The older I get, the more I see there are these crevices in life where things fall in and you just can't reach them to pull them back out. So you can sit next to them and weep or you can get up and move forward. You have to stop worrying about who's ...
My father was a doctor,' she says, 'a very kind man. He died in the early '70s, relatively young.' She taps the cigarette packet on the table. 'Of lung cancer.' 'Oh.' 'But the thing about that is,' she says as she exhales, 'it doesn't take very long ...
But the greatest cause of verbicide is the fact that most people are obviously far more anxious to express their approval and disapproval of things than to describe them. Hence the tendency of words to become less descriptive and more evaluative; the...
To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true abo...
People talk about mainstream fiction and sf as though they were two quite different kinds of writing, and fantasy as well, as though it was quite different. But I think this a false distinction, that it is a labelling that helps librarians, and peopl...
Wizards don’t believe in gods. They didn’t deny their existence, of course. They just didn’t believe. It was nothing personal; they weren’t actually rude about it. Gods were a visible part of narrativium that made things work, that gave the w...
... she exclaimed, the innate respectability of the middle-class housewife rising impulsively to the surface through the acquired dilettantism of the 'light woman.' People who enjoyed 'picking-up' things, who admired poetry, despised sordid calculati...
Socrates himself said, 'One thing only I know, and this is that I know nothing.' Remember this statement, because it is an admission that is rare, even among philosophers. Moreover, it can be so dangerous to say in public that it can cost you your li...
You baffle me, addle me, drive me insane. You muddle, befuddle, and rattle my brain. My senses are mad, Skewed judgment to blame. You drive me half stark-raving bonkers! (But the truly crazy thing is how I love it.)
I believe the main purpose of life is to accept with gratitude what you've been blessed with so that you may use those gifts to mold yourself into the best person you can possibly be. Learning to discern things of true value from those of little or n...
They urge us to study our history that we might learn from past tragedies and errors. But sometimes I think it's actually a good thing that humanity so easily forgets. The haze that eventually claims old suffering often enables us to move on.
Things always appear clear and simple from behind glass. It is in the thick of tribulations that blurring details arise, complicating my life. You can't rightly judge me, nor can you assist, from a shielded viewpoint.
Throughout my life people have constantly told me to 'be careful', to 'take care' and to 'mind how I go'. They may just be figures of speech, but they always seem such stupid things to say to someone. I feel like saying "Thanks for the timely reminde...
He stepped off the pavement like a man jumping off a bridge, as calm as a swimmer with an ocean out below. Lucy had known what he was going to do the instant their eyes met. She'd know what he intended because she would have done the very same thing ...
And the bummer thing is, ghosts never leave. They might leave you alone sometimes, but they're always there deep down, whispering lies in your ear. They echo the lies others told you: That you're not smart enough; that you're not pretty; that you'll ...
I really can't handle talking about this for too long because it hurts too much, but I want to say that there is one thing I've learned about people they don't get that mean and nasty overnight. It's not human nature. If you give people enough time, ...
A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We...
My feeling toward Republicans is like my feeling about sharks: of course they're stupid and vicious. It's in their nature to be mindless, ravening killing machines. It's nothing personal. They don't know any better. Pretty much the only thing you can...
He turned to Edwin. "You know, the stuff you just told me makes more sense than all the weird things the counselors and psychologist have told me in school and at the detention center." Edwin tapped Cole's shoulder with the broken stick. "That's beca...
No matter how dark the room gets I can always see. It looks emptier when I put the lights on so I don't do it if I can help it. Brightness disagrees with me: it hurts my eyes, wastes electricity and encourages moths, all sorts of things. I sit in the...
It is good thing to learn the truth one's self. To first believe with all your heart, and then not to believe, is good too. It fattens the emotions and makes them to stretch. When as a woman life and people disappoint her, she will have had practice ...
