Gandalf: Here lies the Last Homely House East of the Sea. Thorin Oakenshield: This was your plan all along - to seek refuge with our enemy? Gandalf: You have no enemies here, Thorin Oakenshield. The only ill will to be found in this valley is that wh...
Most people fail at whatever they attempt because of an undecided heart. Should I? Should I not? Go forward? Go back? Success requires the emotional balance of a committed heart. When confronted with a challenge, the committed heart will search for a...
With me, travelling is frankly a vice. The temptation to indulge in it is one which I find almost as hard to resist as the temptation to read promiscuously, omnivorously and without purpose. From time to time, it is true, I make a desperate resolutio...
Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important; it is s...
i am really colored & really sad sometimes & you hurt me more than i ever danced outta/ i am ready to die like a lily in the desert/ & i cdnt let you in on it cuz i didnt know/ here is what i have/ poems/ big thighs/ lil tits/ & so much love/ will yo...
True, [Gary Nolan] might not strike fear into the hearts of all you free-swinging power hitters out there—at least not in the same way as, say, Tom Seaver … but without question he was one of the most talented pitchers in baseball during the Big ...
Why do you talk all the time?” I asked. It was a rhetorical question, but she cocked her head on one side and considered it carefully. “I think it’s ’cause I don’t know any big words, like you and Mummy,” she said, just in time to pull me...
A demonstrative and convincing proof that an acid does consist of pointed parts is, that not only all acid salts do Crystallize into edges, but all Dissolutions of different things, caused by acid liquors, do assume this figure in their Crystallizati...
I was struck - not for the first time in my years of travel - by how isolating contemporary American society can seem by comparison. Where I came from, we have shriveled down the notion of what constitutes 'a family unit' to such a tiny scale that it...
There's such a big difference between being dead and alive, I told myself, the greatest gift that anyone can give anyone else is life. And the greatest sin a person can do to another is to take away that life. Next to that, all the rules and religion...
Words tend to last a big longer than things, but eventually they fade too, along with the pictures they once evoked. Entire categories of objects disappear - flowerpots, for example, or cigarette filters, or rubber bands - and for a time you will be ...
Quote from my book DIVINE INTERRUPTIONS: A BIBLE STUDY THROUGH THE BOOK OF JOB. Available on Amazon. "LIFE lessons are so challenging! God never promised us an easy life, but it’s not all darkness and suffering. We have a choice to see things with ...
Some people's lives seem to flow in a narrative; mine had many stops and starts. That's what trauma does. It interrupts the plot. You can't process it because it doesn't fit with what came before or what comes afterward. A friend of mine, a soldier, ...
Funding for the Special Operations Network comes directly from the government. Most work is centralized, but all of the SpecOps divisions have local representatives to keep a watchful eye on any provincial problems. They are administered by local com...
Right, I totally forgot. I can’t wait to taste the flummery.” “I’m not sure if I want to know what that is,” Manning said. “It’s a sort of jelly, but made into a mold that is shaped like a castle or a tower or just a”—Debbie Mae wig...
The big, burly oaf offended my girl, so without hesitation I rushed to her defense. I did, however, make a few stops along the way, and by the time I got home and back, the dispute was settled and she had found another way home.
You know the saying a rolling stone gathers no moss? I'm the opposite. I've gathered too much, and when one thing happens, it brings up everything else that's ever been similar to it. I don't just feel things once and then move on. I fell them over a...
Sometimes I like to think I live with ghosts. Not from my past, but wispy bits of ideas and books that hang in the air like silk puppets. Sometimes I think I see my own ideas, floating around too, but they usually don't last that long. They're more l...
If “piracy means using the creative property of others without their permission- if “if value, then right” is true- then the history of the content industry is a history of piracy. Every important sector of “big media” today- film, records,...
There's a lot youdon't know, Sam. There's a lot I don't tell you. I know who I am. I know what I do, and what I am to this place.I know what I am to you, and how much you depend on me.You may be the symbol, and you may be the one everyone turns to wh...
He flashed the warmest smile I'd ever seen, and my heart felt comforted. Maybe D.J. saw my insecurities, my fears. Maybe he knew God still had a lot of work to do in my life before I'd be good girlfriend material. Or maybe, just maybe, he saw beyond ...
