I know the rules. I've been living here longer than you have." He cracks a smile then. He nudges me back. "Hardly." "Born and raised. You're a transplant." I nudge him again, a little harder, and he laughs and tries to catch hold of my arm. I squirm ...
One of the arguments that authoritarian governments use to ward off the call for greater political freedom is to argue that American-style democracy is no guarantee of good policy.... Over the years, I’ve grown used to these arguments, and my respo...
The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clott...
Saying good-bye to a city is harder than breaking up with a lover. The grief and regret are more piercing because they are more complex and unmixed, changing from corner to corner, with each passing vista, each shift of the light. Breaking up with a ...
Bert: Uncle Albert, I got a jolly joke I saved for just such an occasion. Would you like to hear it? Uncle Albert: [sobbing] I'd be so grateful. Bert: Well it's about me granddad, see, and one night he has a nightmare. He was so scared, he chewed his...
[Kambei is considering the farmer's offer] Kambei Shimada: It's impossible. Katsushiro: Sir! Why not arm them with...? Kambei Shimada: I thought of that, too. Katsushiro: But sir. Kambei Shimada: [pointedly] This would not be a game. A band of forty ...
Mrs. Lovett: [continues singing] No denying times is hard, sir - / Even harder than the worst pies in London. / Only lard and nothing more - / Is that just revolting? / All greasy and gritty, / It looks like it's molting, / And tastes like - / Well, ...
Mild depression is a gradual and sometimes permanent thing that undermines people the way rust weakens iron. It is too much grief at too slight a cause, pain that takes over from the other emotions and crowds them out. Such depression takes up bodily...
The warmth of your heart is tauntingly near, but you reserve it as you shut me out in the lizard of your doubt. Is it because you don't understand the freakish assembly of my soul, a soul that was once broken? In some ways I guess I don't blame you. ...
Another way to describe the dilemma for religious faith is that pluralism creates social conditions in which God is no longer an inevitability. While it is possible to believe in God, one has to work much harder at it because the framework of belief ...
Do I think it was inherent nobility that brought us out here?” He shook his head. “Maybe. I don’t call it nobility, though. I think it’s our innate human need to champion the underdog. We are constant optimists. We’re the emotional descende...
It's about personal development. It's about creating your own character and pushing it to the limit. It's about pushing yourself so far out of your own and everybody else's idea of who you are and what you're capable of, that you no longer believe in...
An unarticulated crush is very different from an unrequited one, because at least with an unrequited crush you know what the hell you're doing, even if the other person isn't doing it back. An unarticulated crush is harder to grapple with, because it...
The worst feeling was poor. Because in Haiti, so many people are poor, it's nothing to be ashamed of. And there's always a way to , to get by, even when you have nothing. But misery in the United States is harder than misery in Haiti. You feel like i...
When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear w...
And the whole time, people kept refilling my cup. Determined not to look like an idiot again, I kept drinking until I could finally take the vodka down without coughing or spitting. I stood, finding it much harder to do than I'd expected. The world w...
Maybe we feel meaning only when we deal with something bigger. Perhaps we hope that someone else, especially someone important to us, will ascribe value to what we've produced? Maybe we need the illusion that our work might one day matter to many peo...
Therefore, the idle parent who wants to stop the whining needs to stop whining himself, and one way is to resist the call to work ever longer and harder hours. Throw your BlackBerry into the river. Unslave yourself. Hard work will not lead to health ...
Contrary to what you may have heard or been taught, your ego isn't a bad thing. It means well. The ego wants to keep you safe, secure, protected and accepted. The problem comes in because it usually attempts to do this by keeping you in the same smal...
All children are curious and I wonder by what process this trait becomes developed in some and suppressed in others. I suspect again that schools and colleges help in the suppression insofar as they meet curiosity by giving the answers, rather than b...
I grip Colin harder, kissing him longer, unwilling to let him go. This is what I want; this is what I’ve wanted since his damn phone interrupted us this morning, his mouth, his body claiming mine. I’m on fire, every muscle in my body attuned to h...
