The music enchanted the air. It was like the south wind, like a warm night, like swelling sails beneath the stars, completely and utterly unreal... It made everything spacious and colourful, the dark stream of life seemed pulsing in it; there were no...
I remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism; and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, an...
Asscrown," I muttered under my breath as I headed to my next class. I wasn't proud of swearing at a complete stranger, no. but he started it. Noah matched my pace. "Don't you mean 'assclown'?" He looked amused. "No," I said, louder this time. "I mean...
There are times in my life when I have been medicine for some while poison for others. I used to think I was a victim of my story until I realized the truth; that I am the creator of my story. I choose what type of person I will be and what type of i...
Maybe I’ll never be able to figure out what I’m passionate about. But when I choose something, it has to be something that when I wake up it’s the first thing I think about, and it’s also the last thing I think about before I go to sleep. I r...
Sinuhe, my friend, we have been born into strange times. Everything is melting – changing its shape – like clay on a potter’s wheel. Dress is changing, words, customs are changing, and people no longer believe in the gods – though they may fe...
Well, think about it for a minute. A guy tells you that he loves you and then turns around and buys you flowers…or worse, tells you that he loves you with flowers. Cut flowers die. They die in a few days after being cut…and this is what you guys ...
It took Feyra some time to realise that she was not delirious: the citizens were wearing painted masks.From childhood she had heard the legend that the Venetians were half human, half beast.She knew that this could not be true, but in the swirling fo...
[regarding a toothache] It made me realize how much one's mind is at the mercy of one's physical well-being, as at times I felt quite demented. My admiration for people who withhold information under torture has increased ten-fold since this ghastly ...
In that time while he was still aware, which was the worse, I wonder: the agony of his physical torture or the horror of their utter hatred, of their moral certainty that he was so beyond the bounds of what they could accept that he deserved not just...
I was into third guesses with Theo and Maddy. Anyway, that's one of the reasons I opted to buy the van and drive cross-country instead of dumping us all in a plane. It gave us some time. Nothing like a three-thousand-mile drive in an enclosed vehicle...
But-when you really think about it-that emotional support only applies to the experience of living in public. We don't have ways to quantify ideas like "amazing" or "successful" or "lovable" without the feedback of an audience. Nobody sits by himself...
The Air Loom had been constructed by the Jacobins in Paris around the time of their coup d'etat in 1793. Just as they had corrupted the ideals of the Enlightenment to their despotic ends, so had they corrupted Enlightenment science. The secret of its...
Anthony Bridgerton leaned back in his leather chair,and then announced, "I'm thinking about getting married." Benedict Bridgerton, who had been indulging in a habit his mother detested—tipping his chair drunkenly on the back two legs—fell over. C...
Red's world, you see, is a closed circle. Not that it matters. I know that I'm a closed circle, too, and it's all I can do to find some starting point from myself, while at the same time trying to find my own terminus. There's no way I'm ever going t...
At that moment, in the temple of her lovers’ tangled limbs, Lea felt the presence of the Divine close by, immanent and imminent — everywhere and everywhen — and it was a sublime feeling, one that made her feel infinitely powerful and infinitely...
Summer has weeks left, but once the calendar displays the word “September,” you’d think it was Latin for “evacuate.” I pity them for missing the best weather and the most energized time of year…It’s an extremely impressive display of li...
Meanwhile it's got stormy, the tattered fog even thicker, chasing across my path. Three people are sitting in a glassy tourist cafe between clouds and clouds, protected by glass from all sides. Since I don't see any waiters, it crosses my mind that c...
Words are great, but even I can admit they have certain short-comings. No word can ever give justice to a smile from a man who never smiled or to an old woman who gives up her seat on the bus to a soldier who lost his leg. And I’m still convinced t...
I don't know what falling in love for me is. The concept of romantic love arose in the Middle Ages. Now remember, the Arabs don't even have a word for love—that is, a word for love apart from physical attraction or sex. And this separation of love ...
Bigger questions, questions with more than one answer, questions without an answer are the hardest to cope with in silence. Once asked they do not evaporate and leave the mind to its serener musings. Once asked they gain dimension and texture, trip y...
