A hundred years from now, people will look back on us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be ...
Finnick and I sit for a long time in silence, watching the knots bloom and vanish, before I can ask, 'How do you bear it?' Finnick looks at me in disbelief. 'I don't, Katniss! Obviously, I don't. I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find ...
Two and a half years ago I’d learned to stop wanting comfort from the people around me, because they couldn’t give it. We were all too scared. I was terrified and so were they. No one could understand what was happening to me, and when they could...
Orlando had a Pinto, a car that hadn't been in existence for thirty-plus years. He still hadn't figured out why a strong, strapping werewolf would want one. Orlando said it was because he'd customized it. Painted pink with purple stripes, the younger...
Because I liked you better Than suits a man to say, It irked you, and I promised I'd throw the thought away. To put the world between us We parted stiff and dry: 'Farewell,' said you, 'forget me.' 'Fare well, I will,' said I. If e'er, where clover wh...
At length, when I considered it, I realized that the best of my actions were small things. Picking flowers and cooking food for my mother when she had been unwell, spending an afternoon with the children, sending money to my sister or kissing Henry�...
Look, sometimes it’s OK with girls like this, they wanna have fun, and sometimes it’s not because they've got a broken wing and they’re hurt and they’re an easy target. In this case, this particular case, I think that wing is being fixed, my ...
Since man always remains free and since his freedom is always fragile, the kingdom of good will never be definitively established in this world. Anyone who promises the better world that is guaranteed to last forever is making a false promise; he is ...
Hindsight, I think, is a useless tool. We, each of us, are at a place in our lives because of innumerable circumstances, and we, each of us, have a responsibility (if we do not like where we are) to move along life's road, to find a better path if th...
And there was never a better time to delve for pleasure in language than the sixteenth century, when novelty blew through English like a spring breeze. Some twelve thousand words, a phenomenal number, entered the language between 1500 and 1650, about...
Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war, Daniel. We all keep quiet and they try to convince us that what we've seen, what we've done, what we've learned about ourselves and about others, is an illusion, a passing nightmare. Wars have no memory, a...
With us, there were always too many false starts. I believe that what's meant to be usually has a way of working out... and with us, it never did. Call it timing, call it fate, call it what you want. It is what it is. Sometimes in the end, the girl d...
There are so many charlatans in the world of education. They teach for a couple of years, come up with a few clever slogans, build their websites, and hit the lecture circuit. In this fast-food-society, simple solutions to complex problems are embrac...
I also think pronunciation of a foreign tongue could be better taught than by demanding from the pupil those internal acrobatic feats that are generally impossible and always useless. This is the sort of instruction one recieves: 'Press your tonsils ...
It was as if he'd suddenly become intimately aware of the fragility of life and how precious time really was. As a result, he made a conscious effort to simplify his life, with the goal of eliminating unnecessary stress. No longer interested in socie...
Probably no single event highlights the strength of Campbell’s argument (on peak oil) better than the rapid development of the Alberta tar sands. Bitumen, the world’s ugliest and most expensive hydrocarbon, can never be a reasonable substitute fo...
I realized, listening to the silences that fell sometimes in my interview groups, that there are things that are sayable and unsayable about motherhood today. It is permissable, for example, to talk a lot about guilt, but not a lot about ambition. Yo...
Daydreaming does not enjoy tremendous prestige in our culture, which tends to regard it as unproductive thought. Writers perhaps appreciate its importance better than most, since a fair amount of what they call work consists of little more than daydr...
This is a paradise of rising to the occasion that points out by contrast how the rest of the time most of us fall down from the heights of possibility, down into diminished selves and dismal societies. Many now do not even hope for a better society, ...
There is nothing in the world so difficult as that task of making up one's mind. Who is there that has not longed that the power and privilege of selection among alternatives should be taken away from him in some important crisis of his life, and tha...
She had hit rock-bottom. She had given a blow job to a man who for all intents and purposes, was a bum. He had smelled so bad, she forced him to spray on some of the perfume she always carried in her purse. Her favorite perfume. After tonight, she wa...
