Beauty is often spoken of as though it only stirs lust or admiration, but the most beautiful people are so in a way that makes them look like destiny or fate or meaning, the heroes of a remarkable story. Desire for them is in part a desire for a nobl...
He had been bored, that's all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen - and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen, even loveless slavery...
Even if the two lovers are mature and experienced people who know that broken hearts heal in the end and can clearly foresee that, if they once steeled themselves to go through the present agony of parting, they would almost certainly be happier ten ...
I propitiated the knife-wielding deities with presents of books. The gifts to them and the head of nursing were also meant to acknowledge that although people get paid to do their jobs, you cannot pay someone to do their job passionately and wholehea...
In this country, you look at a person, and you know them. It is the inside-out way the people of this country wear their soul. In their eyes you can find civilisations of honesty or sweeping fields of lies. It's taken some getting used to but now Asa...
Sometimes people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them,” I said. Isaac shot me a look. “Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That’s what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don’t you belie...
Up until the 20th century, traditional cultures (and this is still true of most cultures in the world) always believed that too high a view of yourself was the root cause of all the evil in the world...Our belief today--and it in deeply rooted in eve...
The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass and trees, but other people, has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or...
A penis is a penis, but a hard-on is more like a message you send to other people. It’s a desire, not a body part.” Brandt swiveled his chair around to face Donnelly, “‘It’s a desire, not a body part’? What kind of fucked-up angry feminis...
Everything 'happens'. People can 'do' nothing. From the time we are born to the time we die things happen, happen, happen, and we think we are doing. This is our normal state in life, and even the smallest possibility to do something comes only t...
A loose definition of the Tea Party might be fifteen million pissed-off white people sent chasing after Mexicans on Medicaid by the small handful of banks and investment companies who advertise on Fox and CNBC.
Often when we hear people speak about meditation, we hear about wisdom, we hear about knowledge. But what, actually, is the effect, what’s the use, of wisdom or knowledge? Understanding. When you understand mind, you’re not at its mercy. When you...
I also have no idea how to be a girlfriend. I love sleeping alone and I avoid sick people at all costs. I don't even cook for myself, so I need someone who appreciates a lovingly baked frozen pizza.
I mean, think about [the phrase 'love the sinner, hate the sin.'] Isn't it like saying, 'I love left-handed people but hate that they're left-handed.' Is that really love? Or is that saying, 'I'm willing to love you as I'd like you to be, not as you ...
You can't go through life striking out at people who hurt or scare you. All that does is show them that you're weak. It tells them that they've wounded you, and a strong woman never shows her wounds unless it serves a purpose.
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriou...
Isaac Asimov's remark about the infantilism of pseudoscience is just as applicable to religion: 'Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold.' It is astonishing, moreover, how many peopl...
Writers (my kind of writers: aspiring novelists, ruminative thinkers, people whose brains don't work quick enough to blog or link or tweet, basically old, stubborn blowhards) were through. We were like women's hat makers or buggy-whip manufacturers: ...
I've shepherded a good many people through their lives, I've baptized babies by the hundred, and all that time I have felt as though a great part of life was closed to me. Your mother says I was like Abraham. But I had no old wife and no promise of a...
As long as they killed people with conventional rather than nuclear weapons, they were praised as humanitarian statesmen. As long as they did not use nuclear weapons, it appeared, nobody was going to give the right name to all the killing that had be...
I don't think I really saw people except as appendages to my needs. It's only now, looking back, that I understand, but at the time I lived in a brilliantly lit haze, shifting and flickering according to my changing desires. Of course, that is only a...
