Will any of those men under you ever really understand all this? They're professional cynics, and it's too late for them. Why do you want to go back with them? So you can keep up with the Joneses? To buy a gyro just like the Smith has? To listen to m...
I memorized all of “John Carter” and “Tarzan,” and sat on my grandparents’ front lawn repeating the stories to anyone who would sit and listen. I would go out to that lawn on summer nights and reach up to the red light of Mars and say, “T...
Straight lines go too quickly to appreciate the pleasures of the journey. They rush straight to their target and then die in the very moment of their triumph without having thought, loved, suffered or enjoyed themselves. Broken lines do not know what...
I don't do formal debates, because formal debates where you have two people up on a stage in equal status, and each of them is given 20 minutes to give their point of view, and then 10 minutes for a rebuttal, or whatever, that creates the illusion th...
The Doctor: Rose... before I go, I just want to tell you: you were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And do you know what? [Pause] So was I! [The TARDIS lights up with energy as the Doctor regenerates into his tenth incarnation.] The Tenth Doctor: Hel...
How quickly we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story "Nightfall," about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove people mad. We who can see the stars e...
I'm always amazed by those people who get up at 5 and write till 8 and then eat a peach and walk their canary and write two hours more and then are free to collect firewood for the rest of the afternoon. Because I just walk around thinking about play...
If you don't know what you want, you'll never find it. If you don't know what you deserve, you'll always settle for less. You will wander aimlessly, uncomfortably numb in your comfort zone, wondering how life has ended up here. Life starts now, live,...
Maybe if I'd agreed to do the debutante thing like she wanted. Or taken up pageants instead of riding jump bikes with a bunch of grungy boys. I'd always tell her, why can't I do both? Who says you have to be either smart or pretty, or into girly stuf...
When discouraged some people will give up, give in or give out far too early. They blame their problems on difficult situations, unreasonable people or their own inabilities. When discouraged other people will push back that first impulse to quit, pu...
But beware of this about callings: they may not lead us where we intended to go or even where we want to go. If we choose to follow, we may have to be willing to let go of the life we already planned and accept whatever is waiting for us. And if the ...
But in that moment, I didn’t want to be trusted. I wanted something far more primal. I stretched up on my tiptoes and leaned in. I closed my eyes as his scent overcame me. When his lips touched mine it felt as if he’d caressed them with a feather...
It's sad that in a world of billions, people can still feel isolated and alone. Sometimes all it takes to brighten up someone's day is a smile or kind word, or the generous actions of a complete stranger. Small things, the tiny details, these are the...
In 2008 I didn't take it all in enough. I was so wrapped up in just the competition that I missed what was going on around me. If I am given that opportunity again to go to the Olympics and be an athlete I want to take it all in because I feel like t...
War means fighting. The business of the soldier is to fight. Armies are not called out to dig trenches, to throw up breastworks, to live in camps, but to find the enemy and strike him; to invade his country, and do him all possible damage in the shor...
You know, small children take it as a matter of course that things will change every day and grown-ups understand that things change sooner or later and their job is to keep them from changing as long as possible. It’s only kids in high school who ...
Wyatt avoided the petty gunfights and headed to a saloon and rigged up a bunch of Molotov cocktails. Her firebombs against members of Tom and Vik's posse had destroyed the scenario's promise of so many wonderful gun duels. She'd killed most of their ...
We're surrounded by people who don’t make that distinction. If you say to them ‘there’s a monster living in my closet, you can’t see him, but you gotta have faith that he’s there’ people would say ‘well that’s ridiculous, you’re out...
One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to show you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken. Then this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of this brand-new deck of cards and s...
He considered the hard times in his life. All the things he had been afraid of. All those years wasted, he told himself, because I was terrified of being different. That's why all us fifty-four-year-olds end up looking so much alike. All of us are te...
And the best, most redeeming, exciting thing I can imagine, from the smashed-up, broken place I've been, is that something beautiful could blossom out of the wreckage... This is what I know: God can make something beautiful out of anything, out of da...
