Genealogy becomes a mania, an obsessive struggle to penetrate the past and snatch meaning from an infinity of names. At some point the search becomes futile – there is nothing left to find, no meaning to be dredged out of old receipts, newspaper ar...
Not everyone is allotted the chance to become a personality; most remain types, and never experience the rigor of becoming an individual. But those who do so inevitably discover that these struggles bring them into conflict with the normal life of av...
The irreducible, ultimate element in religious faith is the insistence that we are created things; male and female He created them; without God we are nothing. And yet, when men and women have children and become parents, they unmistakably become cre...
In any relationship, there will be frightening spells in which your feelings of love dry up. And when that happens you must remember that the essence of marriage is that it is a covenant, a commitment, a promise of future love. So what do you do? You...
So many television marriages - that playing out of lives against a background of the tube. Instead of two lives filing the room, There are their two lives and the eleven o'clock news with Constant commercial interruption. Instead of what you say and ...
Sure I’m alone but I don’t feel lonely. Some people regard loneliness as a disease and to be honest, this is the first time in years I have been totally alone. No girl around to put my hand under her chin in the dead of night or feel her warm bre...
There is only one way: Go within. Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put it to this test: Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write? Above...
She was breathtaking in her beauty and her human spirit, he thought, unable to speak as he gazed upon her. Hers was the sort that would not fade or grow jaded with time and years, but flourish, grow more radiant with life and its experience. Hers was...
If you are never frightened, sir, you would never find out what you was made of and what you was capable of doing. You would never become a better man than what you started out being. P'raps this is what you will discover - what you are made of and w...
If you dont speak, they will know you know more than you're telling them. And if they know that, they'll find a way to get what you know out of you. Believe me, they'll get everything out, Willie. Don't have any qualms about it -- make your story goo...
We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the c...
Like an attack this melancholy comes from time to time. I don't know at what intervals, and slowly covers my sky with clouds. It begins with an unrest in the heart, with a premonition of anxiety, probably with my dreams at night. People, houses, colo...
All I know is that I've wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I'd get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don't want it anymore, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can t...
I used to pray you know, pray to God that He would somehow stop it. All the nights of listening to my mother scream and things breaking. Of holding my brother and sister and listening to them cry and begging me to stop it.' My voice is slow and stead...
If I am seeking to get identity from you ,I will watch you too closely, listen to you too intently, and need you to fundamentally. I will ride the roller coaster of your best and worst moments and everything in between. And because I am watching you ...
There are times when every act, no matter how private or unconscious, becomes political. Whom you live with, how you wear your hair, whether you marry, whether you insist that your child take piano lessons, what are the brand names on your shelf; all...
Value all relationships for the lessons they teach. Make sure you learn the lessons well. If not you will repeat those mistakes over and over. Focus on the kind of relationship you do want! Surround yourself with people who manifest those characteris...
But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. The large house in which we live demands that we transform this world-wide neighborhood into a world –...
If you want to know if someone was meant to be in your future, then remove all the worldly things about them from your mind. Don’t think about their looks, the intimate moments or their personality. Now, think about how they made you feel, how they...
I am amazed at the heart of man: It possesses the substance of wisdom as well as the opposites contrary to it ... for if hope arises in it, it is brought low by covetousness: and if covetousness is aroused in it, greed destroys it. If despair possess...
All love tends to become like that which it loves. God loved man; therefore He became man. For nine months her own body was the natural Eucharist, in which God shared communion with human life, thus preparing for that greater Eucharist when human lif...
