And I don't just mean that they change you. A lot of people can change you—the first kid who called you a name, the first teacher who said you were smart, the first person who crowned you best friend. It's the change you remember, the firsts and wh...
The person who believes the sum of his morality involves gay marriage and abortion alone, and neglects health care and world trade and the environment and loving his neighbor and feeding the poor is, by definition, a theological liberal, because he t...
Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and stre...
Life is a puzzle, a riddle, a test, a mystery, a game—whatever challenge you wish to compare it to. Just remember, you're not the only participant; no one person holds all the answers, the pieces, or the cards. The trick to success in this life is ...
No one is without troubles, without personal hardships and genuine challenges. That fact may not be obvious because most people don't advertise their woes and heartaches. But nobody, not even the purest heart, escapes life without suffering battl...
It's like a big circle. I've gone on a get-a-man crusade, but so far it's been a disaster and I'm feeling as bad about myself as I ever have. I know I'm a great person and all that, a good friend, but I feel like real bottom of the barrel girlfriend ...
You might find it alarming to think that your doctor will not actually need to see you in person but might make a diagnosis based on the position of the stars, the colour and smell of your urine, and the taste of your blood.
I blew that clay pigeon to smithereens. I don't know why Mum got so upset. According to Uncle Andrew she's a crack shot herself. But she says I'm too young. What I'd like to know is how old does a person have to be before they get to do all the fun s...
Nostalgia!" Miss Frost cried. "You´re nostalgic!" She repeated. "Just how old are you, William?" She asked. "Seventeen, " I told her. "Seventeen!" Miss Frost cried, as if she'd been stabbed. "Well, William Abbott, if you're nostalgic at seventeen, m...
According to my mother, I was a fiction writer before I'd written any ficton, by wich she meant not only that I invented things, or made things up, but that I prefered this kind of fantasising or pure imagining to what other people generally liked - ...
Any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person’s nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow...
I am personally optimistic. I share the widespread view that we are entering a new epoch during which we can achieve conscious evolution and the elevation of humanity to a constructive steward of the Earth.
It is of great significance if there is a person who truly prays in a family. Prayer attracts God's Grace and all the members of the family feel it, even those whose hearts have grown cold. Pray always.
Before New York, the cracks were already there, but now they began to split open and gape, and the difference between how a thing or a place or a person appears and the reality becomes alarmingly visible, garish.
Is being burnt a requisite for the making of art? Personally, I don't think it is. But art is poultice for a burn. It is a privilege to have, somewhere within you, a capacity for making something speak from your own seared experience.
I have long seen my spirituality as personal, to the degree that I harbor a slight mistrust for anyone who practices similarly. It is as though they are admitting to have on the same cut and color of underwear I do. It may be true, but I don't like t...
Do you know how hard it is to paint kindness?” She leaned her hip against a desk in the corner of the room, still watching me. “It’s the only part of a person I really want to capture. Everything else seems to get lost in layers of deception or...
To influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone e...
Maybe this is what it feels like for civilians when they see cops doing some of the dirty work. A lot of times they don’t understand what’s happening. They see something they don’t like and it upsets them—because they don’t have the full st...
First thought? I’d kissed you without knowing for sure that you were gay and it could have blown up in my face. Then, when it didn’t, I thought about kissing you again. After that I just wanted to be the person you could confide in and trust with...
Cole gets up and then says, “Adam. Five texts. I can read them to you.” He pauses. “Unless they’re personal.” I roll my eyes. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m pretty sure he’s desperately in love with my sister.” Cole ...
