Go ahead and try. I'll attempt to loosen up. Her muscles tightened when I took her hand in mine. "Do you know any self-hypnosis?" "I guess I'm tensing too much." She took several deep calming breaths then tensed her muscles and relaxed them, repeatin...
It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call ‘something there,’ more deep and more general than any of the special and particular ‘senses’ by which the...
Be cautious then, young ladies; be wary how you engage. Be shy of loving frankly; never tell all you feel, or (a better way still), feel very little. See the consequences of being prematurely honest and confiding, and mistrust yourselves and everybod...
Whatever the cause, I could not meet his sunshine with cloud. If this were my last moment with him, I would not waste it in forced, unnatural distance. I loved him well - too well not to smite out of my path even Jealousy herself, when she would have...
Amid the worry of a self- condemnatory soliloquy, his demeanour seemed grave, perhaps cold, both to me and his mother. And yet there was no bad feeling, no malice, no rancour, no littleness in his countenance, beautiful with a man's best beauty, even...
As a young woman, I schooled my romantic sensibilities on the most impossible examples. "Romeo and Juliet" is one of my favorites. I once plotted out the length of time it took them to conjoin. Four days. Four days for one of the world's greatest sto...
What sense would it make to classify a man as handicapped because he is in a wheelchair today, if he is expected to be walking again in a month, and competing in track meets before the year is out? Yet Americans are generally given 'class' labels on ...
Not many years before the Happening, one of your country's largest religious bodies officially declared that their book was holier than their God, thus simultaneously and corporately breaking several commandments of their own religion, particularly t...
Do you mean to say," asked Caspian, "that you three come from a round world (round like a ball) and you've never told me! It's really too bad for you. Because we have fairy-tales in which there are round worlds and I have always loved them … Have y...
Mom, how do you know if the guy is guy?” You mean if he’ll be a good husband?” She pauses, then says “The ticket is for the man to love the woman more than she loves him.” Shouldn’t it be equal?” Mom cackles. “It can never be equal.�...
I am here to determine my relationship." Simon goggled. She couldn't be talking about him. Could she? "Do you see that man?" Isabelle asked, pointing at Simon. Apparently she was talking about him. "That's Simon Lewis, and he is my boyfriend. So if a...
This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit ...
Nobody's busting into YOUR apartment at three in the morning, are they? Well, then don't worry about what they're doing in South Korea and places like that. It's like the standard of living. Are you content to achieve your higher standard of living a...
Where and how did my relationship with Kumiko go wrong? That's what I can't understand. Not that I'm saying everything was perfect until that point. A man and a woman in their twenties, with two distinct personalities, just happen to meet somewhere a...
She wasn't dressed like a student. She wore an elaborate burgundy dress with long skirts, a tight waist, and matching burgundy gloves that rose all the way to her elbows. Moving deliberately, she managed to get down off the stool without tangling her...
God created through love and for love. God did not create anything except love itself, and the means to love. He created love in all its forms. He created beings capable of love from all possible distances. Because no other could do it, he himself we...
The faery lady looked at Hettie curiously from beneath her wig. "You know..." she said, very softly. "All I wanted was that you would be my friend. That isn't very much to ask, is it? Doesn't everyone in the Smoke Lands have a friend? Doesn't everyon...
In the forest you may find yourself lost, without companions. You may come to a river which is not on a map. You may lose sight of your quarry, and forget why you are there. You may meet a dwarf, or the living Christ, or an old enemy of yours; or a n...
Critics and academics have been trying for forty years to bury the greatest work of imaginative fiction in English. They ignore it, they condescend to it, they stand in large groups with their backs to it - because they're afraid of it. They're afrai...
This book has nothing to do with cats. Or mice. Or self-motivation. This book is 100% 50% finished. But don’t worry, I finished the good half. But don’t be mistaken—the good half isn’t good at all. In fact, it’s remarkably terrible. It’s ...
You may think that hiding your pain from sight is somehow going to make it disappear. I can tell you from experience that it isn’t. It is just like the time as a kid when you really didn’t want to eat your greens. If you hid them underneath a pie...
