I never once thought I wanted to be a soldier. I wanted to be a teacher. As soon as I left college, though, they sent me my draft notice, stuck me in officers training, and I ended up on the continent for twelve years. My life went by like a dream.
Afterwards, in bed with a book, the spell of television feels remote compared to the journey into the page. To be in a book. To slip into the crease where two pages meet, to live in the place where your eyes alight upon the words to ignite a world of...
Just before he passed behind the hedge at the end of the drive, he turned to look back at Stoke Morrow and caught me spying on him. His shining eyes were so cruel, and before I could close the curtain, I saw the flash of an awful grin on his face. It...
It's something I imagine occasionally: waking up to discover civilisation has ended, leaving nothing but empty streets and silence. I don't actually want that to happen, but I ponder what I'd do, and how I'd stay alive. How it would feel to be alone,...
Remember, aid cannot achieve the end of poverty. Only homegrown development base on the dynamism of individuals and firms in free markets can do that.
Maybe that's what love's all about. You share the good and the bad, and hope to God that in the end the person will still be waiting for you on the other side. Marriage is a complete and total leap of faith -- I've always thought of myself as a risk ...
Music is the secret language that effortlessly connects our bodies, our minds, and our souls. I’m addicted to the lyrics— they speak to me in a way only he and I will understand. So, until it’s safe to speak my mind, I’ll speak to him through...
[I]t was with a good end in mind – that of acquiring the knowledge of good and evil – that Eve allowed herself to be carried away and eat the forbidden fruit. But Adam was not moved by this desire for knowledge, but simply by greed: he ate it bec...
Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try ...
The world seems to be witnessing a deluge of 'haterisms', and racist propaganda because evil's pain was born to die, and it's time of tyranny is near the end. Don't get caught up by the souls of wickedness; this ain't your fight. ~T.F. Hodge
I'm hoping you end up happily married to the man of your dreams and have a hoard of beautiful kids that'll keep you on your toes by turning your neighbours into various types of pond-life." He then shot her his signature grin. "But if it happens to b...
Society can give its young men almost any job and they'll figure how to do it. They'll suffer for it and die for it and watch their friends die for it, but in the end, it will get done. That only means that society should be careful about what it ask...
Jamie: You know what I figured out today? Landon: What? Jamie: Maybe God has a bigger plan for me than I had for myself. Like this journey never ends. Like you were sent to me because I'm sick. To help me through all this. You're my angel.
We were never organized readers who would see a book through to its end in any sory of logical order. We weave in and out of words like tourists on a hop-on, hop-off bus tour. Put a book down in the kitchen to go to the bathroom and you might return ...
I assure you the law isn't a line engraved in marble, immovable and unchangeable through the centuries. Rather...the law is like a string, fixed at both ends but with a great deal of play in it-very loose, the line of the law-so you can stretch it th...
Phillip Murray and Wanda Saxton meet in the last scene under the rainy awning, their wrong wife and fiance finally story-lined away, and walk out together into the downpour - we know from the first scene, Christmas eve, that both of them like walking...
I can feel him step close, then his hands lay on my shoulders, and they burn in the most delicious way, only reminding me how dangerous Benjamin is to me, to my soul. How fast I would get lost in him, only to end up with a broken heart when I could n...
By spending years and years living entirely for yourself, thinking only about yourself, and having responsibility to no one but yourself, you end up inadvertently extending the introverted existence of a teenager deep into middle age.
If you were upset about an ugly pimple on the end of your nose, you might try to feel better by keeping your pimple in perspective. You might compare your pimple situation to that of someone who was being eaten by a bear, and when you looked in the m...
Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends; And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of s...
We will do anything to get away from our own pain. We will change our lives, rip people out, swallow a bottle of life-ending pills. When we hurt more than we can bear, when our lives get that dark, it's shocking what we will do to protect ourselves.
