In the street below, a posh-looking drunk man is reading the card of a prostitute, Blue-Tacked up by a doorbell. He’s examining it with all the forensic care I presume he puts into reading a wine list. ‘What are you looking for?’ I ask him, in ...
Are you seeing Jesus yet? Eric the ayahuasca virgin asks me this morning over a late brunch at the Yellow Rose... We're trading visions like trading card stats, comparing our different curanderos and gossiping like schoolgirls while the street vendor...
These days, however, I am much calmer - since I realised that it’s technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism, you wouldn’t be allowed to have a debate on women’s place in society. You’d be too busy giving ...
Wes sat in a cracked vinyl booth picking at his fries and listening to Amanda go on and on about the dress she'd found. '...and it has these little lavender bows. Oh, Wes, I can't wait 'til you see it.' She gesticulated wildly, and her only saving gr...
He is quiet and small, he is black From his ears to the tip of his tail; He can creep through the tiniest crack He can walk on the narrowest rail. He can pick any card from a pack, He is equally cunning with dice; He is always deceiving you into beli...
I wonder of what you must daily endure in America, having no government to protect you, no one to tell you what to do. Is it true you're given no ration card, that you must find food for yourself? Is it true that you labor for no higher purpose than ...
I blame the Internet. Its inconsiderate inclusion of everything.Success is transparent and accessible, hanging down where it can tease but not touch us. We talk into these scratchy microphones and take extra photographs but I still feel like there ar...
A Manifesto for Introverts 1. There's a word for 'people who are in their heads too much': thinkers. 2. Solitude is a catalyst for innovation. 3. The next generation of quiet kids can and must be raised to know their own strengths. 4. Sometimes it he...
Pain has an odd way of expressing itself in the acts of business. No matter how many setbacks a leader might experience, there always seems to be a new opaque watermark of endurance testing, invisibly triggered for erratic combustion in each compound...
M. Gustave: How does one come by front row aisle seats for a first night at the Opera Toscana with one day's notice? How does one arrange a private viewing of the tapestry collection at the Royal Saxon Gallery? How does one secure a corner table at C...
Cutter: Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if...
Colter Stevens: Lily awoke in an evening dress and an opera cloak. In her hand were 5 playing cards. At some point today, you're gonna hear about a failed terrorist attack on a commuter train near Chicago. You and I kept that bomb from going off. If ...
[Dino shows Frawley a file on Desmond Elden] FBI S.A. Adam Frawley: Desmond Elden? Dino Ciampa: Yeah. Works at Vericom. Never seen the inside of a jail cell. Now, most of these guys get no-show jobs. They take the armored truck, foreman goes, "Yeah, ...
Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawingup at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through—and very good lists they were—very well chosen, and very ne...
He had been educated in no habits of application and concentration. The system which had addressed him in exactly the same manner as it had addressed hundreds of other boys, all varying in character and capacity, had enabled him to dash through his t...
It must not be thought, however, that in pagan Ireland Fairyland was altogether conceived as a Hades or place of the dead. We have already seen that in some of its types and aspects it was inherently nothing of the sort; as when, for example, it came...
As to the ancient historians, from to , we credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no further: for if we do, we must believe the two miracles which relates were performed by Vespasian, that of curing a lame man, and a blin...
There were many deficits in our swamp education, but Grandpa Sawtooth, to his credit, taught us the names of whole townships that had been forgotten underwater. Black pioneers, Creek Indians, moonshiners, women, 'disappeared' boy soldiers who deserte...
When you lay down a proposition which is forthwith controverted, it is of course optional with you to take up the cudgels in its defence. If you are deeply convinced of its truth, you will perhaps be content to leave it to take care of itself; or, at...
But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the pe...
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and bl...
