John had written that normal fantasy ("normal" in the T.S. Kuhn sense) was written for the moderately educated class from suffering ennui. It was for folks stuck doing dull, repetitive work, growing old while not getting laid half often or variously ...
He could pass off the inferior bottles on tables seven and four. Table seven knew nothing of wine, sending back a bottle of Riesling as "corked" because it had bits of cork in it, the imbeciles. Table four had gulped down a very special old pale bran...
Elle got up and walked over to the window. She put her hands up on the clear glass and surveyed the vast gardens below. Fiorins stood in clusters outside the castle-like structure. They whispered. Some simply stood and looked up at her. One Fiorin pu...
At first you might wonder what you did to deserve such treatment. Nothing, probably, so that doesn't matter. What matters is that, eventually, the abuse becomes the status quo. It's no longer about the whats and whys (“what did I do?” “why are ...
That’s why we all hate ’em, he thought. Those expressionless eyes watch us, those big faces turn to follow us, and doesn’t it just look as if they’re making notes and taking names? If you heard that one had bashed in someone’s head over in ...
Science fiction is held in low regard as a branch of literature, and perhaps it deserves this critical contempt. But if we view it as a kind of sociology of the future, rather than as literature, science fiction has immense value as a mind-stretching...
It is a tedious cliché (and, unlike many clichés, it isn't even true) that science concerns itself with how questions, but only theology is equipped to answer why questions. What on Earth is a why question? Not every English sentence beginning with...
He wants in His freedom actually not to be without man but WITH him and in the same freedom not against him but FOR him, and that apart from or even counter to what man deserves. He wants in fact to be man's partner, his almighty and compassionate Sa...
This book will prove the following ten facts: 1. A Goon is a being who melts into the foreground and sticks there. 2. Pigs have wings, making them hard to catch. 3. All power corrupts, but we need electricity. 4. When an irresistible force meets an i...
Just because something doesn’t go as planned, doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth your while. Sometimes you have to fall forward, by learning what doesn’t work, to discover what does. Sometimes you have to get knocked down lower than ever before, so...
For I was hungry, while you had all you needed. I was thirsty, but you drank bottled water. I was a stranger, and you wanted me deported. I needed clothes, but you needed clothes. I was sick, and you pointed out the behaviors that led to my sickness....
The creator wrestles with a hard, invisible substance, a substance far superior to him. Even the greatest victor emerges vanquished, because our deepest secret, the only one that deserves expression, always remains unexpressed. This secret never subm...
My love, a person is better judged by how they treat their inferiors than their betters. That is the true measure of a man, or a woman. Think you that you are so far above Lata?" "If I am to be your wife then I shall be far above her and she had bett...
Let’s take it slow because I’d like each moment we share to be etched in my memory. And I’d like these memories to make me smile wistfully someday. Let’s take it slow because I’m keeping a journal of our journey, and someday I’ll turn it ...
We are children, perhaps, at the very moment when we know that it is as children that God loves us - not because we have deserved his love and not in spite of our undeserving; not because we try and not because we recognize the futility of our trying...
But here's the most incredible thing about it: the philosopher isn't proposing that as a concept; he's simply articulating what humans believe about themselves. That first they thing and therefore then they exist. What follows on from that is even wo...
Can we capture the love of God? Can we contain him in all His might? No, but he has promised to bind us to Him, in chains of righteousness held tight. Can we capture the light of God? Can we bask forever under His warm rays? No, but weeping may go on...
For its survival, the satanic cult demanded secrecy and obedience while it made brutality, even killing, appropriate. Denial and disavowal were inevitable responses to required behaviors so bizarre as to seem unreal, even to those who enacted them. W...
I asked her what was so scary about unmerited free grace? She replied something like this: "If I was saved by my good works -- then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with rights. I would ...
The tree in the field is to be treated with respect. It is not to be romanticized as the old lady romanticizes her cat (that is, she reads human reactions into it). . . . But while we should not romanticize the tree, we must realize that God made it ...
When outsiders claim that we are unchristian, it is a reflection of this jumbled (and predominately negative) set of perceptions. When they see Christians not acting like Jesus, they quickly conclude that the group deserves an unchristian label. Like...
