It feels like everything I do is inspired, each thing I do is worthwhile, and it's true that when I write it feels divine. Why else would I search for something that I could never find? Why all the endless nights asking the almighty for a sign? Why o...
We are all inclined to accept conventional forms or colours as the only correct ones. Children sometimes think that stars must be star-shaped, though naturally they are not. The people who insist that in a picture the sky must be blue, and the grass ...
There’s no reason to live, but there’s no reason to die, either. The only way we can still show our contempt for life is to accept it. Life is not worth the bother of leaving it. Out of charity, one might spare a few individuals the trouble of li...
Kell wore a very peculiar coat. It had neither one side, which would be conventional, nor two, which would be unexpected, but several, which was, of course, impossible. The first thing he did whenever he stepped out of one London and into another was...
…the art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea…. It is on the back of an idea, something believed in with conviction or seen with precision and thus compelling words to a shape…. You have not finished with it because you...
When we enter the world as a child, they say we are innocent. When we leave the world as an older adult, we have each experienced a mixture of life's sorrow and joys. The years bring diverse events and mindsets, clouding up our vision, so that we no ...
Renouncing false beliefs will not usher in the millennium. Few things about the strategy of contemporary apologists are more repellent than their frequent recourse to spurious alternatives. The lesser lights inform us that the alternative to Christia...
The only thing--I tell you this straight from the heart--that disgusts me in Salzburg is that one can't have any proper social intercourse with those people--and that music does not have a better reputation...For I assure you, without travel, at leas...
There was nothing green left; artillery had denuded and scarred every inch of ground. Tiny flares glowed and disappeared. Shrapnel burst with bluish white puffs. Jets of flamethrowers flickered and here and there new explosions stirred up the rubble....
Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initative or creation, there is one elementary truth...that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves. too. All ...
This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning, This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face, This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again. Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well I have,...
The hatred I feel for him, for the phantom girl, for everything, is so real and immediate that it chokes me. Gale is mine. I am his. Anything else is unthinkable. Why did it take him being whipped within an inch of his life to see it? Because I’m s...
If Jem dies, I cannot be with Tessa,” said Will. “Because it will be as if I were waiting for him to die, or took some joy in his death, if it let me have her. And I will not be that person. I will not profit from his death. So he must live.” H...
Always too eager for the future, we Pick up bad habits of expectancy. Something is always approaching; every day we say, Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear, Sparkling armada of promises draw near. How slow they are! And how much time they waste, R...
As a fact, we cannot give suffering precedence in either our individual or collective lives. We have to , and those who give precedence to suffering will be left behind. They fetter us with their sniveling. We have someplace to go and must believe we...
Would you like me to grovel with gratitude for bringing me here, High Lord?" "Ah. The Suriel told you nothing important, did it?" That smile of his sparked something bold in my chest. "He also said that you liked being brushed, and if I'm a clever gi...
Last night, Good Friday night, at the bottom of the escalator at King’s X tube, a weasel-faced man in uniform was sweeping up rubbish with a wide broom, drink cartons, cigarette packets with all the dust and filthy scraps of the day which he pushed...
Smokers always waxed poetic about the ritual of it, how a large part of the satisfaction was packing the box and pulling the foil wrapper and plucking an aromatic stick. They claimed they loved the lighting, the ashing, the feeling of being able to h...
We got a call from across the street that a black woman had broken into this house.” “And you were going to arrest her without even knocking on the door?” “We had to secure her first. Um. Are you okay, ma’am?” “Of course I am. Don’t y...
If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me ... I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. So how could ...
Happiness, she would explain, was when a person felt good, light, creative, content, loving and loved, and free. An unhappy person felt as if there were barriers crushing her desires and the talents she had inside. A happy woman was one who could exe...
