When we are babies...we need an authoritative figure to guide and take care of us. We ask no questions about that authority and imagine that the small circumference of family life is the limit of the universe...As we mature, our horizon expands and w...
...it is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin. I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem i...
This light of history is pitiless; it has a strange and divine quality that, luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, often casts a shadow just where we saw a radiance; out of the same man it makes two different phantoms, and the one ...
Or, God, maybe this was just life. For everyone on the planet. Maybe the Survivor's Club wasn't something you "earned," but simply what you were born into when you came out of your mother's womb. Your heartbeat put you on the roster and then the rest...
Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they look for a place to dump it. And if you let them, they’ll dump it on you. So when ...
I have found that a writer is formed not so much by their experiences but by the way in which they view and capture those experiences. Like vivid, rainbow metallic skin cells on the wings of a fragile butterfly, it is how you touch and reveal those i...
I'll tell you what's real. Real is that I was in jail for the past year, rooming with drug dealers and eating crap food your dog wouldn't touch. Real is not being able to wear your own frickin' underwear and showering with twenty-five other dicks eve...
This advance (at first very much against the will of the outdistanced men) will transform the love experience, which is now filled with error, will change it from the ground up, and reshape it into a relationship that is meant to be between one human...
I want to keep you. I want to lock you up and not let anyone near you. I don't want others touching you, I don't want them to smell you. I want you hidden and safe. I want to hoard you and never share you with anyone again. I would shape my entire li...
Heartbreak is awful, but truth be told, if you have never had your heart broken, then you aren't fully living. I want you to ask yourself this question because I want you to bask in the fullness of life. And in order to feel life - to experience life...
the rest of the guardians are all checking out the explosion," I realised. Pieces began coming together-including Lissa's lack of surprise over the commotion. "Oh no. You had Christian blow up ancient Moroi artifacts." "Of course not," said Eddie. He...
It took me a moment to realize but I was having an epiphany. I was standing in the middle of Times Square wearing nothing but purple tennis sneakers with the laces pulled out, clutching an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s in one hand and a shit-eating...
It is also possible to say precisely why. Truth seduces us very easily into a kind of joy of possession: I have comprehended this and that, learned it, understood it. Knowledge is power. I am therefore more than the other man who does not know this a...
This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience - it looks for a way of being constructive. Love is not possessive. Love is not anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own ideas. Love has good manners and does not pursue self...
The first Abenaki word I ever learned was Bitawbagok – the word they use for Lake Champlain. It means, literally, the waters between. Since I’ve come back from Quebec, I have thought of my address as Bitawkdakinna. I don’t know enough Abenaki t...
It was the first time! Just because there weren’t fireworks the first time doesn’t mean there will never be fireworks. We’re human; we’re adults; we teach each other; we communicate; fireworks don’t just go off, wham-bang; fireworks evolve!...
Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they'd seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, whe...
[Piper] rushed to get dressed. By the time she got up on deck, the others had already gathered—all hastily dressed except for Coach Hedge, who had pulled the night watch. Frank’s Vancouver Winter Olympics shirt was inside out. Percy wore pajama p...
If we can’t repair things with the Romans—well, the two sets of demigods have gotten along. That’s why the gods kept us separate. I don’t know if we could ever belong there.” Percy didn’t want to argue, but he couldn’t let go of the hop...
If I had a girl, I’d want her to know that she can be anything she wants and that she doesn't have to rely on her looks or clothes or hair or make-up to define who she is or to get respect from other people. I’d want her to know she has a right t...
I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the standard common among those with the ...
