Love has an extreme capacity to offer everything we need but not without extreme pain. Anyone who tastes the sweet fruit -joy of love, deserves to taste the bitter fruit -pain of separation. Nobody should taste the bitter before the sweet. It means n...
Dying only means moving into a nicer house. We have only gone into the next room. We still are what we have always been. We aren’t far away. We are only on the other side of the pathway.
It had replayed in her mind, over and over, growing in importance till it seemed her whole life could be slotted into two categories. Life before the kiss, and life after the kiss. Her life before the kiss had moved step by step ever closer to the pr...
[N]o such thing as objective writing, . . . every inscription, every traveler's tale, every news account, every piece of technical writing, tells more about the author and his time than it does about the ostensible subject.
Existentialism is no mournful delectation but a humanist philosophy of action, effort, combat, and solidarity. Man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines say...
Outside the leaves on the trees constricted slightly; they were the deep done green of the beginning of autumn. It was a Sunday in September. There would only be four. The clouds were high and the swallows would be here for another month or so before...
I wanted to get away from him before he led me into talking, before he made me feel angry, or grieved, or jealous all over again. I did not want to feel anything for him, not desire, not resentment. I wanted to be cold to him, so I turned on my heel ...
This is a book. It is a book I found in a box. I found the box in the attic. The box was in the attic, under the eaves. The attic was hot and still. The air was stale with dust. The dust was from old pictures and books. The dust in the air was made u...
One can,' said Ernest 'remain unmoved before a cloud as before an automatic ticket machine. I don't like poetry, I don't like flowers, I don't like machines, I don't like sugar, I don't like pepper, I don't like what you like.' This was addressed to ...
Death cannot be struggled against, brother. It ever arrives, defiant of every hiding place, of every frantic attempt to escape. Death is every mortal's shadow, his true shadow, and time is its servant, spinning that shadow slowly round, until what st...
Broken by hardships, disappointments and tragedy, people can become discouraged and cynical. But lives can also be mended. Put back together well, they won't be just like they were before. Damaged pieces reassembled with a golden bonding of patience ...
I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness; the second is frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoi...
Ronald Reagan knew audiences. It was a key element of his political genius. One of the things at which brilliant politicians are better than mediocre ones is smelling new public concerns over the horizon before they are picked up by polls - before th...
My parents would frisk me before family events. Before weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, and what have you. Because if they didn't, then the book would be hidden inside some pocket or other and as soon as whatever it was got under way I'd be found in...
The heart is a repository of emotions--real, imagined, and invented, owned and borrowed, past, present, future--and there in your chest, operating at an average of 80 beats per minute at rest, is a heart that has stories to tell.
Ellie: "What was your favourite food before root beer floats were invented?" Will: "I dont know. Food was terrible before people started putting lots of chemicals and artifiacal flavours into it to make it taste better. I guess Ive always like carrot...
I imagine that's what it must have been like to ride the roller coaster back in the before time. One moment teetering at the top, the world laid out before you and the rush of life filling your lungs. . . and then the plummet. The lack of control. Th...
Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites...
Before the Wright brothers flew, flying was fantasy. Before the civil rights movement, people getting along together and the races being equal was a fantasy. Things change because we imagine a different world, a world that is not. And I think that im...
To me, it's all about saying "thank you" before you open the gift box. At times, the gift wrap is so beautiful, all I want to do is admire the craftsmanship before very carefully pulling back the tape to see what's inside. I think that pretty much de...
[Strap is continuing his prayer as the team gets ready to leave the locker room] Coach Norman Dale: Strap? [to another player] Coach Norman Dale: How long is he going to go on like this? Rade: I don't know. He'll come when he's ready, not before. Coa...
