He recognised that all the period of Odette's life which had elapsed before she first met him, a period of which he had never sought to form any picture in his mind, was not the featureless abstraction which he could vaguely see, but had consisted of...
Suddenly the memory of his wife came back to him and, no doubt feeling it would be too complicated to try to understand how he could have yielded to an impulse of happiness at such a time, he confined himself, in a habitual gesture of his whenever a ...
It is the same in life; the heart changes, and that is our worst misfortune; but we learn of it only from reading or by imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to dis...
You cannot mend the chromosome, quell the earthquake, or stanch the flood. You cannot atone for the dead tyrants’ murders and you alone cannot stop living tyrants. As Martin Buber saw it, the world of ordinary days “affords” us that precise ass...
He had laid his head back until his scalp had contacted his spine, that far back, and opened his throat, and a sound rose in the auditorium like a wind coming from all four directions, low and terrifying, rumbling up from the ground beneath the floor...
Otherwise I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love. At noon I lay down ...
Here You always belonged here. You were theirs, certain as a rock. I’m the one who worries if I fit in with the furniture and the landscape. But I “follow too much the devices and desires of my own heart.” Already the curves in the road are fam...
At the time of Lewis and Clark, setting the prairies on fire was a well-known signal that meant, ‘Come down to the water.’ It was an extravagant gesture, but we can’t do less. If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant g...
The secret of seeing is, then the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sough...
Was she acting entirely consciously? No: women are always sincere, even in the midst of their most shocking duplicities, because it is always some natural emotion which dominates them. Perhaps, having given this young man such a hold on her, by havin...
How are the veins of thee, Autumn, laden? Umbered juices, And pulpèd oozes Pappy out of the cherry-bruises, Froth the veins of thee, wild, wild maiden. With hair that musters In globèd clusters, In tumbling clusters, like swarthy grapes, Round thy ...
Again, it is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than t...
I can't say when you'll get love or how you'll find it or even promise you that you will. I can only say you are worthy of it and that it's never too much to ask for it and that it's not crazy to fear you'll never have it again, even though your fear...
Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is ...
Elle est retrouvée! -Quoi? -l'Éternité. C'est la mer mêlée Au soleil. Je devins un opéra fabuleux : je vis que tous les êtres ont une fatalité de bonheur : l'action n'est pas la vie, mais une façon de gâcher quelque force, un énervement. L...
One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to s...
At the lip of a cliff, I look out over Lake Superior, through the bare branches of birches and the snow-covered branches of aspens and pines. A hard wind blows snow up out of a cavern and over my face. I know this place, I know its seasons - I have h...
I was amazed that what I needed to survive could be carried on my back. And, most surprisingly of all, that I could carry it. That I could bear the unbearable. These realizations about my physical, material life couldn't help but spill over into the ...
the phantom of the man-who-would-understand, the lost brother, the twin --- for him did we leave our mothers, deny our sisters, over and over? did we invent him, conjure him over the charring log, nights, late, in the snowbound cabin did we dream or ...
The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals. Abrahamic religion mixes explosively with (and gives strong sanction to) ...
Sad is one of those words that has given up its life for our country, it's been a martyr for the American dream, it's been neutralized, co-opted by our culture to suggest a tinge of discomfort that lasts the time it takes for this and then for that t...
