A strong, vague persuasion that it was better to go forward than backward, and that I could go forward— that a way, however narrow and difficult, would in time open— predominated over other feelings: its influence hushed them so far, that at last...
Fair enough." She lowered her knees, stared down as she buttoned her shirt again. "Ty, I'm really sorry. I'd never do anything to upset Eli, or to cause trouble between the two of you." "I know." He pushed to his feet and after a brief hesitation hel...
We dragged Linc along. His current honey is working tonight." "Still the intern?" "Yeah." Helen sat on the curvy velvet chaise, made herself at home. "I'm starting to think he's getting serious about her." "And?" "I don't know. She's a nice girl, rai...
Yes?" she asked, eyeing me guardedly. I struck out a hand and said "Shake." Arra stared at the hand, then into my unfocused eyes. "One good fight doesn't make you a warrior," she said. "Shake!" I repeated angrily. "And if I don't?" she asked. "I'll g...
You're the medium Weed and I use to communicate, that's all, this set of holes, pleasantly framed, this little femme scampering back and forth with scented messages tucked in her little secret places." She was too young then to understand what he tho...
You should climb around inside my brain, Dan. It's like this dark room surrounded by quicksand." "I know what you mean," her brother said quietly. "I hate being in my brain sometimes. I have to get out." "What do you do?" Amy asked. Dan shrugged "I g...
Above all human existence requires stability, the permanence of things. The result is an ambivalence with respect to all great and violent expenditure of strength; such an expenditure, whether in nature or in man, represents the strongest possible th...
Mr. Morris's poem is ushered into the world with a very florid birthday speech from the pen of the author of the too famous ,—a circumstance, we apprehend, in no small degree prejudicial to its success. But we hasten to assure all persons whom the ...
Like all failed experiments, that one taught me something I didn’t expect: one key ingredient of so-called experience is the delusional faith that it is unique and special, that those included in it are privileged and those excluded from it are mis...
Adoro ver os barcos no rio Hudson, mas é muito diferente de estar num que balança e galga as ondas. Admira-me que a viagem seja tão agitada, porque do cais os barcos parecem deslizar sobre a água. Não se passa o mesmo com o amor? Parece tão sim...
We are one knot in a great web of being, building out of the vast past and (with luck) continuing billions of years into the future, until the sun dies, the last of its energy reaches Earth, and our local light goes out. The most appropriate response...
Dr. Webb says that losing a sibling is oftentimes much harder for a person than losing any other member of the family. "A sibling represents a person's past, present, and future," he says. "Spouses have each other, and even when one eventually dies, ...
We live in a moment in which old conflicts, much altered during their subterraneous years, have boiled up again. The struggle to own the past so that it can be made to serve contemporary interests has led to gross distortions. But it is true also tha...
I love the writers of my thousand books. It pleases me to think how astonished old Homer, whoever he was, would be to find his epics on the shelf of such an unimaginable being as myself, in the middle of an unrumored continent. I love the large minor...
Witch Baby wanted to ask Ping how to find her Jah-Love angel. She knew Raphael was not him, even though Raphael had the right eyes and smile and name. She knew how he looked--the angel in her dream--but she didn't know how to find him. Should she rol...
The walls, where there was room, were well decorated with calendars and posters showing bright, improbable girls with pumped-up breasts and no hips - blondes, brunettes and redheads, but always with this bust development, so that a visitor of another...
The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don't just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed. Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will b...
...and it's not my place to chase around after you, fixing stuff. What I know's what I know, and it don't include putting the world back the way it out to be. It's too late for that. Way too late for heroes, champions, miracles. Don't matter what our...
I now want to examine a second major feature of Western civilization that derives from Christianity. This is what philosopher Charles Taylor calls the 'affirmation of ordinary life.' It is the simple idea that ordinary people are fallible, and yet th...
The majority of people dismiss those things that lie beyond the bounds of their own understanding as absurd and not worth thinking about. I myself can only wish that my stories were, indeed, nothing but incredible fabrications. I have stayed alive al...
Finally, from what we now know about the cosmos, to think that all this was created for just one species among the tens of millions of species who live on one planet circling one of a couple of hundred billion stars that are located in one galaxy amo...
