to love made me grateful for my ability to do so, and I realized, far too late, that though I never did o...
But I don’t think I’ve ever known such a natural at Potions!” said Slughorn. “Instinctive, you know — like his mother! I’ve only ever taught a few with this kind of ability, I can tell you that, Sybill — why even Severus —” And to H...
Harry, despite your privileged insight into Voldemort’s world (which, incidentally, is a gift any Death Eater would kill to have), you have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of V...
In its essence, Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech is one citizen’s soul-searing plea with his countrymen––Whites and Blacks––to recognize that racial disparities fueled by unwarranted bigotry were crippling America’s ...
We often forget our human connectedness. Throughout my life, I have felt the greatest beauty lies in this connection. It has been in the deepest connections with others that I have experienced the greatest degree of learning, healing and transformati...
Doing it all the time, whether or not we are in the mood, gives us ownership of our writing ability. It takes it out of the realm of conjuring where we stand on the rock of isolation, begging the winds for inspiration, and it makes it something as do...
If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy no...
...education is the ability to retrieve information at will and analyze it. But you can't have higher-level learning- you can't analyze-without retrieving information.' And you can't retrieve information without putting the information in there in th...
Some women get erased a little at a time, some all at once. Some reappear. Every woman who appears wrestles with the forces that would have her disappear. She struggles with the forces that would tell her story for her, or write her out of the story,...
Learning to practise mindfulness greatly enhances our ability to manifest emotional intelligence and equanimity under pressure and to display calmness, empathy and adaptability when communicating with others, whether it be with co-workers, clients or...
Plenty of mathematicians, Hardy knew, could follow a step-by-step discursus unflaggingly—yet counted for nothing beside Ramanujan. Years later, he would contrive an informal scale of natural mathematical ability on which he assigned himself a 25 an...
