How long your closet held a whiff of you, Long after hangers hung austere and bare. I would walk in and suddenly the true Sharp sweet sweat scent controlled the air And life was in that small still living breath. Where are you? since so much of you i...
The only absolute truth is change, and death is the only way to stop change. Life is a series of judgments on changing situations, and no ideal, no belief fits every solution. Yet humans need to believe in something beyond themselves. Perhaps all int...
I happen to believe that America is dying of loneliness, that we, as a people, have bought into the false dream of convenience, and turned away from a deep engagement with our internal lives—those fountains of inconvenient feeling—and toward the ...
Everything about it was false. Right then, in that office, with the realization that no one knew the truth about my life, my thoughts about the world were shaken. Like driving along a bumpy road and losing control of the steering wheel, tossing you-j...
There is no living being on earth at this moment except myself. I could walk down the halls, and empty rooms would yawn mockingly at me from every side. God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of 'partie...
What is the meaning of life? What is our purpose on earth? These are some of the great, false questions of religion. We need not answer them, for they are badly posed, but we can live our answers all the same. At a minimum, we can create the conditio...
If you want to teach your children that they are the tools of God, you had better not teach them that they are God's rifles, or we will have to stand firmly opposed to you: your doctrine has no glory, no special rights, no intrinsic and inalienable m...
For all this talk about us being a nation at war with child abuse, and for all the media hype about witch-hunts and false allegations — and don't ever let anyone use the word witch-hunts about this; there were no witches — the fact remains that i...
Look at the kind of people who most object to the childishness and cheapness of celebrity culture. Does one really want to side with such apoplectic and bombastic bores? I should know, I often catch myself being one, and it isn’t pretty. I will def...
There is a law of the natural worlds (the spiritual and the physical) and this is something I have understood: that for every genuine existence, for every real manifestation and occurrence, there are are ten thousand falsities. Before you meet what o...
I cannot decide whether it is an illness or a sin, the need to write things down and fix the flowing world in one rigid form. Bear believed writing dulled the spirit, stilled some holy breath. Smothered it. Words, when they’ve been captured and imp...
43. To his friend a man should bear him as friend, to him and a friend of his; but let him beware that he be not the friend of one who is friend to his foe. 44. Hast thou a friend whom thou trustest well, from whom thou cravest good? Share thy mind w...
Insp. Thomas: [to his squad] He may be abroad, traveling on a false passport. What you're going to do now is to go down to the Passport Office. Get a complete list of every passport application for the last three months. Special Branch Detective: But...
No Child Left Behind has diminished [teachers'] sense of control of their own classroom, narrowed the focus of their jobs, and stifled pedagogical innovation.
Education is no substitute for intelligence. That elusive quality is defined only in part by puzzle-solving ability. It is in the creation of new puzzles reflecting what your senses report that you round out the definition.
Without hesitation but with a sense of entitlement, he lifted my hand to his lips. He was gentlemen-like in every way... I don’t know why I wondered if it was an act or for real.
He said, one has to learn that painting well - in the academic and technical sense - comes right at the bottom of the list. I mean, you've got that ability. So have thousands.
You don’t get lucky without preparation, and there’s no sense in being prepared if you’re not open to the possibility of a glorious accident.
He was aware of the irony that he who prized his freedom and willingness to seek the truth had been happiest when he had a defined purpose, a sense of duty and obligation, and a specific destination in mind.
Nathan seemed to have absorbed his sense of journalistic ethics from old movies about newspaper reporters. For Naomi, internet sampling ad scratching was a completely valid form of journalism, presenting no ethical clouds on its open-source horizon.
Indeed, in that sense we’re all rather often almost like mad people, only with the slight difference that the ‘sick’ are somewhat madder than we are, so that it’s necessary to draw a line here.