Although psychology and pedagogy have always maintained the belief that a child is a happy being without any conflicts, and have assumed that the sufferings of adults are the results of the burdens and hardships of reality, it must be asserted that j...
The tree of possibilities: life as it reveals itself to a man arriving, astonished, at the threshold of his adult life: an abundant treetop canopy filled with bees singing. And he thinks he understands why she never showed him the letters: she wanted...
We, and I think I'm speaking for many writers, don't know what it is that sometimes comes to make our books alive. All we can do is write dutifully and day after day, every day, giving our work the very best of what we are capable. I don't that we ca...
When moods go bad, when feelings become sad, when excitement is low, stick it out; don't leave and go. When life gets heavier than Earth and meaningless seems birth, step back and breathe, collect yourself and don't seethe. Remember all gets eventual...
The comfort and nostalgia of the past you once knew does not exist anymore, but in the subjective experiences of your memory. You can not go back; you can not live there anymore, for you are here. You are now. If you linger in the past, you find you ...
One way of emphasizing the singularity of the recent past is [..] to observe that the total number of humans ever to have lived is estimated at around (a bit less than) 100 billion. One of Walt Whitman's poems has a memorable image—thinking of all ...
A writer is a dangerous friend. Everything you say, all of your life and experience, is fodder for our writing. We mean you no harm, but what you know and what you’ve done is unavoidably fascinating to us. Being friends with a writer is a bit like ...
Dimitri: Well, you and I will both be Lissa's guardians someday. I need to protect her at all costs. If a pack of Strigoi come, I need to throw my body between them and her. Rose: I know that. Of course that's what you have to do. Dimitri: No. If I l...
It’s not that we have to leave this life one day, it's how many things we have to leave all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, wine, summertime, drunkenness, and the physics of falling leaves, clothing, myrrh, perfumed hair, flirting friends, two...
If other people owe you an apology, and your words of apology to them are proper and heartfelt, you still may not hear from them for a while. After all, what are the odds that they get to the right emotional place to apologize at the exact moment you...
In South Africa, they dig for diamonds. Tons of earth are moved to find a little pebble not as large as a little fingernail. The miners are looking for the diamonds, not the dirt. They are willing to lift all the dirt in order to find the jewels. In ...
What Walter thinks is that people are like rivers. We never stay in the same place but jest keep flowing along, learning new stuff and picking up new experiences and changing all the time. So today’s you isn’t the same as yesterday’s you and wo...
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would no...
In eleven or twelve years of writing, Mike, I can lay claim to at least this: I have never written beneath myself. I have never written anything that I didn't want my name attached to. I have probed deeper in some scripts and I've been more successfu...
After a spent day, I walked back in a fever. The whole way home the sun touched my cheeks. The blissful evening glow spread across the meadows and I called this light the blood I shed. My hot burning blood lay consoling the entire world. So I walked ...
Memoir writing draws on all aspects of who we are, body, mind and soul. We are challenged to dig deep, to remember, and once again inhabit the skin of who we were and what we have learned. Writing memoir is an act of testimony, witnessing, healing. W...
Life is really simple. There are no complicated rules we must follow. There are no external forces, which dictate how we must lead our lives. There is no fate that prevents us from being who we want to be. We are the ones who often insist that life i...
I am tired of people saying that poor character is the only reason people do wrong things. Actually, circumstances cause people to act a certain way. It's from those circumstances that a person's attitude is affected followed by weakening of characte...
It is not the self respect and pride that you take with you, but the heritage you leave behind to your children that matters. A strongly marked personality can influence descendants for generations. Those blessed with a patriotic genetic legacy shoul...
When words don’t add up in love, it is because of six possible reasons: 1. They are afraid to tell you the truth because you will leave them. 2. They enjoy being a liar or playing people because of ego reasons and/or control. 3. They don’t know t...
The idea for the Guild first came up at a party. Your father and I met there and, well, I suppose that's a story all its own. But we were both frustrated by the media at the time. We set out to tell the truth when everyone else seemed set on choosing...
