Our task is to build cultural fortresses to protect our emerging nativeness. They must be strong enough to hold at bay the powers of consumerism, the powers of greed and envy and pride. One of the most effective ways for this to come about would be f...
The earl narrowed his eyes as he hopped off his bay gelding and surveyed the deep green expanse of lawn surrounding the ancestral home. The graceful house, built atop and around an ancient abbey, wore its centuries of accretion with aplomb, as if it ...
He had grown fat on solitude, he thought, and had learned to expect nothing from the day but at best a dull contentment. Sometimes the dullness came to the fore with a strange and insistent ache which he would entertain briefly, but learn to keep at ...
He looked, well, sturdier than he used to. His shoulders were square and, naturally, broader than before. His neck, a bit thicker. He probably had an Adam’s apple now too, like any man did. If he turned, would she see it starkly in profile, protrud...
With no sums to keep his conscience at bay, the black book loomed large, creeping into his line of sight. He scanned the room for something else to do. The harness still needed work. And he'd been meaning to fix that rickety shelf since last month. T...
I wrote the last sentence of in early April and stumbled out of my apartment and into the beautiful spring feeling panicked and amazed. There is no single experience in my life as a writer to match that moment, the blue of the sky and the breeze drif...
Above and about me all was space. The sky was hazy blue, and from this vantage point, I could see all the way down the Via Roma, at the far end of the forum, to the bay. Its waters sparkled invitingly and I slowed, feeling my amictus fluid with my mo...
Kisi ko apni zindagi k poshidah goshay dikha kar ye kehna k ' daikho men ne tm par aitabar kiya hai...meray aitabar ko totnay na daina' uske toheen aur tazleel karny k matradif hai...men samjhta hon k insan ya to kise par aitabar kary nahi...aur agr ...
Elsie's shop was a treasure chest, where green wellies and waxed jackets originated way before Hunter and Barbour became household names. If she did not have what you wanted, dearie, she would go up to her vast attic, root around and come down to ann...
Kaffee: Whoa. Hold it. We gotta take a boat? Barnes: Yes, sir. To get to the other side of the bay. Kaffee: Nobody said anything about a boat. Barnes: Is there a problem, sir? Kaffee: No, no problem. I'm just not that crazy about boats, that's all. G...
Galadriel: Mithrandir... why the Halfling? Gandalf: ...I don't know. Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I've found it is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keeps...
Waiter: [Hermione hides from Cormac at the Christmas party. Waiter offers hors d'oeuvres] Dragon tartare? Hermione Granger: No, thank you. Harry Potter: I'm fine. Waiter: Just as well. They give you terrible bad breath. Hermione Granger: On second th...
Regrets are particularly poignant for the old, those of us who have used up most of the chances we'll ever get and are left to make peace with our failed choices. Most things distance themselves with space and time to eventually slide off the edge of...
Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, I felt a door opening in me and I entered the clarity of early morning. One after another my former lives were departing, like ships, together with their sorrow. And the countries, cities, garde...
The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words HOME, CHRIST, ALE, MASTER, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, wi...
Fenella Doorn watched the unfamiliar wreck of a ship ghosting into her bay. Crippled by cannon fire, she thought. What else could do such damage? The foremast was blown away, as well as half the mainmast where a jury rig clung to the jagged stump, an...
Finally we came over a rise and I saw the Caribbean...My first feeling was a wild desire to drive a stake in the sand and claim the place for myself. The beach was white as salt, and cut off from the world by a ring of steep hills that faced the sea....
Snake's Lullaby Brother, sister, flick your tongue and taste the flakes of autumn sun. Use these last few hours of gold to travel, travel toward the cold. Before your coils grow stiff and dull, your heartbeat slows to winter's lull, seek the sink of ...
Mr. Parker: So what else happened today? Mother: Oh, nothing much. Ralphie had a fight? Mr. Parker: A fight? What kind of a fight? [Looks at Ralphie] Mother: Oh, you know how boys are. I gave him a talking to... [Looks at the news paper] Mother: Uh I...
Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. O, well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! O, well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat ...
For even now the drums were in our blood, we sat forward almost hearing them across the bay, and the van raced on through the streets so that the driver could hustle back for another load of pleasure-seekers, so bent on pleasure they were driving rig...