Despite the fact that he loves books and owns a bookstore, A.J. does not particularly care for writers. He finds them to be unkempt, narcissistic, silly, and generally unpleasant people. He tries to avoid the ones who've written books he loves for fe...
Despite his attempts to maintain a vigorous structure of errands, golf games, visits, and meetings, there were sometimes days like this one, filled with rain and touched with a gnawing sense of parts missing from life. When the slick mud ran in the f...
Many years ago someone told me something that I flatly refused to accept. And I still don't accept it now, despite all the times I've seen it proved right. "The common good and the individual good rarely coincide..." Sure, I know, it's true. But some...
People don't always go down in history for the vigor with which they perform their jobs. We remember Louis the Fifteenth . . . for his furniture; we remember Pierre Léotard, despite his being the greatest trapeze artist ever, for his leotard. The id...
2) Members will attend events together as a group, including, but not limited to, Homecoming, Prom, parties, and other couply events, despite possibly being labeled as freaks and getting jealous looks from guys who wish we were their hot dates, but i...
Nico di Angelo came into Olympus to a hero's welcome, his father right behind him, despite the fact that Hades was only supposed to visit Olympus in winter solstice. The God of the dead looked stunned when his relatives clapped him on the back. I dou...
What's going on?' he asked, looking from face to face. 'I was having a good dream.' 'I need you,' said Lissa. 'I hear that from women a lot,' said Adrian. Christian made a gagging sound, but the faintest glimmer of a smile crossed Eddie's lips, despi...
Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead.
Even Winnipeggers who depart for Toronto, Calgary or Vancouver never assimilate or fully lose their regional identity. They remain stuck on their birthplace, in the middle of the flat, snowy, buggy, flood-prone and isolated prairie, where everyone se...
The task of a philosophy of photography is to reflect upon this possibility of freedom - and thus its significance - in a world dominated by apparatuses; to reflect upon the way in which, despite everything, it is possible for human beings to give si...
Helen Keller became deaf, dumb, and blind shortly after birth. Despite her greatest misfortune, she has written her name indelibly in the pages of the history of the great. Her entire life has served as evidence that no one is ever defeated until def...
I can’t swim, because despite my love being shaped like Michael Phelps, it’s so heavy it’s like an anti flotation device. If I can barely even carry it, I can understand how it’s a burden to you and why you don’t want to keep it in your hea...
It’s the bonds forged over baijiu, more than anything else, that keep me coming back for another ganbei despite the hiccups, figurative and literal. You can learn more about someone after three shots of baijiu than in years of sober tea sipping.
They were mostly French, a few Arabs, and despite their uniforms they didn't look very important any more. Later I learned that if you watch men die, especially if you've known them at all, they still look important afterward no matter what you have ...
I had a dream about you. I was at your family reunion, and your grandma was chugging the hunch punch with all the confidence of a mature woman in diapers. I was on Wheelchair Patrol, and your uncle Kunkel kept sneaking off to the women’s restroom, ...
Marilynn...passed out black cases to everyone. I opened mine to find an iPad inside. Several candidates whistled. Despite my agitated state, it impressed me too. Maybe wizard school wasn’t going to be as lame as I had thought. “All of your schedu...
When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky....They will never be the same again because you cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same....Look ...
Life is an illusionist, proficient at its art. It proves to be bitter, an adversary But is indeed a friend in disguise, a silent well wisher. It forces us into arduous stations and assesses our limitations. It guides us to the path of defeat, even so...
I always thought I'd eventually learn how to draw really well, and despite constant evidence to the contrary, I just kept on trying. If you're too good at anything, you don't have to think about the process, whereas I feel like I spend my life with m...
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and in spite of what most people might have expected from a young girl growing up deaf, life for me was like one long episode of 'The Brady Bunch.' Despite whatever barriers were in my way, I imagined myself as Ma...
Growing up in Israel, how can I not be an optimist? When you remember what Israel was 50 years ago and you see Israel now, one of the most successful countries in the world, stable, democratic, with an enormously stable economy despite everything tha...
