Henry's face went red in anger as he blustered at her audacity. It wasn't often anyone got the better of him, and Sin knew no woman had ever flummoxed him before. Not even Eleanor. "You are willing to declare war for him ?" Henry asked indignantly. S...
Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,' Holly advised him. 'That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the...
Suddenly, by the sort of violent effort with which one wrenches one's head away from the pillow in a nightmare, Winston succeeded in transferring his hatred from the face on the screen to the dark−haired girl behind him. Vivid, beautiful hallucinat...
This is the lesson of all great television commercials: They provide a slogan, a symbol or a focus that creates for viewers a comprehensive and compelling image of themselves. In the shift from party politics to television politics, the same goal is ...
Sincere and unspiteful laughter is mirth, but where is there any mirth in our time, and do people know how to be mirthful?... A man's mirth is a feature that gives away the whole man, from head to foot. Someone's character won't be cracked for a long...
I told her that I didn't want to take any drugs. That I had come here not to take drugs. "Listen," she said, not unkindly, "up until now I would say that ninety-nine percent of all the narcotics you have taken in your life you bought from guys you di...
I wouldn't live in a colony like that, myself, for a thousand dollars an hour. I wouldn't want it next door. I'm not too happy it's within ten miles. Why? Because their soft-headedness irritates me. Because their beautiful thinking ignores both histo...
Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent ...
I’d write and read and let myself, a little at a time, step down into myself- like a stairway down into a dark, intimate kiva- where the work of vigil is taking place, the necessary attending. I imagine there’s a little fire burning in there, a f...
One of the things I love about books is being able to define and condense certain portions of a character's life into chapters. It's intriguing, because you can't do this with real life. You can't just end a chapter, then skip the things you don't wa...
Is it true?" he said. "They're saying all down the train that Harry Potter's in this compartment. So it's you, is it?" "Yes," said Harry. He was looking at the other boys. Both of were thickset and looked like bodyguards. "Oh, this is Crabbe and this...
Great wealth can make a man no happier than moderate means, unless he has the luck to continue in propsperity to the end. Many very rich men have been unfortunate, and many with a modest competence have had good luck. The former are better off than t...
THE MYTH OF THE GOOD OL BOY AND THE NICE GAL The good of boy myth and the nice gal are a kind of social conformity myth. They create a real paradox when put together with the "rugged individual" part of the Success Myth. How can I be a rugged individ...
Jesus offered a single incentive to follow him; it was woven into all he said and did. Here is how I would after twenty-four years of following summarize his selling point: "Follow me, and you might be happy--or you might not. Follow me, and might be...
Occasionally, in the stillness of a taxi or an airplane, she would catalog the pleasures she had lost. Cigarettes. Chewing gum. Strong mint toothpaste. Any food with hard edges or sharp corners that could pierce or abrade the inside of her mouth: pot...
For while they'd stayed close during the absurd years of his sharp rise, having children had knocked it all into a different arrangement. The minute you had children you closed ranks. You didn't plan this in advance, but it happened. Families were li...
One example is the familiar parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), which in some ways might be better called the parable of the elder brother. For the point of the parable as a whole - a point frequently overlooked by Christian interpreters, in...
It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man-- that question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing at the present moment in these uprising times-- whether to follow uncritically the track he finds himself in, without co...
as i discovered, the path to sobriety is a precarious, complex journey. you obviously want to purge yourself of something that has been so destructive and has had such a grip on you. but in the deep recesses of your mind, you wonder if you will mourn...
WAIT, WAIT! JUST one more!” “Bliss, there are children waiting.” And they probably hated us, but I was just so glad to see her smiling that I didn’t care. “Yeah, well, they all just jumped on the bandwagon. Most of them weren’t alive when...
Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no...
