If you’ve come to see that the image you absorbed while growing up is not valid, and you launch out on a prefabricated Journey, you are most likely to simply replace it with another, fancier paradigm – the mind is that easily fooled by its own ba...
So I'm back again to the eternal question, the one that has plagued me all my life: How Do Other People Do It? How come they were given life's rule book and I missed out? Where was I when God was dispensing capability and cop on? Looking at shoes, pr...
Elend, my dearest Elend who brings a pile of books to each ball he attends and ignores everybody in favour of having a nice read. Elend who has to grow up rather suddenly in the face of the revolution he has read extensively about, but never thought ...
Shit is fucked up when it comes to appearances and women. We’re expected to be hot - but if we are, we’re vain and stupid. And if we’re not hot we’re useless. Kind of hard to get around. But we’re not stupid. We know that we’re doing dama...
Coveralls," I reply, and I know I'm no longer screening what's coming out of my mouth. He raises a eyebrow, amused yet again. "You wouldn't want to ruin your clothing." I gesture vaguely in the direction of his jeans. "I could always take them off." ...
When you have come to the edge of all that you know and are about to drop off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen,’ the Warmaster had told him. ‘And what are they?’ he had asked. ‘That there w...
I argue that even as the war is framed in certain ways to control and heighten affect in relation to the differential grievability of lives, so war has come to frame ways of thinking multiculturalism and debates on sexual freedom, issues largely cons...
Travel is the discovery of truth; an affirmation of the promise that human kind is far more beautiful than it is flawed. With each trip comes a new optimism that where there is despair and hardship, there are ideas and people just waiting to be energ...
Sometimes I worry about how attached I am to this dog. About the fact that the primary relationship of my life is with a canine. That at the end of a terrible day I look forward to nothing more than coming home and lying on the bed, under the covers,...
Some people are trapped by the belief that love comes in finite quantities, and that our kind of love exhausts the supply upon which they need to draw. I do not accept competitive models of love, only additive ones.
They have achieved a level of organization far beyond others of their species. Unfortunately, it is being used for destructive purposes at the moment. Don't look so surprised my dear, it's in the nature of the beast.' 'But these squirrels are not bea...
Having come to the conclusion that there was so much to do that she didn’t know where to start, Mrs Fowler decided not to start at all. She went to the library, took from the shelves and, returning to her wicker chair under the lime tree, settled d...
Well then," Roen said briskly, "are you sleeping?" "Yes." "Come now. A mother can tell when her son lies. Are you eating?" "No," Brigan said gravely. "I've not eaten in two months. It's a hunger strike to protest the spring flooding in the south." "G...
In this country, you look at a person, and you know them. It is the inside-out way the people of this country wear their soul. In their eyes you can find civilisations of honesty or sweeping fields of lies. It's taken some getting used to but now Asa...
What is it about stars that you love so much?” he asks. That answer comes quickly. “Because they’re infinite. They’re miracles, and anything is possible when you look out into the massive space that goes on and on.” Because I want that. I w...
Everything 'happens'. People can 'do' nothing. From the time we are born to the time we die things happen, happen, happen, and we think we are doing. This is our normal state in life, and even the smallest possibility to do something comes only t...
You can’t hold it in forever,” Colton said, apropos of nothing. “Yes, I can.” I had to. “You’ll go crazy. It’ll come out, one way or another.” “Better crazy than broken.” I wasn't sure where that came from, hadn't thought it or me...
Ain't that a sight? With all the things we know and learn, we still ain't touched the big mysteries -- where we come from, where we go next, why we even her. And when something truly miraculous happens, we run and hide in our caves. We deny.
It was such a strange tormenting feeling when your daemon was pulling at the link between you; part physical pain deep in the chest, part intense sadness and love. Everyone tested it when they were growing up: seeing how far they could pull apart, co...
We feel cold, but we don't mind it, because we will not come to harm. And if we wrapped up against the cold, we wouldn't feel other things, like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the aurora, or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight...
But doesn't add something to what has come before; but takes something away. At its most daring, it can feel like a Bat Turn, a 180-degree spin int the Batmobile. Make that a But Turn.
