To put it in a rather vulgar way, I had been dreaming about love in the firm belief that I could not be loved, but at the final stage I had substituted desire for love and felt a sort of relief. But in the end I had understood that desire itself dema...
I now want to examine a second major feature of Western civilization that derives from Christianity. This is what philosopher Charles Taylor calls the 'affirmation of ordinary life.' It is the simple idea that ordinary people are fallible, and yet th...
The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personal...
To be mad is to feel with excruciating intensity the sadness and joy of a time which has not arrived or has already been. And to protect their delicate vision of that other time, madmen will justify their condition with touching loyalty, and surround...
Almost immediately, I found the red door into the library. I opened it idly- and the breath stopped in my throat. It was the same room I remembered: the shelves, the lion-footed table, the white bass-relief of Clio. But now, tendrils of dark green iv...
JUST LISTEN “When your mind is quiet and you listen closely, you will hear the children weeping silently. If you can’t quite hear their cries, then listen with your eyes. These are the children of the streets, who have learned pain and suffering ...
I came into the room, which was half dark, and presently spotted Lord in the audience and realised that I was in for trouble at the last part of my speech dealing with the age of the earth, where my views conflicted with his. To my relief, fell fast ...
The hardcore drug addicts that I treat, are, without exception, people who have had extraordinarily difficult lives. The commonality is childhood abuse. These people all enter life under extremely adverse circumstances. Not only did they not get what...
Some days you get up and you already know that things aren't going to go well. They're the type of days when you should just give in, put your pajamas back on, make some hot chocolate and read comic books in bed with the covers up until the world loo...
This afternoon I sat at my window and alternately wrote at my new serial and watched a couple of dear, amusing, youngish maple-trees at the foot of the garden. They whispered secrets to each other all the afternoon. They would bend together and talk ...
Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grote...
Modern Romans insisted that there was only one god, a notion that struck Alobar as comically simplistic. Worse, this Semitic deity was reputed to be jealous (what was there to be jealous of if there were no other gods?), vindictive, and altogether fo...
It was never a good idea to laugh at a God as powerful as Hades. Although, the sight of him with cream-colored paint smeared in his raven dark hair and smudged on his nose was comical. "Already went that route. Me bedroom ended up a nasty shade of ch...
A gun I had been brought down by a gun. It was practically comical. Cheaters, I thought. I’d spent my life focusing on hand to hand combat, learning to dodge fangs and powerful hands that could snap my neck. A gun? It was so… well, easy. Should I...
There's something about courting the darkness that makes some people see the truth in raw, twisted ways, as though they were shining a black light on life to illuminate the absurdity of it all. Comics tell you a truth you can only see from the unders...
Even bullying was important to Wonder Woman, and in Sensation Comics #23 she stopped a gang who were picking on a young boy, showed the head bully the error of his ways and learned about his home situation, spoke to his father about his abusive tende...
I spoke of the tragic illusion of perpetuity, but, no, my friends, it is a comic one. The ludicrous plot in which we are all trapped. The ancient Greeks referred to plot as mythos, attributing the random drift of human affairs to some sort of unknowa...
Juno MacGuff: [When Mark shows Juno one of his old comic books] "Most Fruitful Yuki"? What is... Oh my god, she's a pregnant superhero! Mark Loring: Isn't that great? I got it when I was in Japan with my band. She reminds me of you. Juno MacGuff: Wow...
Django: [Politely and gentleman-like] Cora, before you go, will you tell Miss Lara "goodbye"? Cora: [Quietly] Do what now? Django: I said, "Tell Miss Lara, goodbye!" Cora: Bye, Miss Lara! Django: [Django quickly shoots Miss Lara, who is comically blo...
Tommy Doyle: I don't like that story anymore. Laurie: I thought King Arthur was your favorite. Tommy Doyle: Not anymore. [takes a stack of comics from under the couch] Laurie: Why do you keep them under there? Tommy Doyle: Mom doesn't like me having ...
Antonio Salieri: [reflecting upon a Mozart score] On the page it looked nothing. The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse. Bassoons and basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it, an oboe. A single note, hanging t...
