Fantasy writing must be grounded in both truth and life experience if it is to work. It can be as inventive and creative as the writer can make it, a whirlwind of images and plot twists, but it cannot be built on a foundation of air. The world must b...
Younger wizards in particular went about saying that is was time magic started to update its image and that they should all stop mucking about with bits of wax and bone and put the whole thing on a properly-organised basis, with research programmes a...
Tonight I saw myself in the dark window as the image of my father, whose life was spent like this, thinking of death, to the exclusion of other sensual matters, so in the end that life was easy to give up, since it contained nothing: even my mother's...
trust me, Anita, if you get dead, especially if he blames himself in any way, he will be a force of destruction looking for a place to be aimed. And he's blamed himself for introducing you to Olaf here from the get-go. If Olaf did to you what he's do...
We are Jesus Christ's; we belong to him. But even more, we are increasingly him. He moves in and commandeers our hands and feet, requisitions our minds and tongues. We sense his rearranging: debris into the divine, pig's ear into silk purse. He repur...
If man really is fashioned, more than anything else, in the image of God, then clearly it follows that there is nothing on earth so near to God as a human being. The conclusion is inescapable, that to be in the presence of even the meanest, lowest, m...
What is opportunity, and when does it knock? It never knocks. You can wait a whole lifetime, listening, hoping, and you will hear no knocking. None at all. You are opportunity, and you must knock on the door leading to your destiny. You prepare yours...
His gaze, blunted by the unnumbered procession of iron bars, uncounted as his softly padded steps. Smooth motion of blood and sinew turning in its own, small circle prescribed by bars and walls ...and skin, confined. Suddenly, without warning, a flas...
In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance ...
A novelist's job is almost to be a stupid as possible, except in the cunning moment when you need to structure something, when you need to be very intelligent indeed. The rest of the time, you need almost an empty mind, where you can let any image in...
The powerful do not understand hope. Hope is not part of their vocabulary. They speak in cold, dead words of national security, global markets, electoral strategy, staying on message, image and money...Those addicted to power, blinded by self-exaltat...
When I climb into my car, I enter my destination into a GPS device, whose spatial memory supplants my own. I have photographs to store the images I want to remember, books to store knowledge and now, thanks to Google, I rarely have to remember anythi...
Our key to greatness lies not in our ability to project ourselves to others as if we are putting ourselves onto a projector and creating an image of ourselves on a projector screen. Rather, our key to greatness lies in who we are which we can give to...
The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all. I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly awar...
At their best, religious and spiritual communities help us discover this pure and naked spiritual encounter. At their worst, they simply make us more ashamed, pressuring us to cover up more, pushing us to further enhance our image with the best desig...
Husbands and wives, recognize that in marriage you have become one flesh. If you live for your private pleasure at the expense of your spouse, you are living against yourself and destroying your joy. But if you devote yourself with all your heart to ...
So very offensive the gospel is, and of course, it's pointing out where I was so sure of being right but in fact was so very wrong! At first I turned so hard against it, but now I find myself so in love with it's blunt honest truth. We need more of t...
She The voices of your whisper The images of your memory The Music of your Laugh The Portrait of your Smile Are dancing on my Mind The Love The Warmth of your Breath The Sensation of your Touch The Presence of your Absence Are my desire The Knowledge...
Buddhism holds that everything is in constant flux. Thus the question is whether we are to accept change passively and be swept away by it or whether we are to take the lead and create positive changes on our own initiative. While conservatism and se...
I don't create my images as visual equations to be solved, but rather, i create them as internal landscapes that the viewer can explore. I enjoy sharing the why behind the what, of my creations... but my way, isn't the only way, to experience them. T...
[Maximus looks at images of his wife and son] Juba: Can they hear you? Maximus: Who? Juba: Your family. In the afterlife. Maximus: Oh yes. Juba: What do you say to them? Maximus: To my son - I tell him I will see him again soon. To keep his heels dow...
