It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die before him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had outlived her husband. Besides, wives should live longer than husbands. Women were more complete inside themselves. They were also better at living in...
Too many people are too angry about language too much of the time. This time could be better spent listening, learning, and enjoying the vast variety of human language around them.
we are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. as we were. as we are no longer. as we will on...
...each reader creates his own film inside his head, gives faces to the characters, constructs every scene, hears the voices, smells the smells. ...whenever a reader goes to see a film based on a novel that he likes, he leaves a feeling disappointed,...
Every man, every woman who has to take up the service of government, must ask themselves two questions: 'Do I love my people in order to serve them better? Am I humble and do I listen to everybody, to diverse opinions in order to choose the best path...
I think the best thing we can do is sell that idea of smaller government - of fiscal responsibility vs. the Obama record. Obama made promises, and on every promise in which he's actually delivered, things have gotten worse instead of better. He said ...
What I’ve always insisted on from myself is to do as well as I could, and keep doing better until I’m at least competent. Long ago I learned that to achieve anything, one must start where one stands. Or spend eternity waiting for the right moment...
No book is really worth reading at the age of 10 which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of 50 – except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have be...
The Three Kinds of Pride are: (1) thinking I am better than the other(s); (2) thinking I am worse than the other(s); and (3) thinking I am just as good as the other(s).
I've always felt that, when I looked at my tombstone, it shouldn't say, 'Mehmet Oz banged out 10,000 open-heart operations.' I've probably done 5,000. Am I any better at it than 10,000? He shook his head. It's just a different number on the tombstone...
Be careful, fathers, when you inordinately desire things to be better for your children than they were for you. Do not, however unintentionally, make things worse by removing the requirement for reasonable work as part of their experience, thereby in...
I talk as I sketch, too, in order to keep their minds off what I'm doing so I'll get the most natural expression I can from them. Also, the talking helps to size up the subject's personality, so I can figure out better how to portray him.
As a rule of thumb, I'd say one cliché per [Romance]--and then be damn sure you can make it work. But if you're going to try to write the virginal amnesiac twin disguised as a boy mistaken for the mother (or father depending how well the disguise wo...
When you're living your life in endurance mode, you don't expect anything good to happen. I'm not saying that you don't dream about some miracle that would change everything for the better. But you pretty much know it's only a fantasy, and that you h...
If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn't pass it around. Wouldn't be doing anybody a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble. That's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say, meet it as a friend,...
How much more of the mosque, of prayer and fasting? Better go drunk and begging round the taverns. Khayyam, drink wine, for soon this clay of yours Will make a cup, bowl, one day a jar. When once you hear the roses are in bloom, Then is the time, my ...
My father would never have said about any of his children you shouldn't express your opinions. But it's the way in which you express them. And for me to do - to speak at demonstrations and be as strident as I was now I see wasn't right. And it - ther...
The truth is that Trout, like Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury and many others, writes parables. These are set in frames which have become called, for no good reason, science fiction. A better generic term would be 'future fairy tales'. And even this is obj...
There is nothing I like better than conversing with aged men. For I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire whether the way is smooth and easy or rugged and difficult. Is life harder...
The best way to get kids to read a book is to say: 'This book is not appropriate for your age, and it has all sorts of horrible things in it like sex and death and some really big and complicated ideas, and you’re better off not touching it until y...
The Brer Rabbit ploy has been quite effective for me. When a country is talking about prosecuting me, I demand to be charged and put on trial and offer to pay my own airfare. They know that I'm going to bring a lot of international media with me and ...
