There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all ou...
You should read something else." Why would he have done that to him?" I don't know," she said. Do you ever feel like Job?" She smiled, a little twinkle in her eyes. Sometimes." But you haven't lost your faith?" No," I knew she hadn't, but I think I w...
She had always thought that if only people could communicate mind-to-mind, eliminating the ambiguities of language, then understanding would be perfect and there'd be no more needless conflicts. Instead she had discovered that rather than magnifying ...
Books are better than television, the internet, or the computer for Books matter because they state ideas and then attempt to thoroughly prove them. They have an advantage allowing the reader to internalize, respond, react and transform. The ideas in...
When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe... that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas-- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in t...
What do you think of Cain’s affirmations?” “He never told a lie. If he says that God talks to him, he is convinced that God is talking to him.” “Do you believe he is a saint?” “God only knows, and never better said. He might be, but aga...
It [fiction] allows us to see the world from the point of view of someone else and there has been quite a lot of neurological research that shows reading novels is actually good for you. It embeds you in society and makes you think about other people...
When you look at what C.S. Lewis is saying, his message is so anti-life, so cruel, so unjust. The view that the Narnia books have for the material world is one of almost undisguised contempt. At one point, the old professor says, ‘It’s all in Pla...
(in response to the question: what do you think of e-books and Amazon’s Kindle?) Those aren’t books. You can’t hold a computer in your hand like you can a book. A computer does not smell. There are two perfumes to a book. If a book is new, it s...
Imagine yourself near the end of your life. You are relaxing in a rocking chair reflecting on the decision you presently want to make. As the older, wiser you thinks about the outcome of your choice, ask yourself three simple questions. 1. Did it cau...
The rewrites are a struggle right now. Sometimes I wish writing a book could just be easy for me at last. But when I think about it practically, I am glad it's a struggle. I am (as usual) attempting to write a book that's too hard for me. I'm telling...
Kindness is like a muscle, the more we exercise it the better we are at it. Kindness starts as a thought but ends as an action. Acting kindly toward others is the only real way to let people know we care about them and their happiness. Without action...
The whole point to New Years is not just to have a new year. But that we should be new, better and different people. That is why we exercise to RE-NEW our bodies. That is why we write GOALS to get a Renewed sense of our potential. That is why we make...
Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him. If the first wo...
History pays no heed to the unspectacular citizen who worked hard all day and walked at night to a humble home with dust on his tunic and his flat cap. But in the end the builders have had the better of it. The miracles they accomplished in stone are...
I used to hope that if I went to church long enough, all my inside weight would go away. That ain't right. Jesus may have come to take away our sins, but he left our feelings right where they've always been. I still have inside me some of what I've a...
I do so much writing. But so much of it never goes anywhere, never sees any light of day. I suppose that's like gardening in the basement. I don't publish so much of what I write. I just seem to plow it back into the soil of what I write after it, re...
We live in a world today that lacks loving-kindness and compassion for our fellow man and woman. As Gandhi so eloquently stated, "Be the change that you wish to see in the world." We need to strive to be better, to be the image of selflessness. Love ...
Wide reading is important. You don’t have to like it, but it’s important to grapple with things you don’t understand. I’ve been spending the last six months getting up an hour early to try to understand economics because I need to. I don’t ...
I'm with him because when I'm with him, I'm free to be me. I'm with him because he's hot. I'm with him because he lets me blather, since I'm prone to blathering, and he lets me rant when I have a bad day. I'm with him because when I rant, he makes me...
I also know that not everyone will like what I do, and that there are many people who do love my work, and so I write for them, and for my own pleasure, and try not to brood too much over those who have different tastes. And I have written enough boo...
