After he had fully determined that the young man was at the bottom of this state of affairs, and that it all came from him, he Jean Valjean, the regenerated man, the man who had laboured so much upon his soul, the man who had made so many efforts to ...
Your skin is your skin. Your legs are your legs. Your hair is your hair. Your smile is your smile. Your past is your past. You can waste your life hating these things, but you may as well learn to accept them. Both routes are difficult and full of pa...
No matter what you are dealing with in life, be it resentment or regret, bitterness or sadness, anger or apathy, hatred or hesitation, depression or disempowerment, disappointment or other destructive anxieties, painful envy or emotional turmoil, fea...
As I age in the world it will rise and spread, and be for this place horizon and orison, the voice of its winds. I have made myself a dream to dream of its rising, that has gentled my nights. Let me desire and wish well the life these trees may live ...
These examples and many others demonstrate an alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a who...
So you see that the process of education, taken in a large way, may be described as nothing but the process of acquiring ideas or conceptions, the best educated mind being the mind which has the largest stock of them, ready to meet the largest possib...
How do you go to your own house when something has gone bad on the inside, when it doesn't seem like your place to live anymore, when you almost cannot recall living there although it was the place you mostly ate and slept for all your grown-up life?...
One example of an uniquely Sethian approach towards initiation is for the initiate to regard his or her own life with the same urgency and need experienced as in a war zone in which every move and action must be weighed yet determined swiftly, as nec...
From the short story (and anthology containing it) DONNY DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE : Donny acted like he didn’t hear me. “You can’t send your mom off into eternity looking like that, Artie. She wouldn’t like it.” He reached into my mother�...
Eddie Dane: Very smart. What were you doing at the club, talking things over with Leo? Tom Reagan: Don't think so hard, Eddie. You might sprain something. Eddie Dane: You are so goddamn smart. Except you ain't. I get you, smart guy. I know what you a...
Noel: A lot of people see friends as something you have on Twitter or Facebook or wherever. If someone wants to read your updates and you want to read their updates, then you’re friends. You don’t ever have to see each other. But that seems like ...
Say a white boy takes a wrong turn and comes to my hood," he once said. "Now he's in the minority––nobody wants him there, unless it's to rob his ass––and more than anything he has to think about how to protect himself, how to get out. There'...
There are times when I long to sweep away half the things I am expected to learn; for the overtaxed mind cannot enjoy the treasure it has secured at the greatest cost. ... When one reads hurriedly and nervously, having in mind written tests and exami...
People say hate is like a poison — but they're wrong. It's like a drug. You never forget your first hit, how it seduces you with its strength and power, and takes you completely by storm. It colors your world in light and meaning, until you wonder ...
The messengers of Jesus will be hated to the end of time. They will be blamed for all the division which rend cities and homes. Jesus and his disciples will be condemned on all sides for undermining family life, and for leading the nation astray; the...
No sooner was I safely among the gravestones than a great feeling of warmth and calm contentment came sweeping over me. Life among the dead. This was where I was meant to be! What a revelation! And what a place to have it! I could succeed at whatever...
For a billion years the patient earth amassed documents and inscribed them with signs and pictures which lay unnoticed and unused. Today, at last, they are waking up, because man has come to rouse them. Stones have begun to speak, because an ear is t...
Am I in the wrong place here, or in the wrong life? Did I not recognize, as I sat in a train that raced past a station and did not stop, that I was on the wrong train, and did I not learn from the conductor that the train would not stop at the next s...
Lying is essential to humanity. It plays as large a part perhaps as the quest for pleasure, and is moreover governed by that quest. One lies in order to protect one's pleasure, or one's honour if the disclosure of one's pleasure runs counter to one's...
I long for the simplicity of theatre. I want lessons learned, comeuppances delivered, people sorted out, all before your bladder gets distractingly full. That's what I want. What I is what we all know, whether we'll admit it or not: every attempt to ...
It is almost impossible to express the extraordinary silence that came over everyone whose eyes were fixed on the painting––not a rustle, not a sound; and the painting meanwhile appeared loftier and loftier with every minute; brightly and wonderf...
