This is the essence of Rembrandt's advice to Van Hoogstraten: the authentic craft develops naturally from one's own experience. So, it seems reasonable to suggest that the search should not be for the lost secrets, but for one's own practice. This is...
I'm pretty sure my parents are pretending they are sick. I know because I taught them both to do that little trick. You blow your nose and hold your head and claim your brain is breaking. And so, a pro like me would know my folks are clearly faking. ...
I carried this problem around in my head basically the whole time. I would wake up with it first thing in the morning, I would be thinking about it all day, and I would be thinking about it when I went to sleep. Without distraction I would have the s...
Not once not twice but at least a dozen times i have advanced an idea to people who thought i was either dreaming , imagining the impossible or just in over my head. When the birth of a rare idea lives to see the light of day it is astounding . I hav...
You’re too important to just … die.” He shakes his head. He won’t even look at me—his eyes keep shifting across my face, to the wall behind me or the ceiling above me, to everything but me. I am too stunned to be angry. “I’m not importa...
We can distinguish three groups of scientific men. In the first and very small group we have the men who discover fundamental relations. Among these are van't Hoff, Arrhenius and Nernst. In the second group we have the men who do not make the great d...
Perhaps the perusal of such works may, without injustice, be compared with the use of opiates, baneful, when habitually and constantly resorted to, but of most blessed power in those moments of pain and of langour, when the whole head is sore, and th...
Isn’t it amazing, amazing, amazing that something so specific can be so resonant? These are the filaments, filaments, filaments from that Walt Whitman poem. It makes me think that the thoughts that I have in my head that make me feel the most lonel...
That’s exactly what I’ll do, I thought to myself. After dinner, I’m going to ask Big Brother to teach me how to read this map. With Aunt Baba still in Tianjin, there’s obviously nobody looking out for me. I’ll just have to find my own way.
But you don't have to fit in to be okay. Believe me! I am the not-fitting-in world expert. I have in maybe five different countries so far. I am homelandless. I even make mistakes when I speak Bulgarian. But it's not big deal, not really. It's not th...
October 1976 was the penultimate performance of Bench’s Hall of Fame career. All the early success and awards and accolades thrown in his direction had prepared him for this moment—when the Big Red Machine became a dynasty by defending it’s Wor...
He sent Eliza a small smile before turning to Lawrence. "What say you and I return to the hotel for a bit? I need to check on my daughter, and you need some time away from my sister." Not giving Lawrence an opportunity to reply, Grayson took him by t...
Are the great spiritual teachings really advocating that we fight evil because we are on the side of light, the side of peace? Are they telling us to fight against that other 'undesirable' side, the bad and the black. That is a big question. If there...
I'm afraid that we all make mistakes. One of the things that defines our character is how we handle mistakes. If we lie about having made a mistake, then it can't be corrected and it festers. On the other hand, if we give up just because we made a mi...
I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the d...
But how can you walk away from something and still come back to it?" "Easy," said the cat. "Think of somebody walking around the world. You start out walking away from something and end up coming back to it." "Small world," said Coraline. "It's big e...
I can believe whatever I want to believe. Who's to prove me wrong this side of the big dirt nap? Doesn't matter, either, what anyone believes. Or whether anyone else believes what believe. The important thing is to believe. Really, truly . That's why...
And what else could we have come here for, except to sense these tiny victories? Not the big victories that crush and kill the victor. Not the wars and civil ructions, but the saving grace of a Hollandaise sauce that has escaped all the possibilities...
I am Nom-O-Tron,' said the machine, in a big, boomy voice, so loud that Astra was afraid her mum and dad or some other grown-ups would hear and come to see who was sneaking a bedtime snack. 'Shhh!' she said. 'Have you got any biscuits?
Code is not like other how-computers-work books. It doesn't have big color illustrations of disk drives with arrows showing how the data sweeps into the computer. Code has no drawings of trains carrying a cargo of zeros and ones. Metaphors and simile...
They put spotlights on me standing there in the road in jeans and workclothes, with the big woeful rucksack a-back, and asked:-"Where are you going?" which is precisely what they asked me a year later under Television floodlights in New York, "Where ...