Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when ...
It is very bad to reach the stage of thinking deeply and frequently about duty unless you are prepared to go a stage further. The Law, as St. Paul first clearly explained, only takes you to the school gates. Morality exists to be transcended. We act ...
What she liked was simply life. "That's what i did it for," she said, speaking aloud to life... Could any man understand what she meant, either, about life? …But to go deeper, beneath what people said, and these judgments, how superficial, how frag...
She could walk through a lightning storm without being touched; grab a bolt of lightning in the palm of her hand; use the heat of lightning to start the kindling going under her medicine pot. She turned the moon into salve, the stars into swaddling c...
I sit up, edge over close to my window, and push it open, slipping one leg in, then the next, turning back to Jase. “Come on.” His smile flashes in the gathering dark as his eyebrows lift, but he climbs carefully in as I lock my bedroom door. “...
Tolstoy said, 'The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed either by a change of life or by a change of conscience.' Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization are unlimited. T...
I have a theory about marriage, Monsieur Boustouler. And it's that nearly always you will know within two weeks if it's going to work. It's astonishing how many people remain shackled for years, decades even, in a protracted and mutual state of self-...
In this week I see such a picture of life, hard and joyful pressed up together and sleeping in the same bed. They come knit together. The lines of pain run through the joy and remind us to go all in, because life is short. The joy edges the pain and ...
I want my heart to be the thin place. I don't want to board a plane to feel the kiss of heaven. I want to carry it with me wherever I go. I want my fragile, hurting heart, to recognize fleeting kairos, eternal moments as they pass. I want to be my ow...
The idea of practicing love is deeply appealing to me, because built right in is an acceptance of imperfection. There is an acknowledgment to myself that I am going to mess this up, an understanding that there is room to grow. Each of my failures jus...
I had always believed, and not only out of cynicism, that a man and a woman could tell in the first ten minutes whether they wanted to go to bed together; and that the time that passed after those first ten minutes represented a tax, which might be w...
I spend a lot of time wondering what dying feels like. What dying sounds like. If I’ll burst like those notes, let out my last cries of pain, and then go silent forever. Or maybe I’ll turn into a shadowy static that’s barely there, if you just ...
Often, the best stories aren't when someone pulls one 180-degree turn, but when someone pulls 180 one-degree turns: the stories when someone experiences a slow and, at times, indistinguishable evolution; the stories where a million tiny steps produce...
A woman isn't all that different from a bonfire. A fire's a beautiful thing, right? Something you can't take your eyes off, when it's burning. If you can keep it contained, it'll throw light and heat for you. It's only when it gets out of control tha...
When Mama starts to move across a room, people pay attention. You can never be sure she's not going to grab you by the top of the head to steady herself. And she's pretty free with that walking stick, too.
Jindagi bhar gadhe ki tarah slog marane se aur kuchh din rich Arab Shaikh ki tarah paisa bahane se quality of life change nahi ho jaati. We only remember one week of good time, but never go back to what we scarified for that one week.
You wanted me to fuck you, didn't you?" Stephen shut his eyes. "Briefly." Crane lowered his head so his mouth was right on Stephen's ear, voice vibrating, teeth and tongue touching the sensitive flesh. "When I fuck you, Mr. Day, it will not be briefl...
I ain't got no people. I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone. That ain't no good. They don't have no fun. After a long time they get mean. They get wantin' to fight all the time. . . 'Course Lennie's a God damn nuisance most of the time...
The poet, the artist, the sleuth - whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial; rarely "well-adjusted", he cannot go along with currents and trends. A strange bond often exists between antisocial types in their power to see environments as...
Some say that you should turn your face from the light of the moon. They say it makes you mad. I turn my face towards it and I laugh. Make me mad, I whisper. Go on, make Mina mad. I laugh again. Some people think that she's already mad, I think.
Desire acts as a honey trap to the unwary male, luring him into unworthy and catastrophic enterprises. The beauty of the Narnian witches isn't ancillary to their evil, but integral to it, one of the weapons in their arsenal. Evil must, after all, app...
