What ever happened to the passion we all had to improve ourselves, live up to our potential, leave a mark on the world? Our hottest arguments were always about how we could contribute. We did not care about the rewards. We were young and earnest.
It wasn't who a person believed himself to be or what he pretended he would do in a given situation. It was what he did when he got there that defined him.
Did you never wonder why the old books are so full of dragons chasing after maidens? The serpents think the girls are orphans, and long to get them away in a lair so that they may grow up strong and tall.
He and the girl had almost nothing to say to each other. One thing he did say was, 'I ain't got any tattoo on my back.' 'What you got on it?' the girl said. 'My shirt,' Parker said. 'Haw.' 'Haw, haw,' the girl said politely.
Matteo lived inside her like a memory that paradoxically stopped the pain and which she could never get enough of... because there was, and never would be, anything that was like him. Wherever she went, whatever she did, he was the only thing she tru...
He might have been encased in a thick glass bubble, so separate did he feel from his three dining companions. It was a sensation with which he was only too familiar, that of walking in a giant sphere of worry, enclosed by it, watching his own terrors...
Smith, you don't realize it's a privilege to practice giving presents to others.' The way he did it was charming; there was nothing glittery and Christmasy about it, but almost sad, and sometimes his gifts were old beat-up things but they had the cha...
My lord said, amongst other things, that he did not propose to burden the doctor with the details of his genealogy. He consigned the doctor and all his works, severally and comprehensively described, to hell, and finished up his epic speech by a pung...
As Ariel recounted the events of her dream, two magnificent, batlike wings grew from the backs of her shoulders, stretched as if preparing to fly, then retreated back into their host. The sound heard when the wings disappear is the giggling of Alanna...
Did you talk to him about it?" "Oh, sure. Nothing happened, yadda yadda. The usual. But my maydar went off like crazy." "Maydar?" "As in, he may be thinking about super hot sex with her. Like radar, only not as sure.
Oh my! Did you see him?' Exie stops abruptly and turns to watch a man who smiles at her. ' Ooh yeah, he is fine.' 'You're not going to stop to talk to him?' 'Why ruin what we have by getting to know him?' She said with a wink.
All I knew was that hate was so deadly as any poison and did no one any good. You had to control and eliminate it, if you could.
Freedom is that which comes from knowledge, the freedom that comes from curiosity, the freedom that comes from the times when the first man did not refuse to look into a telescope and discovered other planets, the freedom that comes from those who tr...
With the new technology that keeps entering the media, film composers are constantly being placed in new learning situations. Acknowledging this and realizing that one must keep up, I maintain, nonetheless, that the real creative power is in the mind...
And if redemption was self-serving, coming as it did ribbon-tied to what he wanted most in life? For once, Akiva's shame wouldn't rise to the bait. He wanted what he'd always wanted, and he'd better just say it, his own worries and fears be damned.
There was polite laughter in the courtroom. Bosch noticed that the attorneys -- prosecution and defense -- dutifully joined in, a couple of them overdoing it. It had been his experience that while in open court a judge could not possibly tell a joke ...
I know great art when someone doesn’t wash their hands after making it. And not only did Duchamp not wash his hands, but he didn’t even flush!
Rarely did events play out as imagined, in any case. The order of future events was transient. In the same way that the past was reconfigured by selective memory, future events, too, were moving targets. One could only act on instinct, grab hold of a...
My daughter breaks both her wrists jumping off of a swing. Her friend, who is five, told her to jump off of it. I promise nothing will happen, she said. But why did she promise that? she wails later at the hospital.
If the foreman had no experience in bossing a mob, they had no experience in being one. Members of a community, not elements of a collectivity, they were not moved by mass feeling; there were as many emotions there as there were people. And they did ...
My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and fought and gobbled until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we de...
