No tabloid will ever print the startling news that the mummified body of Jesus of Nazareth has been discovered in old Jerusalem. Christians have no carefully embalmed body enclosed in a glass case to worship. Thank God, we have an empty tomb. The glo...
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go whe...
Pa never told stories like Grandpa. Or treated the barn like family. Eli knew how Grandpa’s own pa had built the barn by hand, hauling bluestone for the foundation behind a stubborn ox with horns as wide as a tractor. How the smell of the plank wal...
Modern man is full of platitudes about living life to its fullest, with catchy keychain phrases and little plaques for kitchen walls. But if you've never retreated to the solitude of a dark room and listened to Beethoven's Ninth from start to finish,...
What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall, That place among the rocks--is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have........ ...
When I was 15 years old, I read an article about Ivan Boesky, the well-known takeover trader - turned out years later it was all on inside information! But before that came to light, he was very successful, very flamboyant. And I thought, 'This is wh...
I went to see the stock exchange when I was 18 years old. I'm not a Wall Street lawyer, I'm a Stanwix Street lawyer. Stanwix Street is a street in downtown Pittsburgh. One of the clients is Mellon Bank, which merged with the Bank of New York Mellon a...
Where does love go? When something you have taped on the wall falls off, what has happened to the stickum? It has relaxed. It has accumulated an assortment of hairs and fuzzies. It has said "Fuck it" and given up. It doesn't go anywhere special, it's...
Trust is such a devious term. When you trust someone, are you not merely assuming that they are what they say that they are? If you place so much in the trust that you have for that one person, then you should place the same amount of trust in assumi...
To me, imagination is about breaking down the walls of a reality of multiple interpretations, and truly opening up your mind to assemble one clear interpretation. Once you have tasted imagination, reality will no longer be enough for you. The line be...
Words are things. You must be careful, careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don’t do that. Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are ...
She was going to go home after this and sip red wine and stare at the wall, I could tell. She would wonder why she was doing this, struggling against commercial interests at a corporate hospital when all she wanted to do was help people, and in the m...
Ah,well," Said Abe, idly studying his fingertips. "I have it on good authority there's going to be a new 'gate' opening up soon over on the south side of the wall." The truth dawned on me. "Oh lord. You're the one who's been doling out C4." "You make...
His gaze, blunted by the unnumbered procession of iron bars, uncounted as his softly padded steps. Smooth motion of blood and sinew turning in its own, small circle prescribed by bars and walls ...and skin, confined. Suddenly, without warning, a flas...
living eulogy. she danced. she sang. she took. she gave. she loved. she created. she dissented. she enlivened. she saw. she grew. she sweated. she changed. she learned. she laughed. she shed her skin. she bled on the pages of her days, she walked thr...
He had thrown himself away, he had lost interest in everything, and life, falling in with his feelings, had demanded nothing of him. He had lived as an outsider, an idler and onlooker, well liked in his young manhood, alone in his illness and advanci...
We believe that today's younger generation, who started a global movement by camping out on Wall Street and its equivalents around the world and who are often choosing a road less traveled rather than joining the military-industrial-academic-prision ...
Language may have limits. But it isn’t just a dim likeness in a mirror. Yes, gestures, glances, touches, taps on walls mean something. So do silences. But sometimes the word is the thing. The bridge. Sometimes we only know what we feel once it’s ...
So you will meet many ’someones’ who will give a new definition to your name. And you can not build walls, must not close the door and please don’t hide, because if you ask me about hurt and love I will say love. Love because the hurt will come...
All others are outside myself; I lock my door and bar them out The turmoil, tedium, gad-about. I lock my door upon myself, And bar them out; but who shall wall Self from myself, most loathed of all? If I could once lay down myself, And start self-pur...
...but you are too much for them: the weak in courage are strong in cunning; and one by one, you have absorbed and have captured and dishonored, and have distilled of your deliverers the most ruinous of all poisons; people hear Beethoven in concert h...
