Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call 'humble' nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is ...
A certain critic -- for such men, I regret to say, do exist -- made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained 'all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.' He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who mad...
Sometimes I feel she hasn't left...especially when I wear the photo charm necklace with her picture in it. I can't tell you how many young men have stared into that picture and the reaction is always the same: a slow beam rises across their faces and...
It reset and mended my freshly damaged and distorted view of life, and made me recognize that this thing we call music, this primal expression that we reshape and refine and define ourselves with, is the gift I was given. The ability to communicate w...
It’s day number six after Agatha broke up with me. I’ve taken over seven hundred pictures documenting my emotions as reflected by my facial expressions. I think the one that most accurately sums up how I feel is image number 389. I call it “Cer...
So when you’re nervous, you count?” “Not just when I’m nervous,” I said. “It’s… all the time. I count the seconds during pauses in conversations. I count the minutes when I’m waiting on something. Sometimes, when I’m kind of panic...
Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into...
The images start to darken and she feels another hunger well up in her, this one having to do with another kind of desire. The desire to feed, to possess, and the aggressive thrill of a predator capturing and killing its prey as it tears into unspoil...
If manifestations of her love are overwhelming and sometimes seem imprudent, it’s because the intensity of such caring doesn’t exist in other areas of life. Ma does not love from behind a protective shield. I’m incapable of opening up to people...
Every last minute of my life has been preordained and I'm sick and tired of it. How this feels is I'm just another task in God's daily planner: the Italian Renaissance penciled in for right after the Dark Ages. ... The Information Age is scheduled im...
I had a lot of Hell that God needed to squeeze out of me, and believe me, sometimes when the Hell leaves you it screams at God on the way out. And when the pain from your past leaves you, sometimes you have to feel it again on the way out. There's no...
I cannot talk of the power of want, of how much desire can do. I don't think it can be measured. I think is forgotten too quickly or dismissed as being worth far less than the other feelings -love, hate, envy. But to something ... To wish for it so m...
It is a strange thing, looking at the sea. When it is calm, or with only gentle ripples, it gives an impression of being soft and kind. But often, on such a calm, the wind suddenly blows, thrusting the water back into angry waves. At such times, in a...
Have you ever been in love, Alison?" He leaned in and draped his arm along the back of her chair. "I'm not talking about a crush or infatuation. I'm talking about where you'd do anything for someone. Can't stop thinking about them. Be there if they w...
The themes that exercised the minds of survivor movements and their allies within the health and welfare professions generated a political project: how to revolutionise medical and judicial approaches to injured adults and children, how to raise awar...
Cooking gives you the opportunity to meet the things you eat. You can touch each carrot or olive and get to know its smell and texture.You can feel its weight and notice its color and form. If it is going to become part of you, it seems worthy, at le...
There is an element of selfishness to this, I suppose. It feels pretty good to be able to so quickly help someone. That is, after all, one of the great emotional payoffs of medicine. That isn't to say that ECT is either a panacea or without flaws - b...
Peace requires something far more difficult than revenge or merely turning the other cheek; it requires empathizing with the fears and unmet needs that provide the impetus for people to attack each other. Being aware of these feelings and needs, peop...
Tucked inside the moments of this great sadness - this feeling of being punctured, scrambling and stricken - were also moments of the brightest, most swollen and logic shattering happiness I've ever experienced. One moment would be a wall of happines...
If you feel like a nearly-drowned rat that’s been dragged through the mud, all twisted up inside your mother’s borrowed, prized quilt, having been tossed about by gale force winds that managed to entangle you in barbed wire one-thousand miles fro...
I'm still trying to decide how I feel about the fact that you knew about this before I did." "Don't be disappointed," Jack said. "The fact that I've been ridiculously proud of you for days doesn't change how excited you should be about this. Besides,...
