You are my brother and I love you. I love you worshipping in your church, kneeling in your temple, and praying in your mosque. You and I and all are children of one religion, for the varied paths of religion are but the fingers of the loving hand of ...
...'undertow'. It describes (...) how underneath our own everyday lives - the shopping and squabbles and weeding and trips to the vet - there's a sense of being dragged slowly off, not against our will but regardless of it. And fighting the undertow,...
Once I heard my mother say that each of us lives in a separate universe, one we have dreamed into being. We love pople when their dream coincides with ours, the way two cutout designs laid one on top of the other might match. But dream worlds are not...
Laundry, liturgy and women's work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings.
For there are two reasons why human beings face danger calmly: they may have no experience of it, or they may have means to deal with it: thus when in danger at sea people may feel confident about what will happen either because they have no experien...
...[E]ven I know that being a parent is awful ninety-five percent of the time...As far as I can tell, it's that last five percent that keeps the human race from dying out. Four parts blinding terror, one part perfection. It's like mainlining heroin. ...
Being Adam Parrish was a complicated thing, a wonder of muscles and organs, synapses and nerves. He was a miracle of moving parts, a study in survival. The most important thing to Adam Parrish, though, had always been free will, the ability to be his...
The urge to let go of the wheel and just see what happens is compelling. If I live, I’ll wake to find myself in hospital. I won’t have to do anything, deal with anybody, talk, be scared anymore, because I will have become somebody else’s respon...
She had never been so affected by the idea of intimacy, but there was something about his eyes; something warm, and gentle even though she felt transparent every time he turned his attention on her; like he could see her, really see her. The idea of ...
I would think it odd, he said, that he had never married. I did not, in fact, think it at all odd--the statistical chances against any woman being prepared to endure both the hairiness of his legs and the tedium of his conversation seemed to be negli...
Orsino: For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won, Than women's are. ... For women are as roses, whose fair flow'r Being once display'd doth fall that very hour. Viola...
At the sound of my name, those two worlds on either side of me collide, and my lips meet his. Time ceases to exist, and so, apparently does any logic that my mind is hanging on to. Logic would say that this is insane; every other fibre of my being sa...
What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world ...
(On having being just proposed to) 'Have you been thinking of this for long?' she managed jerkily, praying for the shock to recede so that she could behave a little more normally. 'Let's say it crept up on me,' he suggested lightly. That didn't sound...
Understanding did not provide solace or make the pain go away; in many ways, understanding was just more salt in the emotional wound. Ignorance allowed one to fight back with unfettered cruelty. Understanding inspired empathy, which led to guilt, as ...
… it would even be inexact to say that I thought of those who read it as readers of my book. Because they were not, as I saw it, my readers. More exactly they were readers of themselves, my book being a sort of magnifying glass … by which I could...
I want to see the king," I said, after explaining who I was. "Wonderful," said the ancient Nkumai who sat on a cushion near the corner pole of the house. "I'm glad for you." That was all, and apparently he meant to say no more. "Why are you so glad?"...
I made myself an “I Love Jennifer” jacket out of my old “I Love Jenn” jacket. Two girls, one continuous love. The I Love Jennifer is a little off-center, but then so am I. Better than being self-centered, as my clone would probably say.
Last year I built a Courage Machine, but I thought it might be noisy and was too afraid to turn it on. So I coated it with glue, covered it with cat hair, mounted it on my wall, and started claiming it was an exotic animal I killed on a Safari in Afr...
Being exhausted, yet keeping up the pursuit.' (Judges 8:4) Even after what I had said of wanting out, even after that humiliation, the physical exhaustion, the deep despair I felt, those words were my new marching orders. The next morning, I swung my...
Because your character is always full of ambition, the news of my being locked up must have been much harder on you than it was on me. When I was arrested, it was almost a relief to know that I could now experience what you were experiencing yourself...