The man who came into the room did not look as though his name was, or could have ever been, Robinson. It might have been Demetrius, or Isaacstein, or Perenna - though not one or the other in particular. He was not definitely Jewish, nor definitely G...
I looked at my friend. I don’t know what I had done to deserve her friendship but she was always there for me. She was there before my whole world came crashing down, she was there after, and she would be there ‘til they laid us both in the groun...
It was early on in 1965 when I wrote some of my first poems. I sent a poem to 'Harper's' magazine because they paid a dollar a line. I had an eighteen-line poem, and just as I was putting it into the envelope, I stopped and decided to make it a thirt...
I used to wait for a sign, she said, before I did anything. Then one night I had a dream & an angel in black tights came to me & said, you can start any time now, & then I asked is this a sign? & the angel started laughing & I woke up. Now, I think t...
So when it came to role models, I looked at presidents' wives. Of course, you're talking about a farm girl who stood in the fields, dreaming, years ago, wishing she was that kind of person. But if I had been that kind of person, do you think I could ...
Interestingly, the word 'person' did not originally refer to the individual in the way we tend to use it today. Instead, 'person' came, via french, from the Latin word 'persona', which referred to the mask worn by tan actor to protray a particular ch...
When it came to love you had to know when to fight, and you had to know when to let go. I was letting go. I never wanted to look at him and hate him; but if I kept myself in this situation I would. I would hate him for never giving me what I wanted. ...
After he had fully determined that the young man was at the bottom of this state of affairs, and that it all came from him, he Jean Valjean, the regenerated man, the man who had laboured so much upon his soul, the man who had made so many efforts to ...
At a great distance appeared with the same pomp the sheep of Thebes, the dog of Bubastis, the cat of Phoebe, the crocodile of Arsinoe, the goat of Mendes, and all the inferior gods of Egypt, who came to pay homage to the great ox, to the mighty Apis,...
I believe, said Austerlitz, they know they have lost their way, since if you do not put them out again carefully they will stay where they are, never moving, until the last bath is out of their bodies, and indeed they will remain in the place where t...
n sooth, I know not why I am so sad: It wearies me; you say it wearies you; But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn; And such a want-wit sadness makes of me, That I have much ado to kno...
God ultimately raises up leaders for one primary reason: His glory. He shows His power in our weakness. He demonstrates His wisdom in our folly. We are all like a turtle on a fence post. If you walk by a fence post and see a turtle on top of it, then...
No sooner was I safely among the gravestones than a great feeling of warmth and calm contentment came sweeping over me. Life among the dead. This was where I was meant to be! What a revelation! And what a place to have it! I could succeed at whatever...
It is almost impossible to express the extraordinary silence that came over everyone whose eyes were fixed on the painting––not a rustle, not a sound; and the painting meanwhile appeared loftier and loftier with every minute; brightly and wonderf...
Petunia only ever went to the doctor reluctantly, and her motive in doing so was always the same: she did it in order to feel less anxious about things. The doctor was supposed to make the worry go away; she did quite enough worrying without actually...
...In Paris she found Magnus, who was living in a garret apartment and paiting, an occupation for which he had no aptitude whatsoever. He let her sleep on a mattress by the window, and in the night, when she woke up screaming for Will, he came and pu...
Very early on, near the beginning of my writing life, I came to believe that I had to seize on some object outside of literature. Writing as a sylistic exercise seemed barren to me. Poetry as the art of the word made me yawn. I also understood that I...
A circle is the only geometric shape defined by its centre. No chicken and egg about it, the centre came first, the circumference follows. The earth, by definition, has a centre. And only the fool that knows it can go wherever he pleases, knowing the...
To her own heart, which was shaped exactly like a valentine, there came a winglike palpitation, a delicate exigency, and all the fragrance of all the flowery springtime love affairs that ever were seemed waiting for them in the whisky bottle. To ming...
I’d do almost anything for you,” Simon said quietly. “I’d die for you. You know that. But would I kill someone else, someone innocent? What about a lot of innocent lives? What about the whole world? Is it really love to tell someone that if i...
None of us really has any idea how many lives we touch or what impact we have on those lives. In most cases, we will never get to see what difference we made, but living out loud isn’t about noticing the results. It is about doing what we came here...
