For most of human history people owned other people. Then, only a hundred and fifty years ago, our ancestors figured out that was a bad idea. One day we’ll figure out, or our descendants will figure out, that people owning land they don’t live on...
She loves swimming,” said Ellen, who I knew had been a competitive swimmer in college. Ellen looked in the rearview mirror at Kara. “Don’t you Kara?” asked Ellen. There was no response. “I didn’t start until I was three,” said Ellen. �...
One thing led to another. That was the only way to explain how Arnold Brinkman, who considered both professional sports and young children unjustifiable, had ended up at Yankee Stadium with a nine-year-old boy.
What's the point of changing who you are in order to impress a woman, when your intention is to return to who you were, a person she was never attracted to in the first place?
Believing in yourself means more than simply believing in your own ultimate success; it means believing you will survive failures, disappointments, rejections, and criticism but still persist.
There’s late, there’s fashionably late, and then there’s me, who’s always unfashionably late. If the party starts at 8:00 on March 5th, I’ll be there at 8:00 on March 5th—the following year.
People are drawn to you because you make them feel happy; I understand that. But wouldn't it be nice to have people flock to you wishing for your happiness?
Augie: Does everybody else know? T.C.: About my epitaph? Augie: About me being gay, you gink-head hoser-face! T.C. Not everybody. There's a night watchman at a Dunkin Donuts just outside of Detroit. He doesn't know yet.
I wonder why when I told him that my chest still ached even though I had finally told him how I felt, he said, "So you finally realize how I've felt these past three years?" and laughed.
To become a 'good reader' one must give oneself over to a regime of concentrated pleasure. One does not set out to read a book a day (there is no necessary pleasure in that) but may spend two or three years on one book [. . .], read only portions of ...
Over the last forty years, many educators, decision-makers, and even some parents have come to regard the arts as peripheral, and let’s face it, frivolous—especially the visual arts, with their connotation of ”the starving artist” and the mis...
That morning, he was afraid of becoming old, and it was a very specific kind of old age he feared, one which had nothing to do with the number of years since your birth. He feared the premature old age of missed opportunities.
Don't worry about being nervous. A lot of vampires have trouble with this from time to time. It happens to everyone." "If I was a forty-year-old man suffering from erectile dysfunction, that would be a great comfort to me, thanks.
When spring knocks at your door, regardless of the time of year or season of our lives, run, do not walk to that door, throw it open with wild abandon, and say, "Yes! Yes, come in! Do me, and do me big!
Some 1.2 billion people in the world still have too little to eat; the same number today suffer from being overweight…..For the first time in 100 years medical experts are predicting that life expectancy in developed countries will fall. Thanks to ...
I wondered how long it could last. Maybe someday, years from now.If the pain would decrease to the point where I could bear it.I would be able to look back on those few short months that would always be the best of my life.
My passion was dead. For years it had rolled over and submerged me; now I felt empty. But that wasn't the worst: before me, posed with a sort of indolence, was a voluminous, insipid idea. I did not see clearly what it was, but it sickened me so much ...
The human murder by poverty in Latin America is secret: every year, without making a sound, three Hiroshima bombs explode over communities that have become accustomed to suffering with clenched teeth.
Love is like holding a baloney sandwich for a friend. That was over two years ago, and I’m still holding it. I wonder if he’s coming back any time soon. He must be starving by now.
How quick, brutal, and fragile is life. You are born, you live a few years in wild hope, then you are dragged back into the night. You might have breathed on a little longer, had you not dared think yourself a human creature instead of an engine of m...
I know not what discoveries, what inventions, what thoughts may leap from the brain of the world. I know not what garments of glory may be woven by the years to come. I cannot dream of the victories to be won upon the fields of thought; .
