I poke at my skull with a finger. It didn't feel soft or anything. I didn't feel insane. But if you'd really lost it, would you have enough left to know? Crazy people never thought they were crazy. "I've always talked to things," I said. "And to myse...
Christianity may be good and Satanism evil. Under the Constitution, however, both are neutral. This is an important, but difficult, concept for many law enforcement officers to accept. They are paid to uphold the penal code, not the Ten Commandments ...
Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No, no scientist enjoys it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection for his or her ideas and findings. Even so, you don’t reply to critics, Wait a minute; this is a really good idea; I’...
If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we shoul...
In 1867, George Campbell, Duke of Argyll, had published The Reign of Law, a book that Darwin found deeply annoying. A supporter of Richard Owen, Campbell argued that while evolution (or "Development") might be observable in the fossil record, it was ...
But Malone was thinking now and as he watched the men lighting cigarettes for each other in the dark, having sex beneath the trees, he turned to his friend and said in a wondering voice: “Isn’t it strange that when we fall in love, this great dre...
An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth - scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books - might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder...
For me, walking in a hard Dakota wind can be like staring at the ocean: humbled before its immensity, I also have a sense of being at home on this planet, my blood so like the sea in chemical composition, my every cell partaking of air. I live about ...
Then you remember the dream,” Mencheres stated. “That bodes ill.” The fear of that made my reply snappy. “Hey, Walks Like An Egyptian, how about for once you drop the formal stuff and talk like you live in the twenty-first century?” T...
Mister Dresden," he said. "And Miss Rodriguez, I believe. I didn't realize you were an art collector." "I am the foremost collector of velvet Elvii in the city of Chicago," I said at once. "Elvii?" Marcone inquired. "The plural could be Elvises, I gu...
There will always be a part of you that misses her. You'll see something that reminds you of her and want to tell her about it, only to realize she's not there anymore. Then you'll feel her loss all over again. (Ravyn) You're not helping me, Ravyn. (...
And the kids?" "Quincy, nothing. All she wants to do is look for Saturn's rings and bring home every creature from the pound. Nelson, though, he's..." She looked at Nicholas. "He's like you. Gifted, but ignorant." Nicholas bristled, "I'm not ignorant...
After Nicholas hung up the phone, he watched his mother carry buckets and garden tools across the couch grass toward a bed that would, come spring, be brightly ablaze as tropical coral with colorful arctotis, impatiens, and petunias. Katherine dug wi...
His name feels like a secret, and now he's wearing it on his wrist. I want to know all about this girl who put it there. What she looks like. If she's got freckles, fair hair or dark, like his. If she's scrappy or etheral, funny or serious, scrape-kn...
She put her tongue out and felt the raw edges of the torn silk. She looped her tongue around them and drew them into her teeth. Just a little bit, she thought, that's all I need to free my eyelids. She pulled the tasteless web between her teeth and g...
Fireheart dashed to the warrior's side. Cloudtail was standing stiff-legged, every hair in his pelt on end as if he were facing an enemy. His eyes were fixed on the limp heap of tabby fur huddled at his paws. "Why, Fireheart?" Cloudtail wailed. "Why ...
[Fireheart] was interrupted by a screech from Cloudtail. "Fireheart! Fireheart, Brightpaw isn't dead!" Fireheart spun around and raced across the clearing to crouch beside Brightpaw. Her white-and-ginger fur, which, she had always kept so neatly groo...
The ultimate goal of the resistance movement is a planet not just living, but in recovery, growing more alive and more diverse year after year. A planet on which humans live in equitable and sustainable communities without exploiting the planet or ea...
The violence of hierarchy is the violence that the powerful use against the dispossessed to keep them subordinated. As an example, the violence committed for wealth is socially invisible or committed at enough of a distance that its beneficiaries don...
All stories have a curious and even dangerous power. They are manifestations of truth -- yours and mine. And truth is all at once the most wonderful yet terrifying thing in the world, which makes it nearly impossible to handle. It is such a great res...
My city. I pondered that phrase, wondered why Barrons felt that way. He never said “our world.” He always said “your world.” But he called Dublin his city. Merely because he’d been in it so long? Or had Barrons, like me, been beguiled by he...
