Fine. Fine. Let’s try. You asked why bad things happen to good people. Well, the simple answer is, there are no bad things and there are no good people. Nothing bad ever happens to anyone and people are neither good nor bad. A person is nothing. A ...
Love's night and a lamp Judged our vows: That she would love me ever And I should never leave her. Love's night and you, lamp, Witnessed the pact. Today the vow runs: "Oaths such as these, waterwords." Tonight, lamp, Witness her lying - In other arms...
the longest prayer Peter ever prayed in the Senate-that of March 10, 1947, at the time of Mrs. Alben Barkley's death-took two minutes; the shortest, that which opened the Second Session of the Eightieth Congress-was exactly 36 words long and took a m...
Do you ever just put your arms out and just spin and spin and spin? Well, that's what love is like; everything inside of you tells you to stop before you fall, but for some reason you just keep going.
Never loved the taste of someone before baby, but with you, I would willingly drown in it. I’m going to devour you Tessa, from the inside out, and you’re going to come so many times that you’ll forget there even was anyone before. Focus on ...
Was I being groomed for some special mission? What possible purpose could an existence like mine serve? When I wasn’t drinking in crappy bars, I was home by myself reading: a life that was achingly lonely, and yet perversely designed to prevent any...
The darkness agrees with me. It asks me to release it, as loud as a roar and as quiet as a whisper. I remember what my sister said long ago: You must control the darkness. You can’t ever give in to it. But the shadows want to make me happy, and I d...
The main thing is, the constraints have come off style. What we are saying now is that the Revolution does not proceed in a pitiless, forward direction, its politics and its language becoming ever more gross and simplistic: the Revolution is always f...
Monsieur Josserand died very quietly - a victim of his own honesty. He had lived a useless life, and he went off, worthy to the last, weary of all the petty things in life, done to death by the heartless conduct of the only human beings that he had e...
A brick, with its rigid conformity, could be used as a model for how the government wants its citizens to be treated. Every brick in this country is equal, and as such they should be identical, and line up in a straight line and keep quiet. And they ...
If ever you do go back, what is it you want of Evesham?" "Do I know? [...] The silence, it might be ... or the stillness. To have no more running to do ... to have arrived, and have no more need to run. The appetite changes. Now I think it would be a...
I understood that if ever one wanted to live with someone you cooked for them and they came running. But then it is my idea of hell these days, living with someone. The idea of sharing your life with someone is just utterly ghastly. I know why people...
The older I got the more I appreciated the role of travel as a stimulus to memories, and the way in which journeys even to new places were somehow always awakening memories of places seen in an ever-receding past.
This creature is the Pooka. Pay no mind to the shape he wears, for he’s none of his own, and no soul either. Ware him ever, trust him never, but when the wind’s right he has his uses. Never forget that you will never know him. The Pooka’s myste...
For Jefferson, William and Mary was largely about what university life is supposed to be about: reading books, enjoying the company of like-minded, and savoring teachers who seemed to be ambassadors from other, richer, writer worlds. Jefferson believ...
Past humanity is not only implicit in each new man born but is contained in him. Humanity is an ever-widening spiral and life is the beam that plays briefly on each succeeding ring. All humanity from its beginning to its end is already present but th...
Praise to our Indian brothers, and the dark face have his due! Thanks to the kindly dark faces who fought with us, faithful and few, Fought with the bravest among us, and drove them, and smote them, and slew. That ever upon the topment roof our banne...
We are beasts, you know, beasts risen from the savannas and jungles and forests. We have come down from the trees and up out of the water, but you can never, ever fully remove the feral nature from our psyches.
I train for the winning moments, hoping all those seconds off the clock will lead to firsts. I train for seconds, that’s all—not even a cumulative minute—and that’s why I only ever earn seconds. Still, I’d rather have time and silver than g...
I want to make a coffee table that consists of a slab of wood supported by four crutches. That way, if a guest ever comes up to me and says, "I accidentally broke one of the legs on your coffee table," I could respond, "Don't worry, those legs are se...
I could be the best lover you’ll ever have. Maybe not the best in bed, but I could be the best conversationalist. It’s called “pillow talk” for a reason, because most men fall asleep right after sex, leaving the pillow as the only thing a wom...
