Peter Gibbons: It's not just about me and my dream of doing nothing. It's about all of us. I don't know what happened to me at that hypnotherapist and, I don't know, maybe it was just shock and it's wearing off now, but when I saw that fat man keel o...
I'm reading a book that actually scares me. It is not a form of fear that is embodied in some irrational phobia of a specific object, living being, or an event, but a fear of words, of actions of beings towards one another, how one word or command wr...
what if you get most of what the eye sees? what if love came in seeds? what if we plant them and they grow trees? what if they form hearts instead of leafs? what if hate was to freeze? what if there was no honeybees? what if your heart stops when you...
The most celebrated American author of the twentieth century, Bellow objected during the first part of his career to being designated a “Jewish writer, ” but it was he who demonstrated how a Jewish voice could speak for an integrated America. Wit...
A man is born; his first years go by in obscurity amid the pleasures or hardships of childhood. He grows up; then comes the beginning of manhood; finally society's gates open to welcome him; he comes into contact with his fellows. For the first time ...
Via the mediation of the Enlightenment, this movement had changed from a hobby among a tiny literate elite and their secretaries, an ostentatious amusement among princely and mercantile art patrons and their masterly suppliers (who established a firs...
At first, you fall in love. You wake in the morning woozy and your twilight is lit with astral violet light. You spelunk down into each other until you come to possess some inner vision of each other that becomes one thing. Us. Together. And time pas...
Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, br...
The air was filled with beings, flying hither and thither in otherworldly haste, and shouting as they went. Half of them were – if Scrooge could put words to it – darkness and evilness incarnate: squat, short beings with owl-like bodies and monke...
There’s one kind of writing that’s always easy: Picking out something obviously stupid and reiterating how stupid it obviously is. This is the lowest form of criticism, easily accomplished by anyone. And for most of my life, I have tried to avoid...
And those who will carefully study the so-called 'Mosaic code' contained in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, will see that, though Jahveh's prohibitions of certain forms of immorality are strict and sweeping, his wrath is quite as strongl...
We all love a good story. We all love a tantalizing mystery. We all love the underdog pressing onward against seemingly insurmountable odds. We all, in one form or another, are trying to make sense of the world around us. And all of these elements li...
i have been told many times by family, friends, colleagues and strangers that I, a black African Muslim lesbian, am not included in this vision; that my dreams are a reflection of my upbringing in a decadent, amoral Western society that has corrupted...
Speech baffled my machine. Helen made all well-formed sentences. But they were hollow and stuffed--linguistic training bras. She sorted nouns from verbs, but, disembodied, she did not know the difference between thing and process, except as they func...
You come to this place, mid-life. You don’t know how you got here, but suddenly you’re staring fifty in the face. When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led; all houses are haunted. The wr...
We have a long distance to travel,' said the Angel of Death to our friend Gil, as soon as they had left the Villa. 'I will order my chariot.' And he struck the ground with his foot. A hollow rumbling, like that which precedes an earthquake, sounded u...
The ancestors of the higher animals must be regarded as one-celled beings, similar to the Amoebae which at the present day occur in our rivers, pools, and lakes. The incontrovertible fact that each human individual develops from an egg, which, in com...
What seems wrong to you is right for him What is poison to one is honey to someone else. Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship, These mean nothing to Me. I am apart from all that. Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better or wo...
In this brief transit where the dreams cross The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying (Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things From the wide window towards the granite shore The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flyin...
So it's back once more, back up the slope. Why do they always ruin my rope with their cuts? I felt so ready the other day, Had a real foretaste of eternity In my guts. Spoonfeeding me yet another sip from life's cup. I don't want it, won't take any m...
Except in a very few matches, usually with world-class performers, there is a point in every match (and in some cases it's right at the beginning) when the loser decides he's going to lose. And after that, everything he does will be aimed at providin...
