2Yes. And as for money it’s only mankind’s most important invention. With respect to money I think everyone has received fair warning. Money is the reason you have no responsibility to that starving girl. It is simply the single most important en...
If we define optimism broadly as the tendency to maintain a positive outlook, then realistic optimism is the tendency to maintain a positive outlook within the constraints of the available "measurable phenomena situated in the physical and social wor...
In the middle section of the book Mirabelle breaks into not one, but two houses near Belgravia Books. I had fun scoping these out - checking which windows looked least secure and figuring out how to scale the mews houses to the rear to get her inside...
The feminist story, she reminded me, is a counternarrative, a narrative of disobedience, a chronicle of battle, nto of surrender. Women who do not fit the mold are too often maneuvered, manipulated, and mangled into some culturally safe archetype. Th...
I didn't think she was that kind of girl." I scampered up onto the ledge and strained to listen. "I overheard two of my students talking about her in homeroom yesterday. I never would have thought Natalie would do something like that. Then again, she...
Selkie women are the women you don’t understand. They are the women who know that they belong to another tribe, in another element. And so they seem as though they don’t belong in yours – and they don’t. They are the women who live by other r...
The Howeitat spread out along the cliffs to return the peasants' fire. This manner of going displeased Auda, the old lion, who raged that a mercenary village folk should dare to resist their secular masters, the Abu Tayi. So he jerked his halter, can...
I didn't plan on either children or writing. Once I realized that writing satisfied me in some enormous way, I had to make adjustments. The writing was always marginal in terms of time when the children were small. But it was major in terms of my hea...
... ongoing care for the soul rather than seek for a cure appreciates the mystery of human suffering and does not offer the illusion of a problem-free life. I sees every fall into ignorance and confusion as an opportunity to discover that the beast r...
In thinking about these questions I have been stimulated by criticisms of the prevailing scientific world picture... by the defenders of intelligent design. Even though writers like and are motivated at least in part by their religious beliefs, the e...
The notion that inspired play (even when audacious, offensive, or obscene) enhances rather than diminishes intellectual vigor and spiritual fulfillment, the notion that in the eyes of the gods the tight-lipped hero and the wet-cheeked victim are freq...
Everyone’s talking about the death and disappearance of the book as a format and an object. I don’t think that will happen. I think whatever happens, we have to figure out a way to protect our imaginations. Stories and poetry do that. You need a ...
All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, o...
Why does the writer write? The writer writes to serve — hopelessly he writes in the hope that he might serve — not himself and not others, but that great cold elemental grace which knows us. A writer I very much admire is Don DeLillo. At an award...
[Hades] returned his attention to the playlist while I eased the car back on the road. His fingers flipped deftly over the screen. 'Orpheus...Dusk...Orpheus...Dusk...do you have anything on here that doesn't make people want to jump off a cliff?' ......
I do not understand a man who does not want to know all that he can know. Why would anyone choose ignorance? If he chooses ignorance because he is lay, then he is a fool, for the ignorant are put to hard labor digging and hauling stones for masters w...
I have a fairy by my side Which says I must not sleep, When once in pain I loudly cried It said "You must not weep" If, full of mirth, I smile and grin, It says "You must not laugh" When once I wished to drink some gin It said "You must not quaff". W...
Jane Austen’s world is a unique wedge of history, immortalized by her wonderful books. It is ironic that I am fascinated by the Regency world in all its details, when Jane Austen seldom mentions any of those facts. She never mentions the war raging...
You have people out here trying to tell you to accept imperfections and that nobody is perfect (except for a dead/make-believe entity?) but if you are telling yourself that you are not perfect, aren't you downgrading your own character? Why would you...
As a historian, I found myself all too often treating my historical subjects like fictional characters, malleable entities that could be made to do one thing or another, whose motivations could be speculated upon endlessly, and whose missing actions ...
You know, I wouldn’t have done this a month ago. I wouldn’t have done it then. Then I was avoiding. Now I’m just waiting. Things happen to me. They do. They have to go ahead and happen. You watch – you wait… Things still happen here and som...
