All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, thou...
All writing problems are psychological problems. Blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. If you imagine the world listening, you'll never write a line. That's why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never...
We are the ones who take this thing called music and line it up with this thing called time. We are the ticking, we are the pulsing, we are underneath every part of this moment. And by making the moment our own, we are rendering it timeless. There is...
Once again the Scriptures are a lodestar, a benchmark, the plumb line steadies us and steers us clear of what is happening in the world and gives us a glimpse of history and politics, economics and daily experiences from God's point of view. Going ba...
He made a small sigh, as he swallowed the first blood, then his mouth closed over my earlobe, mouth working at the wound, tongue coaxing blood from the wound. He pressed his body the length of mine, one hand cupping my turned head, the other playing ...
It may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to usurpation on one side ...
Somehow it felt familiar, an old story retold, the claws in my shoulder, my arms twisted behind my back, the drag down the street, Will assisting my father and thinking how much fun it was to hunt someone down. I knew it all. Each snarled command was...
Unseen University was much bigger on the inside. Thousands of years as the leading establishment of practical magic in a world where dimensions were largely a matter of chance in any case had left it bulging in places where it shouldn't have places. ...
Marry me he said voice full of emotion. Be my soul mate my friend and my lover as long as we both live. Make babies with me that have curly hair and big brown eyes. Grow old with me and we'll watch the sun set together in the evenings. And when I lea...
Half asleep, he wondered whether that might not have been his happiest day ever, the last, perfect day swelling with the immensity of his secret intent, secret creation—the day before everything changed—the day before he realized, for the first t...
Percy," Apollo said, "I wouldn't worry too much. The last Great Prophecy about took almost seventy years to complete. This one may not even happen in your lifetime." I thought about the lines Rachel had spoken in that creepy voice: about storm and fi...
It was all very strange, Mr. Gray thought, as he wiped the coffee canister clean with a sponge. Very, very mysterious. You were born; you lived a whole life; and at the end, you wound up in a coffee canister. "Ah, well," he said out loud quietly. "Th...
But is it an honest living?" Alec persisted, clinging to his last shred of resolve. "Most of those who employ me are great lords or nobles." "It sounds like a pretty dangerous line of work," Alec remarked, aware that once again Seregil had side-stepp...
The book was in her lap; she had read no further. The power to change one’s life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that live in river water and enter the bodies of swimmers. She was exci...
I feel the same way. It doesn't make sense, and I can't understand it, but maybe emotions aren't supposed to make sense," I finally said. One the other line, Mickey blew out a deep breath. "Tomorrow, then." "Tomorrow," I agreed. Just when I thought h...
It's strange how things seem to come full circle. You know what I mean? I'm sure you do. The way your life seems to drift along with no set path, then something good happens to you and you can trace the line that brought you there back to a specific ...
Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be ab...
As the lines on the palm and forehead … turned darker and thicker, as he matured along the highs and lows of life-wave, the hazy and blurred phrases shook off the dust of time and dried the moisture of pain, thus being vivid like an image on a carv...
There were times when he felt as if he were being literally torn in two. Times when he raged at the injustice of what was happening to him, times when he was overwhelmed with guilt. There was no right and wrong anymore, which had been one of clear-cu...
It was a heavenly summer, the summer in which France fell and the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk. Leaves were never such an intense and iridescent green; sunlight glinted on flower-studded meadows as the Germans encircled the ...
And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten—since, in either case, other men and women will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now o...
