The idea being that if I was so incredibly small, then I could do almost anything, because what impact would I have, really? What damage could be done, being so puny in the big scheme?
I got the idea that to write books would be the best way to spend a life. I never thought of anything else that seemed like half as much fun, although in my next life I would like to be an architect, too, so I can have an easier time restoring houses...
Having your book edited is like watching your cat being operated on. It's uncomfortable and someone is probably going to get hurt. Most likely the cat. But in the end, things work out for the best and your cat is better it. And then your cat gets rel...
4Shbab has been dubbed Islamic MTV. Its creator, who is an Egyptian TV producer called Ahmed Abu Haiba, wants young people to be inspired by Islam to lead better lives. He reckons the best way to get that message across is to use the enormously popul...
Just like the notion of "Internet natives", who have never known a world without Internet access, we, who have lived our entire lives with video games, can be known as "video game natives.
And this,' Ivan said to the children gathered around, 'is who we are, and this is what we do. Our family serves the Lord--no matter what comes--and when He answers our prayers, no matter how he answers them--we give him praise.
It was nice of her to want to believe the best about me. People tend to do that with the strangers they're fucking. If she wanted to think that apathy and independence were the same thing, good for her. Maybe she was right.
Peleaba por descubrir sentimientos nuevos (…). Se creaban nuevas formas de alegría al tiempo que nuevas clases de tristeza. La eterna decepción de lo que es la vida, el alivio de un respiro inesperado, el miedo a la muerte”.
We cannot even predict what kinds of emergent properties would appear when animals begin interacting as part of a brain-net. In theory, you could imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by th...
When I was a girl I would look out my bedroom window at the caterpillars; I envied them so much. No matter what they were before, no matter what happened to them, they could just hide away and turn into these beautiful creatures that could fly away c...
Our small ears never had such a workout as on the Fourth of July, hearing not only our own bursting crackers but also those of our friends, and often the boom of homemade cannon shot off by daring boys of 16 years, ready to lose a hand if it blew up.
Some acts of worldbuilding in fiction instantiate a milieu that is so culturally odd and exotic, so displaced from the audience's consensus reality in terms of quotidian rituals and observances, clothing and habitations, taboos and emotions, that the...
Plainly, she is quite besotted by him,... a girl, a young girl, and she is falling in love for the first time in her life. ...little Kitty Howard at a loss, stumbling in her speech, blushing like a rose, thinking of someone else and not herself is to...
I can speak of our baby like this to no one else. Who but his father would linger over the exact width of his gummy little smile or the blueness of his eyes, or the sweetness of his little lick of tawny hair on his forehead?
I remembered seeing a media channel where they showed picture after picture of food items I had never seen before in my life. When I asked my father what it was, he said they called it the “Two Minutes’ Hate.
The physicality between us was like nothing I’d experienced before. Just the brush of his fingertips over my cheek was enough to make me feel undressed and naked. “I don’t know,” I answered. “What do you suggest? Culture, entertainment, or ...
My grandmother died from Alzheimer's, and it was a big shock. For the families left behind, it is not an easy closure. It's not a gradual fading. The person is losing so much of their humanity as they're dying. Losing your memories, you lose so much ...
…no industrial designer worth his salt, or our attention, has been trained to work exclusively on any particular product, unless by accident. What he has been trained to do is practice a process called design, a process that includes esthetic choic...
When you turn from one room to the next, when your animal senses no longer perceive the sounds of the dishwasher, the ticking clock, the smell of a chicken roasting - the kitchen and all its seemingly discrete bits dissolve into nothingness - or into...
When someone dismissively answers “Of course a tree makes a sound if no one’s nearby,” they are merely demonstrating their inability to ponder an event nobody attended. They’re finding it too difficult to take themselves out of the equation. ...
By the time the last few notes fade, his hope will be restored, but each time he's force to resort to the Adagio it becomes harder, and he knows its effect is finite. There are only a certain number of Adagios left in him, and he will not recklessly ...