In a variation on James's recipe for interesting experience--the familiar leavened by the novel--Hobbs's "art of choosing difficulties" requires selecting projects that are "just manageable." If an activity is too easy, you lose focus and get bored. ...
Isn’t it amazing, amazing, amazing that something so specific can be so resonant? These are the filaments, filaments, filaments from that Walt Whitman poem. It makes me think that the thoughts that I have in my head that make me feel the most lonel...
In this cold land, there is a little hope for anyone. But is this right, God? I'm just trying to be a better man! Trying to save lives! But is this right award for? I know, I have done some bad choices, and bad things, but I'm trying to repay my sins...
When all great movements are in their infancy, they are nourished basically on the mother's milk of righteous indignation. It is a time of red-faced screaming and finger pointing. That's a good thing - we need to be angry to move toward any systemic ...
I do not like a high-organized church. I think that as soon as the congregation reaches a level of one hundred or so people, it is time to build a new church. As soon as the congregation gets to the point where you are not on fairly intimate terms wi...
Like infants, when they are born into the world, God's children are not born again in the full possession of their spiritual faculties; and it is well and wisely ordered that it is so. What we win easily, we seldom value sufficiently. The very fact t...
To me, the poor are like Bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a six-inch deep flower pot, you get a perfect replica of the tallest tree, but it is only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted; only t...
I keep everything hidden because there's nothing about my true self that anyone likes. I'm not difficult, Sebastian. I'm the easiest person around. I don't belong, and I spend all my time pretending I do. Sometimes I get weary of it, and that makes m...
one thing I don’t need is any more apologies i got sorry greetin me at my front door you can keep yrs i don’t know what to do wit em they don’t open doors or bring the sun back they don’t make me happy or get a mornin paper didn’t nobody st...
I believe that children in this country need a more robust literary diet than they are getting. …It does not hurt them to read about good and evil, love and hate, life and death. Nor do I think they should read only about things that they understan...
The first morning Simon had been at Amatis's house, a grinning lycanthrope had showed up on the doorstep with a live cat for him. "Blood," he'd said, in a heavily accented voice. "For you. Fresh!" Simon had thanked the werewolf, waited from him to le...
A farmer is helpless to grow grain; all he can do is provide the right conditions for the growing of grain. He cultivates the ground, he plants the seed, he waters the plants, and then the natural forces of the earth take over and up comes the grain....
Jace?" She offered him the glass. "I am a man," he told her. "And men do not consume pink beverages. Get the gone, woman and bring me something brown." "Brown?" Isabelle made a face. "Brown is a manly colour," said Jace and yanked on a stray lock of ...
I ordered my favorite drink; vanilla iced blended coffee with whipped cream and caramel sauce on top. The whipped cream and caramel sauce were the best. Usually when no one was watching, I would lick the inside of the lid to get every last drop of th...
To get rich, one must have but a single idea, one fixed, hard, immutable thought: the desire to make a heap of gold. And in order to increase this heap of gold, one must be inflexible, a usurer, thief, extortionist, and murderer! And one must especia...
.....listening means learning to hear someone's inner world and deepest feelings with far greater attention in order that we don't let our own assumptions get in the way. The dying may speak in images far more akin to dreamland than the world of ever...
The President is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the President on a golf course. If Eisenhowe...
There were people dying everywhere getting massacred in every town and village, there were people being picked up and thrown into dark jails in unknown parts, there were dungeons in the city where hundreds of young men were kept in heavy chains and f...
A kind of joyous hysteria moved into the room, everything flying before the wind, vehicles outside getting dented to hell, the crowd sweaty and the smells of aftershave, manure, clothes dried on the line, your money’s worth of perfume, smoke, booze...
There are those who wake up each morning to conquer the day, and then there are those of us who wake up only because we have to. We live in the shadow of every neighborhood. We own little corner stores, live in run-down apartments that get too little...
Jordan doesn't really care about the blood," Simon said now. "His whole thing is about me being comfortable with what I am. Get in touch with your inner vampire, blah, blah." Clary slid in next to him onto the bed and hugged a pillow. "Is your inner ...
