The things that don't happen to us that we'll never know didn't happen to us. The nonstories. The extra minute to find the briefcase that makes you late to the spot where a tractor trailer mauled another car instead of yours. The woman you didn't mee...
Being a baby is hard. You born in a new world, whole wide world like it has no boundaries. You face new life that is extremely different with your previous life. You hear people talking, but never understand. You want to say something, but you don't ...
A storm was coming; you could feel it in the air, chill wind was cutting through the thickest coat and there was a faint wetness in the air that was touching the skin if turned towards the storm. Mark looked at the sky above the ocean. The sky was ge...
It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all. We should long ago have become angels had we been capable of paying attention to the experience of art, and allowing ourselves to be...
Happy? That doesn’t feel solid enough, somehow. Like it’s fleeting or transient, and whenever something crappy happens, it’s gone in a puff of smoke. I’m in love with someone I want to spend my life getting to know. He makes me feel safe and ...
My body is a political battlefield. It is a place of war, of death and suffering, of triumph and victory, of damage and repair, of blood and tears and sweat. It is a place where memories go to find purpose for their existence. It is a place where hum...
It’s the process of being minimized, invalidated, silenced. It’s the process of being subjected to whatever someone else thinks I owe them. It’s the process of being used, examined, explored, and thrown away. It’s the process of being convinc...
Almost all the world is natural chemicals, so it really makes you re-think everything. A cup of coffee is filled with chemicals. They've identified a thousand chemicals in a cup of coffee. But we only found 22 that have been tested in animal cancer t...
In Christianity and the body of Christ there is no room for celebrities, the message of the cross doesn't centre around anyone. It is Christ & Him alone. God can do without any of our church celebrities. We've got to let God stand out in all we do. O...
You speak of love but are you the love you speak of? I can tell the depth of somebody's faith by how far and broad their love stretches. If you lack in faith hit your knees and pray for it. It's not about just loving people who see eye to eye with yo...
I live precariously through my characters - so I want them to be loved passionately, live vibrantly, love unconditionally. Make friends they would die for - Explore unimaginable possibilities from all warps of life. And to never forget those that hel...
Keep me rather in this cage, and feed me sparingly, if you dare. Anything that brings me closer to illness and the edge of death makes me more faithful. It is only when you make me suffer that I feel safe and secure. You should never have agreed to b...
Readers may be divided into four classes: 1) Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied. 2) Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting throu...
It has often been said there’s so much to be read, you never can cram all those words in your head. So the writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads. That's why my belief is the briefer the brief is, the ...
Of all the deep longings, this ache for missing intimacy, cuts through sharply, like a scream in a silent room, like the last gasping breath under a stifling mask, like the huge lump in the throat that one is unable to swallow. This deep ache to be h...
It is getting dark. In the low mists over the hills, an orange glow broods, as if the trees are on fire. Bats are flooding out from the hundreds of caves that perforate these mountainsides. I watch them plunge into the mists without any hesitation, t...
Creativity is more about taking the facts, fictions, and feelings we store away and finding new ways to connect them. What we're talking about here is metaphor. Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art, if it is not art itself. Metaphor is our vocabulary...
Why is contemporary China short of works that speak directly? Because we writers cannot speak directly, or rather we can only speak in an indirect way. Why does contemporary China lack good works that critique our current situation? Because our curre...
Love finds you in strange ways. You cannot hope to stay out of its reach forever. It surely has a way to sneak up on you and when you think you’ve conquered it, escaped it; it finds you and blinds you. And when love leaves, it stares right in your ...
I'm from California and couldn't find a job in marketing in 2007-2009. So I became a social media blogger and marketed myself to show clients I can sell things. One client told me I sold illusions, while another told me I sold an image. I told them b...