Of course it was painful, and there were times when, emotionally, I just wanted to chuck it all. But pain seems to be a precondition for this kind of sport. If pain weren't involved, who in the world would ever go to the trouble of taking part in spo...
An important distinction needs to be made in politics between allowing your values to guide you and keeping religion and government separate. Liberals are rightly concerned about government-established and government-supported religion, especially in...
Parent-Teacher Conference At the parent-teacher conference, my father made a scene. He scared my fifth-grade teacher, with his mask from Halloween. She showed him all my science grades and said she was concerned, but he just stuck his tongue out when...
Ideas are fruits of your thinking. But they've got to be harnessed and put to work to have value. Each year an oak tree produces enough acorns to populate a good-size forest. Yet from these bushels of seeds perhaps only one or two acorns will become ...
DeathWish: You spent some time working with Courtney Love and Billy Corgan on a creative level, how did this experience help your growth as an artist? EA: It didn't -- it stunted it entirely. I gave up over a year of my life and career helping Billy ...
Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time - when pursued like a bandit - will behave like one, always remaining one county or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door o...
A breeze stirred Dovewing's pelt, as is someone had walked past. She lifted her head an saw two figures standing just beyond her Clanmates. One was a badger with a narrow, striped face, the other a grotesque, hairless cat who's blind, bulging eyes sa...
Don’t pray that God would teach you how to love like He loves; pray that He would fill you with Himself and that He would love in and through you. Don’t pray that He would teach you to have joy; pray that the living God full of joy would enter in...
Until recently, I was an ebook sceptic, see; one of those people who harrumphs about the “physical pleasure of turning actual pages” and how ebook will “never replace the real thing”. Then I was given a Kindle as a present. That shut me up. S...
A great many small failures have brought me to this Dark room where, against the teachings of the church, I lie in the forgiving dark with you and we kiss And loosen our clothing and feel the hot urge Toward nakedness, man's natural destination, The ...
One of the few things left in the world, aside from the world itself, that sadden me every day is an awareness that you get upset if Boo Boo or Walt tells you you're saying something that sounds like me. You sort of take it as an accusation of piracy...
Love?” Michael smiled down at his hands. “Love, real love, is being seen. Being known. Knowing the ugliest part of someone, and loving them anyway. And . . . I guess I think two people in love become something else, something more than the sum...
They are one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy - not actually evil, but bad tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without an...
…It's as if they actually think that what other people think of them somehow doesn't matter. I mean, I know we're all supposed to believe that, but obviously, none of us actually do. And nor should we, because it does! It does matter! And the peopl...
Approaching the Start of Civil Exams Perhaps I was once a young Chinese scholar approaching the start of civil exams, my mind grown weary and sad from seclusion with books on syntax and poetic style. All that I knew were the mist-covered mountains an...
Last Saturday night I was in a club on the South Side of Chicago listening to live rock music and talking to a guitar playing veteran of the music scene in the city. He looked and talked like the musicians that I recall from my childhood; he was a th...
These are all direct quotes, except every time they use a curse word, I'm going to use the name of a famous American poet: 'You Walt Whitman-ing, Edna St. Vincent Millay! Go Emily Dickinson your mom!' 'Thanks for the advice, you pathetic piece of E.E...
[last lines] Mrs. Marcus: [as she, with Emmeline and Monica in tow, enter the prison hospital, right after Benjy throws the banana peel on the floor] Now see here, you idiots, it's all your fault, because if you hadn't... [slips on the banana peel an...
Mowgli: Gee, cousin Louie, you're doing real good. King Louie: Now here's your part of the deal, cuz. Lay the secret on me of Man's Red Fire. Mowgli: But I don't know how to make fire. King Louie: [singing] Now don't try to kid me, Man Cub / I made a...
Bagheera: [to Baloo while Mowgli sleeps after they save him from King Louie] Mowgli seems to have man's ability to get into trouble, and your influence hasn't been exactly... Baloo: Shh! [softly] Baloo: Keep it down! You're gonna wake little buddy. H...
Jacob Singer: Jezzie? Get me out of here. Evil Doctor: Where do you want to go? Jacob Singer: Home. Evil Doctor: Home? This is your home. You're dead. Jacob Singer: Dead? No. I just hurt my back, I'm not dead. Evil Doctor: What are you, then? Jacob S...
