But I loved the library simply because it was a library. I love libraries. I like reading, but I love libraries. Being surrounded by books makes me feel safe, the way some people need trees or mountains around them to feel secure. Not me – nature�...
Which epitaph would you choose for your grave-stone: "He made lots of money." or "He saved the Earth"? And don't think I'm being sarcastic, because for once, I'm not. We're all going to die. What will be your legacy? Smaug-loads of money? or Saving t...
Helicopter parents. Before I started at Pirriwee Public, I thought it was an exaggeration, this thing about parents being overly involved with their kids. I mean, my mum and dad loved me, they were, like, interested in me when I was growing up in the...
Poseidon put his weathered hand on my shoulder. “Percy, lesser beings do many horrible things in the name of the gods. That does not mean we gods approve. The way our sons and daughters act in our names…well, it usually says more about than it do...
In trying to make the slave experience intimate, I hoped the sense of things being both under control and out of control would be persuasive throughout; that the order and quietitude of every day life would be violently disrupted by the chaos of the ...
At least a third of a woman's life is marked with aging; about a third of her body is made of fat. Both symbols are being transformed into operable condition-- women will only feel healthy if we are two thirds of the women we could be. How can an "id...
Yep,” I said, rolling the body onto its back and staring into the horrified, bloated face, “you’re a single-bagger. My kinda gal.” I gave her a smile and a friendly wink. The face stared back at me with that same frozen look of terror. “Oh,...
Were all first loves like that? Somehow she doubted it; even now it struck her as being more real than anything she'd ever known. Sometimes it saddened her to think that she'd never experience that kind of feeling again, but then life had a way of st...
All the authors I studied, all the historical figures, with the exception of George Washington Carver, and all those figures I looked upon as having importance were white men. I didn't mind that they were men, or even white men. What I did mind was t...
What good the prophet in the wilderness may do is incremental and personal. It's good for us to hear someone speak the irrational truth. It's good for us when, in spite of all of the sober, pragmatic, and even correct arguments that war is sometimes ...
Since poetry deals with the singular, not the general, it cannot - if it is good poetry - look at things of this earth other than as colorful, variegated, and exciting, and so, it cannot reduce life, with all its pain, horror, suffering, and ecstasy,...
Rather than there being two distinct and unambiguous categories of constrained and unconstrained (or tragic and utopian) visions of human nature, I think there is just one vision with a sliding scale. Let’s call this the Realistic Vision. If you be...
The hardware man had measured out the nails, offered his condolences, and then asked Bright if he'd considered signing up to go to the war...With his mother dead, there was nothing really to stay for. Bright had signed his name, listened wordlessly t...
The room fell silent. I frankly didn't know what I was going to do to help Eduardo, but I had the sense that he was right- no one else could help him, and without help, all that he'd done would crumble. Plus, I like being called his only hope. I felt...
Allowances can always be made for your friends to disagree with you. Disagreement, vehement disagreement, is healthy. Debate is impossible without it. Evil does not question itself, only hope questions itself. Even the incorruptible are corruptible i...
For anyone who feels lost in their own way, going back to who you are and what you love or moving forward to whoever you are meant to be or meant to love, is the purpose of being lost. We lose ourselves, so we can find out who we truly are. And when ...
It [being very rich] used to worry me, and I thought it wrong to have so many beautiful things when others had nothing. Now I realize that it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor. The poor have always been the favour...
Sometime we don't always what we want!" shouted Evie, not knowing herself. "That's life!"... The Captain, still looking at her, raised his eyebrows in surprise. He was proud of her for being brave enough to shout at (the villain), but he said softly ...
It's a great lesson about not being too precious about your writing. You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go. You can't be that kid stand...
Durzo cleared his throat. "I've got bad news... Life being unfair and all that..." "Oh, great. What is it?" [replied Kylar] "Luc Graesin? Kid you died on the wheel to save?" "It was more for Logan than for Luc, but what about Luc?" "Hanged himself," ...
...to be in a relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously. And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he can't accept who God is; a Being that is love. We learn that we are lovable or unlovabl...
