Nothing will shake a man-or at any rate a man like me-out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he disco...
Wendy is still dead. I hadn't understood before: it really doesn't bring them back. Somehow, you think, despite what you know, it will be a trade. Find the person who did the wrong thing and they will suffer instead of the one who was killed. Instead...
It's been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such messa...
I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it--it, the physical act. I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not...
September had never been betrayed before. She did not even know what to call the feeling in her chest, so bitter and sour. Poor child. There is always a first time, and it is never the last time.
It was a cruel fate, Yet not so cruel as Mago's will be. I promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and the horse god and every god that lives. I swear by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with ...
I told you once before that there were two times for making big money, one in the up-building of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow money on the up-building, fast money in the crack-up. Remember my words. Perhaps they may be of use to y...
Why, when we regain consciousness, is it not an identity other than the one we had previously that is embodied in us? It is not clear what dictates the choice nor why, among the millions of human beings we might be, it is the being we were the day be...
Say you’ll marry me when I come back or, before God, I won’t go. I’ll stay around here and play a guitar under your window every night and sing at the top of my voice and compromise you, so you’ll have to marry me to save your reputation.
... what kind of life do we live if we let fear break us down? The truth is there will be tough times, we've certainly been through them before; but good things happen everyday. Great things. We just have to open our eyes and see them.
I was starting to see that what looks like garbage from one angle might be art from another. Maybe it did take a crisis to get to know yourself; maybe you needed to get whacked hard by life before you understood what you wanted out of it.
Everything will usually get worse before it gets better, but when it does get better...remember all who put you down and all who helped you up. Forgive but never forget. Let Karma take care of all the rest.
It sometimes entered Mr. Pontellier's mind to wonder if his wife were not growing a little unbalanced mentally. He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictit...
If we accept time for what it is, how it flows and how we flow with it, I doubt very much that we would continue wasting loads of it by constantly checking our watches. The gnomons's shadow falls where it falls - and so do we. Where we are now is whe...
A true leader is not meant to be greeted with unanimous praise by his people. A leader is meant to be questioned, to be suspect, to be hated. If he is not, then one can easily assume that either he has not challenged his abilities as a leader by maki...
A brick could be placed in the center of a silver platter, surrounded by leafy green garnishes to compliment the red of the brick, and frozen for the next time you have the in-laws over for dinner. I’d recommend eating before they arrive, because I...
I'm glad never had any children,' said Cousin Sarah. 'If they don't break your heart in one way they do it in another.' 'Isn't it better to have your heart broken than to have it wither up?' queried Valancy. 'Before it could be broken it must have fe...
For most digital-age writers, writing rewriting. We grope, cut, block, paste, and twitch, panning for gold onscreen by deleting bucketloads of crap. Our analog ancestors had to polish every line mentally before hammering it out mechanically. Rewrites...
Many people believe they know true darkness, but until it has been experienced it cannot be imagined. Without even a flicker of light, the mind begins to play tricks. There is a constant feeling that there is a wall before you, that you must stop. Th...
I had never been this mad at her before. It was one thing to be attacked by someone you hated, but this was something else. This was the kind of hurt that could only be inflicted by someone you loved, who you thought loved you. It was sort of like be...
Men and women who are lonely create. Those who are gregarious rarely do... Any poet would rather bed with a girl than write a poem about her. All art is the result of frustration. Art is energy deflected from its normal course in action.
