Being depressed is one thing when your life can be seen by outsiders as justifiably hard, but it is a whole different shameful story when you have everything and still feel like you can't bear to get out of bed in the morning. People can't really be ...
A visitor asked Lincoln what good news he could take home from an audience with the august executive. The president spun a story about a machine that baffled a chess champion by beating him thrice. The stunned champ cried while inspecting the machine...
The phone is about the same size as a cigarette pack. It's no surprise to me that the traditional cigarette lighter in many cars has turned into the space we use to recharge our phones. They are kin. The phone, like the cigarette, let's the texter/fo...
And in it all, the sensation of shaking my fists at the sky, shaking my fists high up to the sky, because that is what we do when someone dies too early, too beautiful, too undervalued by the world, or sometimes just at all -- we shake our fists at t...
Anyway, I think Florence and I noticed each other before the local train screeched to a halt at the 110th Street station, because as I boarded it felt as though we were supposed to step into the same car, and hold onto the same moist metal bar. My wi...
Kaminski plunged ahead. "I am not going to sign off on anything related to the Raptors," he said. "And I don't care if I'm fired for it." Buy raised a hand. "Whoa, wait a minute, I don't think you'll be fired," he replied quickly. "Now that Skilling'...
To the Sabbath! To the Sabbath!' they cried. 'On to the Witches' Sabbath!" Up and down that narrow hall they danced, the women on each side of him, to the wildest measure he had ever imagined, yet which he dimly, dreadfully remembered, till the lamp ...
The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss—you have gone and lost something else. But the body moves toward health. The mind, too, in steps. One step at a time. Ask a mother who has just lost a child, How m...
Though loss did not pass from one person to another liker a baton; it just formed a bigger and bigger pool of carriers. And, she thought, scratching the coarseness of the horse's mane, it did not leave once lodged, did it, simply changed form and ask...
You seem to like helping, taking care of people," he said. "That is admirable." "You enjoy being nurtured?" "Well, that isn’t all you promise. When you touch me, I feel a fire at my center. You want me to grow and find my true story, my purpose. Yo...
The problem with secrets is that they don't want to stay that way. They say information wants to be free. And maybe that's the case. But what I do know is that every story wants to be told. You can bury them as deep as you want. You can hide them. Yo...
When John-Joseph Heller's fights became too much of a sure thing, story has it he moved on to more risky fights with grown men and even starved dogs. Though he was scarred often, he was never beaten. But as he brought each opponent to his knees, John...
Coffee and humanity both sprang from the same area in eastern Africa. What if some of those early ape-men nibbled on the bright red berries? What if the resulting mental stimulation opened them up to a new way of looking at old problems, much as it d...
He built a tower to try and be closer to her and walled himself inside.” She stared at him for a moment as if waiting for something. “And?” He glanced at her, puzzled. “And, what?” She widened her eyes. “How does the story end? Did the so...
How can we satisfy ourselves without going on in infinitum? And, after all, what satisfaction is there in that infinite progression? Let us remember the story of the Indian philosopher and his elephant. It was never more applicable than to the presen...
What kind of plan B?" Hale asked. He was almost holding his breath when a voice answered, "My kind." Macey tried to read the look on his face then, but it was gone in a flash. It had been a simple moment of peace and joy and pure happiness. That voic...
Then she added in a sort of childish delight: 'We'll be poor, won't we? Like people in books. And I'll be an orphan and utterly free. Free and poor! What fun!' She stopped and raised her lips to him in a delighted kiss. 'It's impossible to be both to...
I know what you must think of me,' [the Doctor] said, his voice so slow. It was like a voice designed for laughing that didn't get to do it often. 'I'm going to tell you a story about a man who travels, and everywhere he goes, he makes everyone's liv...
The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it d...
On Earth, Liz was constantly occupied with studying and finding a college and a career and all those other things that the adults in her life deemed terribly important. Since she had died, everything she was doing on Earth had seemed entirely meaning...
was born at Woolsthorpe, near Grantham, in Lincolnshire, 1642: a weakly and diminutive infant, of whom it is related that, at his birth, he might have found room in a quart mug. He died on March the 20th, 1727, after more than eighty-four years of mo...
