When I first accepted my own death, the world was intantly changed. It was a completely new sensation. It took something like this to finally open my eyes. Before, I had simply shut myself off so that I could not see, could not hear. What had I been ...
This was awkward to infinity. Alex living here would change my entire routine. I was sharing a bathroom with my boyfriend. How scary was that? I had tampons and pads and everything in there. He was going to be naked in the shower on the other side of...
Someone put opera on inside the house. Someone changed it to hip-hop, thank God. Someone started a shower. Someone vacuumed. Again. Life. In all its mundane majesty. And you couldn't take advantage of it if you were sitting on your ass in the shadows...
Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travelers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own education. Through characters – the saints and the sinne...
I will simply die, as you will simply die, when our hearts stop beating. And instead of the fires of Hell or the clouds of Heaven, there will be a chorus of hungry worms or fish, depending on how we go. Isn’t that what really terrifies you most of ...
It was obvious that the woman was trying to turn over a new leaf, so we bought all her bowls. I got a gigantic stoneware one with a flat bottom, like you’d use if you were making bread for the whole army, and I knew I would have to change my whole ...
As we stand there, it hits me how quickly everything changes - how life is like peering into a kaleidoscope, and just as you're looking at a gorgeous pattern you think you'd maybe even like to keep around forever, the colors morph into something comp...
So, why are you in Biloxi?" ... Bran didn't move, but there was a subtle change in him as he watched her. "I thought the reason I was here was obvious." "Do you mean because of me?" Asking that left her feeling exposed even if she'd made it clear tha...
Perhaps he still hopes. If there’s any justice in the Gods’ injustice, then may they let us keep our dreams, even when they’re impossible, and may our dreams be happy, even when they’re trivial. ... Every dream is the same dream, for they’r...
There, Master Niketas,’ Baudolino said, ‘when I was not prey to the temptations of this world, I devoted my nights to imagining other worlds. A bit with the help of wine, and a bit with that of the green honey. There is nothing better than imagin...
It is photography itself that creates the illusion of innocence. Its ironies of frozen narrative lend to its subjects an apparent unawareness that they will change or die. It is the future they are innocent of. Fifty years on we look at them with the...
In taking that photograph, I understood something I will never forget: how I wished to arrest all the beauty that came before me. Not the classical beauty of symmetry and exact proportions or the fancy of fashion, which is ever-changing with the seas...
The teachings of Buddha are eternal, but even then Buddha did not proclaim them to be infallible. The religion of Buddha has the capacity to change according to times, a quality which no other religion can claim to have... Now what is the basis of Bu...
Any number of celebrities are dogged by "gay rumors" because we cannot quite place them into a given category. We act like placing these people in categories will have some impact on our lives, or that creating these categories is our responsibility,...
Launching a turnaround takes courage. I cannot measure that and so it is not going to be included in my analysis, but behind the moments of change there are always a few people within these societies who have decided to try to make a difference.
Because those four days in the mountains, they changed us. I gave you a piece of me. And you must have given me a piece of yourself, too, because you wouldn't have come here otherwise. You would have let go. I can't let go of you, Britt. And I don't ...
When a man may whisper in a close ear, and that whisper be repeated far away and many moons later, then he has power. When a many may speak against another, and that other be brought to ruin and rue by nothing more than those words, then he has power...
The problem is acceptance, which is something we're taught not to do. We're taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things, alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been given- that you are not in a pro...
Have you ever felt happy and miserable at the same time?” I sighed. “Yes.” Hutch sat up. He threw the covers back and got out of bed. He opened up the blinds sending rays of bright sunlight into his room. “But I got over it. I figured out no ...
Where did the bonds of maternity end? All children grew up, changed, became somebody else. Parents who trembled that they might lose a gap-toothed toddler to some terrible accident ended up losing him anyway, always, to time. The toddlers died, after...
Maybe the conference was an inversion layer of another kind, bringing me face-to-face with old friends and old places. With cancer and the Gap and the Old Man, railing about newfangled players and spicy food. Bringing me face-to-face early with death...
