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...
We're not mindless golems, designed to think exactly the same thing. To try to suppress those thoughts is no better than slavery, and being free to say what you want, write what you want or draw what you want, as long as it doesn't offend anyone... T...
She asked, "Is there anything I can do to help?" He buried his nose in her hair, took a deep breath and sighed. "You help just be being here." "Well, that bit is easy," she told him with a smile. "Because I wouldn't be anywhere else.
As time passed from solstice to mild solstice in those occluded zones of my early childhood, I played beneath the distracted majesty of my mother's blue-eyed gaze. With her eyes on me I felt as if I were being studied by flowers.
Perhaps I really was disillusioned; unable to see myself for who, and what, I really was. Maybe I really was an ungrateful wretch who just refused to take responsibility for my own actions. Maybe I was lying to myself because I didn’t want to admit...
It's not about finding ways to avoid God's judgment and feeling like a failure if you don't do everything perfectly. It's about fully experiencing God's love and letting it perfect you. It's not about being somebody you are not. It's about becoming w...
I like being on my own better than I like anything else, but I can't give up love. Maybe it's the tension between longing and aloneness that I need. My own funicular railway, holding in balance the two things most likely to destroy me.
so if you love him, why keep him waiting for 13 years?" "Because I was afraid. Afraid of not being worthy, afraid of not knowing how to love him, afraid of waking up one day and not loving him anymore.
In one of his puckish moods Saul talked the president of a university into letting him anonymously take an examination being administered to candidates for a doctorate in community organization. "Three of the questions were on the philosophy of and m...
Today’s generation didn’t want to watch ancient actors reciting the same tired lines. They wanted to see themselves reflected onscreen –rude, raw, entitled. These kids needed to believe that they themselves were only one daring, controversial a...
Chélan had acted as imprudently for Julien as he had for himself. He had given him the habit of reasoning correctly, and of not being put off by empty words, but he had neglected to tell him that this habit was a crime in the person of no importance...
I guess I just couldn't see standing there -- alive, talking, thinking, breathing, being -- one second, and dead the next. It really bothered me. Death by violence isn't the same as dying any other way, accident or disease or old age. It just ain't t...
Being depressed and suicidal doesn't mean wanting to kill yourself every moment of every day. It may be a fixed obsession, but sometimes it gets relegated to the back of your head. Rather, it means the world takes on the very cut and dry, black and w...
Clown: Good Madonna, why mournest thou? Olivia: Good Fool, for my brother's death. Clown:I think his soul is in hell, Madonna. Olivia:I know his soul is in heaven, Fool. Clown: The more fool, Madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven.
Gradually, after being the target a few times of a similar capriciousness, which he discerned as default behavior for most people, and not liking it, Paul learned to not be more generous or enthusiastic or attentive that he could sustain regardless o...
If you’re wearing a space suit, I’ll take a unicrescent sandwich; hold the mayonnaise—and the moon. (But don’t hold it in your hands.) Let us dance like the moon is hollow and inhabited by beings of light who give off enough energy so I can b...
When I’m 42, I’ll have 21 years of experience being 21. I’ll be doubly prepared to handle myself in a bar, most likely by avoiding them altogether.
As I helped him up, I felt him shake all over, so I asked him to forgive me, without knowing what for, but that was my lot, asking forgiveness, I even asked forgiveness of myself for being what I was, what it was my nature to be.
The “Warrior Ethos” emphasizes placing the mission first, not accepting defeat, and being disciplined physically and mentally. Why? Because an American Soldier is a “guardian of freedom and the American way of life.
Something can be humorous without being funny. The difference is when it’s humorous, a person says, “That’s funny,” and when it’s funny, a person can’t say anything because they’re too busy laughing.
(Thinking while being interrogated by the Germans) You big shots think you can decide on my life, but I have news for you: you can't touch a hair on my head without the will of God my Father, because He is on my side.
