Christian consciousness experiences itself in a curious sense as LIBERATED TO FAIL, without intolerable damage to self-esteem and without any reduction of moral seriousness. We are free to be inadequate, free to foul things up, and yet affirm ourselv...
Seconds later, the female security officer grabbed a pair of my father's shorts from the top of the duffel bag, and emptied out the contents of his pockets. A lighter, three nail files, a pocket wrench, a pair of pliers, a screwdriver, and a nectarin...
The Emperor, you see, protects... He protects mankind, through the Legions, through the Martial corps, through the war machines of the Mechanicum. He understands the dangers. The inconsistencies. He uses you, and all the instruments like you, to prot...
She knew it the way people say they know they are about to be hit by lightning, yet remain powerless to run, unable to avoid their fate. She panicked, as anyone might have when disparate parts of her life were about to crash into each other, certain ...
[the Ghostbusters exit the elevator. Dr. Egon Spengler charges his proton pack] Dr Ray Stantz: Come on. [Chambermaid enters Hallway/corridor from Hotel Room] Dr Ray Stantz: [Ray and Egon shout and blast her cart with proton beams] Dr. Peter Venkman: ...
Vincenzo Coccotti: Sicilians are great liars. The best in the world. I'm Sicilian. My father was the world heavy-weight champion of Sicilian liars. From growing up with him I learned the pantomime. There are seventeen different things a guy can do wh...
Black was the without eye Black the within tongue Black was the heart Black the liver, black the lungs Unable to suck in light Black the blood in its loud tunnel Black the bowels packed in furnace Black too the muscles Striving to pull out into the l...
And in a way, this was how he had come to see his death, as a series of small ones taking place over the course of his life and leading finally to the main event, which would be so anti-climatic, so undramatic (a sudden violent seizure in his long ab...
The proper stuff of fiction” does not exist everything is the proper stuff of fiction every feeling every thought every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon no perception comes amiss. And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and sta...
Only occasionally can you glimpse through the embrasures of an otherwise perfectly polite person to see the cannons aimed out, only in a certain glint of light do the eyeteeth become fangs. We are driven by desire and fear. Only in our solitary hunge...
O Lord, I have been talking to the people; Thought's wheels have round me whirled a fiery zone And the recoil of my word's airy ripple My heart unheedful has puffed up and blown. Therefore I cast myself before thee prone: Lay cool hands on my burning...
Dani had threatened to kill him. This must be the way she planned to do it. Her dark hair was down around her shoulders and she was wearing earrings that glittered in the sunlight. The purple dress she had on showed off her toned legs and hugged her ...
Bluestar blinked. "There are cats who would argue that there should never have been a fifth Clan in the forest at all. Why are there four oaks at Fourtrees, if not to stand for the four Clans?" Firestar gazed up at the massive oak trees, then back at...
This is your war now.' I despised myself for the cheesy sentiment, but what else did I have? 'Some war,' he said dismissively. 'What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They're made of me as...
Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so ins...
Our brains tread a tightrope between learning too much from the past and incorporating too much new information from the present. The ability to walk this line – to adjust to the demands of different environments and modalities – is one of human ...
My brain is so busy with Nick thoughts, it’s a swarm inside my head: Nicknicknicknicknick! And when I picture his mind, I hear my name as a shy crystal ping that occurs once, maybe twice, a day and quickly subsides. I just wish he thought about me ...
A person cannot direct his emotional life in the way he bids his motor system to reach for a cup. He cannot will himself to want the right thing or to love the right person or to be happy after a disappointment, or even to be happy in happy times. Pe...
What made marriage so difficult back then was yet again that instigator of so many other sorts of heartbreak: the oversize brain. That cumbersome computer could hold so many contradictory opinions on so many different subjects all at once, and switch...
The blazing sun beat down on the concrete of the museum's front yard- Reverend Ryu Yosop felt as if the heat were sucking up all the moisture in his brain and heart. What different colors he and his brother Yohan must have used as each of them painte...
The part of the brain most affected by early stress is the prefrontal cortex, which is critical in self-regulatory activities of all kinds, both emotional and cognitive. As a result, children who grow up in stressful environments generally find it ha...
