Have you noticed how difficult it is just to get along in the world? If you're no good at all in your job, people treat you badly and eventually you will be unemployed. And if you're a little better than competent, everyone expects miracles from you,...
Then you don't know. You can't know what it feels like to meet a person and suddenly know without a doubt that the whole purpose of your life so far-every choice you made, every twist of fate along the way-was just a journey to get you to that person...
Perhaps soul mates don’t exist, I thought. Maybe they were only a way to get over a loss that couldn’t be forgotten, a way to mend a heart that was unredeemable—an aberrant remedy that dissolved long before the healing began. A way to love a nu...
If the ink of my writing morphed into ants, would they march along with my thoughts? Would they find my work as enjoyable as a picnic? If the answer is no, I wouldn’t hesitate to stomp all over my writing.
Just that dwelling and planning is bullshit, you dwell on the past, you can’t move forward. Spend too much time planning for the future and you just push yourself backwards, or you stay stagnant in the same place all your life. Live in the moment, ...
Easy climb, Kurokuma. You do it easily.' 'Not on your life,' Horace said... 'That's what we have Rangers for. They climb up sheer rock walls and crawl along narrow, slippery ledges. I'm a trained warrior, and I'm far to valuable to risk such shenanig...
The scientist would look at a sphere, measure the surface in great detail, categorize the skin qualities and components, then predict evolving surface tensions and potentials. The use of that sphere, however, along with its beauty and potential would...
Chris, soap people are like us-they seldom go outdoors. And when they do, we only hear about it, never see it. They loll about in living rooms, bedrooms, sit in the kitchens and sip coffee or stand up and drink martinis-but never, never go outside be...
I was at a dinner party many years ago,sitting along from Tom Stoppard, who in those days smoked not just between courses,but between mouthfuls. An American woman watched in disbelief. "And you so intelligent!" "Excuse me?" said tom "Knowing those th...
Lately Kevin has been bothering himself with the idea that nothing is certain, nothing can be proven. Not one thing, not in all the world. The sun will rise tomorrow. The sun rose this morning. The sun is in the sky. There's a sun at all. The world i...
Every day we make our way through a moral forest, along pathways ever branching. Often we get lost. When the array of paths before us is so perplexing that we can't make a choice, or won't, we can hope that we will be given a sign to guide us. A reli...
First, our enemies were the natives, then they were the Nazis, then after a while it was the communists. Finally, at the pinnacle of what we’re calling civilization, our enemies are the Islamic terrorists. Our enemies seem to change over the course...
I used to believe, although I don't now, that growing and growing up are analogous, that both are inevitable and uncontrollable processes. Now it seems to me that growing up is governed by the will, that one can choose to become an adult, but only at...
Tears blurred her vision as she leaned over him. His mouth was surely made for smiling. For laughing. For kissing. Grief welled up along with the feeling that he might never do any of those things again. She closed her eyes and pressed her lips to hi...
Some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat. In our mad rush for progress and modern improvements let's be sure we take along with us all the old-fashioned things worth while.
We live, I suppose, in the unconfessed hope that the rules will at some point be broken, along with the normal course of things and custom and history, and that this will happen to us, that we will experience it, that we — that is, I alone — will...
On hands and knees the figure comes pacing along beside the wall that flanks the patio, lithe, sinuous, knife in mouth perpendicular to its course. In moonlight and out of it, as each successive archway of the portico circles high above it, comes dow...
These Aussie girls are free to set their own courses in the world, to meander and experiment. Their travels are not bumps along the road - they are life itself. See the world and then come home and decide who you want to be in it, not the other way a...
Nick laughed and pet the Wangdoodle on the head. “Esperto, you silly boy,” he said to the Wangdoodle. “Usually, Esperto only transforms when I’m in danger,” Nick said to Elphaba. “But whenever he’s around Dymons, he loves to play along....
When one contemplates the streak of insanity running through human history, it appears highly probable that homo sapiens is a biological freak, the result of some remarkable mistake in the evolutionary process. The ancient doctrine of original sin, v...
You who understand what a human mind can be, how can you bear it? I don't have the hundredth part of your mind and there are days when I think I'll go mad. I can feel it. Or hear it. It's more like hearing something creeping along the walls, just beh...
