The theories of the French revolutionaries, as summarized by historian Roger Hancock, were founded on "respect for no humanity except that which they proposed to create. In order to liberate mankind from tradition, the revolutionaries were ready to m...
I thought that I needed a church and hundreds of guests and music that actually sounded like music, but I was wrong. What I needed was a drunken priest, irreverent guests, and a companion who learned to play piano from a goat." "Then you got exactly ...
Why? Do you plan to make out with her?" His teeth ground with so much force he feared they would soon be nothing but a fond memory. "I plan to question her." "Ah. So that's what the kids are calling it these days. Well, have fun." with that, a still-...
Hey, Meg," she said without preamble. I need you to write a letter of recommendation for me. I'm applying for grad school." Meghann screamed into the phone. "Oh, my ! I'm so proud of you. I'm hanging up now; I have to draft a letter that makes my bes...
You again,” she said, and she did not sound happy. “I know,” the warrior replied with a heartfelt sigh. “You’re so lucky to see me twice in one day. You’re honored by my presence, yada, yada, heard it all before. Let’s just move on, sha...
I’ve never cheated on a lover. I’m faithful, always. But the war comes before anyone’s feelings. Every time.” Wow. Battle before love. Without a doubt, he was the most unromantic male she’d ever met. Even more so than her great-grandfather,...
The reason the very concept of God has become at once so impoverished, so thoroughly mythical, and ultimately so incredible for so many modern persons is not because of all the interesting things we have learned over the past few centuries, but becau...
We know how to dream beautifully! And in our dreams we are always extraordinarily active! We cross oceans, found colonies, introduce ideal governments, and die as Kings or at least Presidents of Republics! In actual life, however, we groan, we are mi...
It's been hard for me at times...the responsibility and expectation that comes with being a leader. I'm not always the one I wish I could be, that I should be, but nonetheless, it is my place. If I were to ever show a commitment to something other th...
If you believe that you can use sex to shore up your fragile self-esteem by stealing someone else's, we feel sorry for you, because this will never work to build a solid sense of self worth, and you will have to go on stealing more and more and never...
Probably one of those sinister organisations that lurked behind the mask of amusing acronym, such as BUM, for example - the Bermondsey Union of Minstrels. Or WILLY, the Whitechapel Institution for Long-Legged Yodellers. It could be any one of a hundr...
Oh, don’t worry, I am perfectly aware of the fantasy involved here, but what we want is almost never exempt from the impossible. That barrier has very little meaning for me these days. Given what’s happened, is just a blind spot that dissolves if...
It would seem that, through touch, through kissing, we might have gouged a worm-size channel through which crucial information could pass, sublingual messages, the kind of pre-verbal intimacy that should flow with thunderous force between the bodies ...
Sorry, I said to myself, wondering how many times in my marriage I'd said that, how many times I'd meant it, how many times Claire had actually believed it, and, most important, how many times the utterance had any impact whatsoever on our dispute. W...
Discipline isn't a dirty word. Far from it. Discipline is the one thing that separates us from chaos and anarchy. Discipline implies timing. It's the precursor to good behavior, and it never comes from bad behavior. People who associate discipline wi...
Strange how it is that men never act crueler than when they're fighting for the sake of an idea. We've been killing since Cain over who stands closer to god. It seems to me that cruelty is just in the way of things. You drive yourself mad if you take...
It's a kind of heresy to say so, but I think our race has made forms more beautiful than what was here before us. Sometimes god's handiwork is crude. There is no more ugly thing than a lobster. There's not much pretty about a caribou. It has an ungai...
Murderers don't get forgiven just because we promise to be good from now on. We have to earn our way back. One hundred is the price. One hundred lives for each we took. That seems fair. That's how we get whole again and that's our work, from now unti...
Personalization is based on a bargain. In exchange for the service of filtering, you hand large companies an enormous amount of data about your daily life--much of whic you might not trust your friends with.
In a sense, the first (if not necessarily the prime) function of a novelist, of ANY artist, is to entertain. If the poem, painting, play or novel does not immediately engage one's surface interest then it has failed. Whatever else it may or may not b...
Neither knew it at the time, but a line had been crossed that could not be uncrossed- a running leap over a chasm of ignorance and misunderstanding between species and worlds...and a baby step taken into life's endless possibilities for wonder and jo...
