I had turned to leave and he had called after me. “Miss Maria, I kin no other woman who could be wearing men’s trousers and be dripping such as ye are and look quite so lovely. It’s a right shame your mother is marrying you off to that great so...
What connexion can there be, between the place in Lincolnshire, the house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him when he swept the churchyard-step? What connexion...
Don't worry about it, Borage. I've always been inclined to think that the Apostle Paul was similarly afflicted. He speaks often of a bodily weakness, and men have been at pains to name it, attibuting to him everything from lameness to lung sickness. ...
My jaw went slack. Private rooms? Great, the button thing had been a step too far. Either he was totally getting the wrong impression—at least, not the impression I wanted to give—or…no. I didn’t want to consider the possibility he might know...
How great inexperience and innocence is. On the authority of their parents they go to a place where they could meet their death; for the Zirder in flood is very dangerous and, given the ignorance of the children, can be incalculably dangerous. But th...
She felt vulnerable and alone and had a sense that a great opportunity was slipping through her fingers. Once again, she felt that life was not treating her as it treated other people: it gave her every chance to achieve something, and just when she ...
But like all moments trapped in time, that moment would end and Joey Boldt, as all the greats before him did, would begin to understand that clinging too tightly to anything results in Time and Fate shaking you until you can't hold on any longer. And...
The source of our art then is not in the achievements of other artists in other days and lands, although it has learned a great deal from these, our art is founded on a long and growing love and understanding of the North in an ever clearer experienc...
Authors are far closer to the truths enfolded in mystery than ordinary people, because of that very audacity of imagination which irritates their plodding critics. As only those who dare to make mistakes succeed greatly, only those who shake free the...
Possibly there are few imaginative writers who have not a leaning, secret or avowed, to the occult. The creative gift is in very close relationship with the Great Force behind the universe; for aught we know, may be an atom thereof. It is not strange...
This is all a tale of an older world and a forgotten countryside. At this moment of time change has come; a screaming line of steel runs through the heather of no-man’s-land, and the holiday-maker claims the valleys for his own. But this busyness i...
-The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other but to be with each other. -The Hopis consider running a form of prayer; they offer every step as a sacrifice to a loved one, and in return ask the Great Spirit to match their strength with some of...
I know she is scared of this simple task even if the fear is something she can't—or won't— acknowledge. Fear, perhaps, is not based on the chemical component of adrenaline alone. It acts also on inexperience, or venturing into the unknown, even i...
They caught up with each other's news casually, leaving long, cosy gaps of silence in which to go to work on their muffins and coffees. Jerome - after two months of having to be witty and brilliant in a strange town among strangers - appreciated the ...
He kept thinking about Mary. What a fool he'd been to let her go. To think, with the thoughtless assurance of youth, that the world was replete with endless possibilities. He'd thought it a mistake to choose so early in life and embrace the present g...
[On scientist Carl Friedrich Gauss] [Carl Friedrich] Gauss told his friend Rudolf Wagner, a professor of biology at Gottingen University, that he did not believe in the Bible but that he had meditated a great deal on the future of the human soul and ...
It is extraordinary that nobody nowadays under the stress of great troubles is turned into stone or a bird or a tree or some inanimate object; they used to undergo such metamorphoses in ancient times (or so they say), though whether that is myth or a...
Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as creator but seldom see "creator" as the literal term for "artist". I am suggesting you take the term "creator" quite literally. You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist-to-artis...
The genius craves inspiration: she craves altered states and fresh perceptions. She will have them either through evolving closer to the divine or through devolving lower into the world. This is how some people with great genius come to die of drug a...
Oh Woman, come before us, before our eyes longing for beauty, and tired of the ugliness of civilization, come in simple tunics, letting us see the line and harmony of the body beneath, and dance for us. Dance us the sweetness of life. Give us again t...
Christians, indeed, have a special obligation not to forget how great and how inextinguishable the human proclivity for violence is, or how many victims it has claimed, for they worship a God who does not merely take the part of those victims, but wh...