[Referring to passage by Alice Munro] Finally, the passage contradicts a form of bad advice often given young writers -- namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say, many great novelists combine "dramatic" showing with lo...
She's had a long life. Now she's going to the Lord." "Frankly it creeps me out a little when you say things like that," Simon said. "It shouldn't. If you don't like 'Lord,' pick another word. She's going home. She's going back to the party. Whatever ...
The most important thing I learnt on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have e...
A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims--these are lucky eventualites but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding famili...
When you have two people who love each other, are happy and gay and really good work is being done by one or both of them, people are drawn to them as surely as migrating birds are drawn at night to a powerful beacon. If the two people were as solidl...
Then Gai told me about the famous cup of the heart, which I should now begin to empty. The Sufis compare our spiritual heart, the seat of God within us, with a cup into which the love of God flows. This cup, however, needs to be emptied before it can...
We overcome the evil in the world by the charity and compassion of God, and in so doing we drive all evil out of our own hearts. The evil that is in us is more than moral. There is a psychological evil, the distortion caused by selfishness and sin. G...
The problem with romance is the occlusion. The tunnel vision, drawing your every gaze downstream, into those other eyes, the flotsam of your better self, your clearer self, along for the ride. It doesn't matter what secrets swirl and bob in the water...
Everybody was hoping for something, talking about our new life to come and all that they hoped from it. Fresh air, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Real gravity, instead of the fake kind that broke every now and then (even though no one over fifte...
You tell me that you sometimes view the dark side of your Diana, and there no doubt you discover many Spots which I rather wish were erased, than conceal'd from you. Do not judge by this, that your opinion is an indifferent thing to me, (were it so, ...
Maligant items don't have to be reminders of bad times, like a breakup or a health crisis. They can bring back memories of loved ones or high points in your life. But if these memories leave you feeling sad or feeling that your life isn't as good now...
I am above the forest region, amongst grand rocks & such a torrent as you see in Salvator Rosa's paintings vegetation all a scrub of rhodos. with Pines below me as thick & bad to get through as our Fuegian Fagi on the hill tops, & except the towering...
The myth that if you don't start early, you might as well not start, tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The music-making world that young people confront reminds me a lot of the world of school sports. After a lot of weeding out, in the end you'...
I stood beside the U-Haul, and I just watched her. I stared at her while she looked on with the saddest look in her eyes. I wanted to know what she was thinking about, what was going on in her head. What had mad her so sad? I wanted to hug her so bad...
He wished he understood where they come from: all the terrorists, religious revolutionists and hate-criminals. Did terrorizing entire communities of people help them sleep sound at night? Did it make them happy? Or are they just in for the attention?...
The Chorus Line: A Rope-Jumping Rhyme we are the maids the ones you killed the ones you failed we danced in air our bare feet twitched it was not fair with every goddess, queen, and bitch from there to here you scratched your itch we did much less th...
Too afraid to touch anything, I found sitting in the custom made indow cubby the safest place for me to be as I played games with raindrops. Rainy days made the time pass more quickly as I pretended I was the tiniest raindrop on its descent down the ...
So I suggested to Dimitri that maybe he should let me off this time. He laughed, and I was pretty sure it was at me and not with me. Rose Hathaway: "Why is that funny?” Dimitri Belikov: "Oh, You were serious.” Rose Hathaway: "Of course I was! Loo...
O Divine Poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various-minded man who, after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy, was made to stay grievously about the coasts of men, the sport of their customs, good an...
What I tried to make clear in Good Calories, Bad Calories was that nutrition and obesity research lost its way after the Second World War with the evaporation of the European community of scientists and physicians that did pioneering work in those di...
All my life, I thought I was this independent woman. I was on all the right committees, made speeches for all the right causes, traveled all over the world. I had my little part-time job, I made all my own decisions, but . . . there was always someon...
