Why, of course, if the reader were smart enough, he could figure the whole thing through after just the first few pages! But in his heart Arthur knew that his readers didn't really want to win. They wanted to test their wits against the author at ful...
Because when I first saw you I thought─no, I knew─you were special. Because I still think that every time I look at you. Because I think you're smart and funny and brave. But most of all," he grins at me─ "because I like questions.
It always rains on the unloved-wet dreams-a fishing expedition-she kisses wyverns (the disneyland analogy)-dinner etiquette and chocolate lovers-desire swears by the first circle-"things are changing"-what can possibly go wrong?
The gospel truth of our time-space reality is that you absolutely can do, be, have, create or experience whatever we want—as long as you first decide that we're worthy of it. And that decision is yours alone.
You see, the catch about portrait painting— I've looked into the thing a bit— is that you can't start painting portraits till people come along and ask you to, and they won't come and ask you to until you've painted a lot first. This makes it kin...
See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it. And the very act of living is a tide: at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much...
Nine days after Perreault first saw the woman in black, an Indonesian mother of four came out of her tent long enough to claim that the mermaid had risen, fully-formed, from the very center of the quake. One of her boys, hearing this, said that he'd ...
As the demands of the positions differed, and as I grew in age and experience, I found that I had changed as a leader. I learned to ask myself two questions: First, what must the organization I command do and be? And second, how can I best command to...
There are two things in life you cannot choose. The first is your enemies; the second your family. Sometimes the difference between them is hard to see, but in the end time will show you that the cards you have been dealt could always have been worse...
Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply; and it must be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which...
You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for ...
Is it by chance that the 18th century of France, the century of the "philosophy of enlightenment," did not produce any poets except the Marquis de Sade, who -- despite his participation in the events of this epoch -- expressed the first violent prote...
What's the point of changing who you are in order to impress a woman, when your intention is to return to who you were, a person she was never attracted to in the first place?
I never heard back from her after our first date, so either she’s dead, or she rejected me. I wonder where her funeral was held.
I have developed a flavorless soup that’s indistinguishable from hot water. It’s the first soup to taste great frozen. Would you like some to go, in a thermos?
Wait!" What?" I lowered my cup hastily, wondering if maybe there was a stray hair, or worse, a newly boiled bug inside my cup. You got to smell it first. It's the proper way to cup coffee." Cup coffee?" Taste it." What? Are you the coffee police or s...
The ordinary man is aware of his surroundings, first, by naming and labelling them; second, by linking them with past memory of them; and third, by relating them to his own personal self. The illumined egoless man is simply aware of them, without any...
Believing is not the same as knowing. Believing is second-hand knowledge, whereas knowing is first-hand experience. When your action comes from a level of belief, there is fear, doubt and restlessness behind such action. When your action comes from a...
What I mean is, right from that first time, there was something in Tommy's manner that was tinged with sadness, that seemed to say: “Yes, we're doing this now and I'm glad we're doing it now. But what a pity we left it so late.
We cannot find Him unless we know we need Him. We forget this need when we take a self-sufficient pleasure in our own good works. The poor and helpless are the first to find Him, Who came to seek and to save that which was lost.
Some 1.2 billion people in the world still have too little to eat; the same number today suffer from being overweight…..For the first time in 100 years medical experts are predicting that life expectancy in developed countries will fall. Thanks to ...
