When your life feels like you're on a sailboat, with no wind to fill your sails, there are still choices. You can drop anchor and enjoy your surroundings. Start your motor, if you have one. Grab an oar and start paddling, or wait for the wind to fill...
When men evaluate each other as men, they still look for the same virtues that they’d need to keep the perimeter. Men respond to and admire the qualities that would make men useful and dependable in an emergency. Men have always had a role apart, a...
The street to my left was backed up with traffic and I watched the people waiting patiently in the cars. There was almost always a man and a women, staring straight ahead, not talking. It was, finally, for everyone, a matter of waiting. You waited an...
I’ll always be your friend,” he said. “Your best friend, if you let me. But I want to be your lover, too.” He groaned and shifted in his chair. “Soon. I want to be that soon.” Then a look came over him. “Oh Gina…I didn’t even court ...
Thank you father, thank you. I know you watched me from above and protected me. I promise I shall serve the Magnarian Confederation with all my body and soul. I shall dedicate myself fully to our confederation, the family that you so loved. And I lov...
If it weren't for me, she wouldn't have to take jobs like this. She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar. I felt my guilt like a brand.... I had seen girls clamor for new clothes and compla...
He’d only ever seen a gun once, a smaller one on the hip of that old deputy, a gun he’d always figured was more for show. He stuffed a fistful of deadly rounds in his pocket, thinking how each one could end an individual life, and understanding w...
Let's worry like mad. Shall we start on a worldwide basis and work down to ourselves, or start with ourselves and spread?" "I'm going to do me-and-Peter and that dead man." "All right. I'm just going to do a wee one about Bunny and then I'll join you...
When a man sees a dying animal, horror comes over him: that which he himself is, his essence, is obviously being annihilated before his eyes--is ceasing to be. But when the dying one is a person, and a beloved person, then, besides a sense of horror ...
First, no qualms. Not the thinnest sliver of misgiving about the value of his work. He was able to feel that the most important job in the world was putting over . In the second place, he was as uninhibited as a performing seal. He never questioned h...
I'm often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I'm running? I don't have a clue.
You always fed strays and bent down to talk to the dogs you met on the street, looking straight into their eyes as if they were old friends. (Maybe they are, you said. From another life.) You liked to go to the pound and look at them. You tried to se...
Dorian said, 'If you do the right thing twice, it will cost you your life. ' Blint said, 'There are things more valuable than life.' The count said, 'You can't pay for all you've done. But you aren't beyond redemption. There's always a way out. And i...
And let's just be honest, there is no such place called 'justice,' if by that we envision a finish line, or a point at which the battle is won and the need to continue the struggle over with. After all, even when you succeed in obtaining a measure of...
door I thought about life and how it resembled a ladder. Do you ever feel that way? Like life is one big uphill climb and there are always more people and circumstances tripping us and trying to pull us back down the ladder, while very, very few peop...
When I get this feeling, this compulsion, I always do what it tells me. I can't explain where it comes from or how I get it, and it doesn't happen very often. But I obey it. And this afternoon I had a feeling that I must come over to the haunted hous...
It had been so silent in the wake of that commotion, a kind of potent silence that seemed to contain everything. The songs of the birds and the creak of the trees. The dying snow and the unseen gurgling water. The glimmering sun. The certain sky. The...
Anita felt like she finally understood why love was symbolized by the grotesque pumping organ, always threatening to clog, or break, or attack. Because the heart was the body's engine, and love was an act of the body. Your mind could tell you who to ...
As Peter Berger has noted, the strategy of apologizing for Christian faith by trying to demonstrate its social utility is always eventually self-liquidating. Sooner of later people realize that a great many of the supposedly practical and secular ben...
In a nutshell, the process they [abusers in a ritual abuse group] use on survivors is designed to: break the will and personality of the person until they become as nothing... with no will of their own...no identity...then they... rebuild the person ...
She stood by the bed and stroked her father's hand, knowing how desperately afraid he must feel at this moment. He'd always prided himself on being the kind of man who could be counted on, a man to whom others looked for advice and support. Dependenc...
