Stories start in all sorts of places. Where they begin often tells the reader of what to expect as they progress. Castles often lead to dragons, country estates to deeds of deepest love (or of hate), and ambiguously presented settings usually lead to...
This is the story of an electrically alive young woman on the brink of her adult life. An artist equally attuned to the light as the shadows, with a limitless hunger for experience and knowledge, completely unafraid of life's more frightening opportu...
Most every charge you level at American capitalism applies with equal force to communism, with this nice difference, that the Reds make no pretense at such frivolities as civil liberties or environmentalism. The differences in degree are so great tha...
In order to exert influence over people, there were other things that could be used besides love. Knowledge seemed to be an equally strong force, perhaps even stronger. Whoever possessed knowledge not only had power over the changeable passions of pe...
Sure that there was an attainable bliss somewhere beyond the decimal point in the p of his sexual trysts, I felt that maybe he had already attained what I was looking for, a more instinctual regard for sex, an equality among thirsts. He had done what...
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared human...
The modern man needs to catch on to the fact that women want to be treated as equals, but only when it suits us. the modern woman's fierce need for independence doesn't mean we want to pay for our half of a meal, or that we don't want a man to hold a...
Strange as it may seem, within plain sight of this same house, looking down from its commanding height upon it, was the Capitol. The voices of patriotic representatives boasting of freedom and equality, and the rattling of the poor slave's chains, al...
If I had a clone, he’d better be my equal, and not my better. Can you imagine how I’d feel being jealous of myself?
But females in even the most advanced Muslim countries are simply, by law, not the equal of men.
Fame is also won at the expense of others. Even the well-deserved honors of the scientist or man of learning are unfair to many persons of equal achievements who get none. When one man gets a place in the sun, the others are put in a denser shade. Fr...
I had a dream about you. It happened during the day. You used a pencil to erase the ink I wrote over the chalkboard since the professor told me 7 + 4 didn't equal 10. You were really cool about it; in fact, you handed me a bucket of ice. Apparently I...
No book is really worth reading at the age of 10 which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of 50 – except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have be...
She remembers this phrase from his final months of law school, when he brought home the books on starting up a business. He'd read ravenously for several weeks and then predicted: "Well, darling, we're going to be rich." Now he slaps shut the last of...
The need for civility in society has never been more important. The foundation of kindness and civility begins in our homes. It is not surprising that our public discourse has declined in equal measure with the breakdown of the family. The family is ...
The good part about having a mental disorder is having a valid reason for all the stupid things we do because of a damaged prefrontal cortex. However, the best part is seeing someone completely sane do the exact same things, without a valid excuse. T...
I live in Ireland near the sea, only one mile from where I grew up - that's good, since I've known many of my neighbours for between 50-60 years. Gordon and I play chess every day, and we are both equally bad. We play chatty, over-talkative bad bridg...
Most of the things that really matter require faith. 'How do I know that my wife loves me?' 'How do I know that Mozart's 'Jupiter Symphony' is sublime and beautiful?' There are all sorts of things which come at a more lowly level than that - 'How do ...
The pessimists believe that the cosmos is a clock that is running down; the progressives believe it is a clock that they themselves are winding up. But I happen to believe that the world is what we choose to make it, and that we are what we choose to...
When the voice of your friend or the page of your book sinks into democratic equality with the pattern of the wallpaper, the feel of your clothes, your memory of last night, and the noises from the road, you are falling asleep. The highly selective c...
A man who is morally clean, other things being equal, has in every instance, greater agility, greater capacity, and greater endurance by far than the man who is not. While the latter is wasting his creative energies in useless pleasures, as well as i...