Life, as I’ve learned, fails to be a concrete, concise package that can easily be wrapped up and contained. Life is full of messy, unpredictable circumstances that test not only our characters, but the people around us as well. Our choices are not ...
He himself, he realized, had always been most abominably frightened, even at the height of his divine power, a frail god upon a rickety throne, afraid of opening letters, of making decisions, afraid of the instinctive knowledge in the eyes of mules, ...
Goods are traded, but services are consumed and produced in the same place. And you cannot export a haircut. But we are coming close to exporting a haircut, the appointment part. What kind of haircut do you want? Which barber do you want? All those t...
I'm not good at having friends. I mean, I can make myself useful to people. I can fit in. I get invited to parties and I can sit at any table I want in the cafeteria. But actually trusting someone when they have nothing to gain from me just doesn't m...
Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s not just a question of how-to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, a...
Your mind always follows your heart. That will never change. The one good thing about you is that you are a survivor. You can survive and get out of any situation. The bad part about it is that in the process you always unintentionally hurt others as...
Spoon!” James said, running at his uncle Gabriel and jabbing him in the thigh. Gabriel mussed the boy’s hair affectionately. “You’re such a good boy,” he said. “I often wonder how you could possibly be Will’s.” “Spoon,” James said...
When (The World According To) Garp was published, people who’d lost children wrote to me. ‘’I lost one, too,’’ they told me. I confessed to them that I hadn’t lost any children. I’m just a father with a good imagination. In my imaginati...
Remember, aid cannot achieve the end of poverty. Only homegrown development base on the dynamism of individuals and firms in free markets can do that.
Maybe that's what love's all about. You share the good and the bad, and hope to God that in the end the person will still be waiting for you on the other side. Marriage is a complete and total leap of faith -- I've always thought of myself as a risk ...
Aye, say thou fool? Then fool, good Sir, am I. But when thou sayest fool remember well That fools do walk in foolish company. So if I am a fool, perhaps ’tis true That other fools around me may be found.
He runs his eye along the row of knives in their racks, the cleavers for splitting bones. He picks one up, looks at its edge, decides it needs sharpening and says, "Do you think I look like a murderer? In your good opinion?" A silence. After a while,...
Killing Japanese didn’t bother me at that time. It was getting the war over with that bothered me. So I wasn’t worried particularly about how many people we killed in getting the job done… . All war is immoral, and if you let it bother you, you...
This may be impossible for you to believe," Colt said in a hushed voice, "but as recently as last year, I was a hyper, naive-albeit extremely good-looking-minor myself." "And now you're a persistent, outdoorsy, unshaven man-boy who cavorts with clone...
Yes! I'm ! I am careful and logical and I look up things I don't understand! When I hear people use the wrong words, I get edgy! I am good with cheese. I read books fast! I ! And I always have a piece of string! That's the kind of person I am!
In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessenin...
Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which aided by several de...
So, you don’t drink much,” he said. “What about food?” “No, I don’t eat food. I tried it once a long time ago when I was still a young vamp. It tasted good, but my body rejected it.” “Don’t feel bad. My body rejects food on occasion...
Be careful with whom you chose to surround yourself when performing some of life's most delicate behaviors. A man is at his most vulnerable state when sleeping, shitting, and fucking … in no particular order. It is generally considered good advice ...
She'd just had the best sex of her life, with an ex-boyfriend she'd spent the last decade pretending didn't exist, in his adorable half-finished, renovating-by-himself one room schoolhouse. Unsettled wouldn't even begin to describe how Laney should b...
In all societies, public rhetoric involves some measure of lying, and history -- political history and art history -- is made when someone effectively confronts the lie. But in really scary societies public conversation is an exercise in using words ...
