If You Can Stand It, Play the Long Game . . . What I mean here is that you have to remain committed to the ultimate goal, which isn’t to win the immediate approval of the online world, or dazzle a workshop, but to improve your storytelling day by d...
We must give our children back their ability to see the divine; we must help them to return to their original innocence where they saw God everywhere they look. They saw the divine in the flowers and the insects of the world, they saw God in the anim...
Is there a support group for people who didn’t like ‘Brokeback Mountain’? We must, if the rave reviews and the newspaper reports are to be believed, be a very tiny — not to mention vulnerable — minority. Am I dead inside because I didn’t ...
Social media has helped make the world flatter and reduced the degrees of separation, leading to the situation where many can interact with people who, but for this platform, they may never have had the privilege to meet or speak with. That is the op...
Stories are how we think. They are how we make meaning of life. Call them schemas, scripts, mental maps, ideas, metaphors, or narratives. Stories are how we inspire and motivate human beings. Great stories help us to understand our place in the world...
They’d arranged to meet with an Omegan mole who worked in the Clinton administration. He was helping them with a new Omega Agency operation involving the Kosovo War, which had just broken out in Europe. Naylor and his cronies were seeking to use Ko...
These guys had names for every conceivable drinking situation. They liked to have a little eye-opener to get themselves going in the morning, a midmorning bracer before attempting anything serious, a few modest cocktails at lunch, followed by the obl...
I didn't really have an interest in politics when I first entered the workforce. What I wanted to do was help people who grew up like me. When I was a kid growing up in Tucson, my father lost his job and we lost everything - including our home. We li...
A strong positive mind is an unbreakable shield against all negative forces and experiences. It never bargains for anything that goes against its true destiny in life. It sees life as an inevitable journey of happiness and success in abundance. There...
Just because you don't like someone doesn't mean you have to talk about them some people may have problems in life and you making rumors can lead to stress and cause the person to kill themselves. This world is filled with crazy people and drunks and...
You know when I was 20 and 30, they were insecurities. Now they're just a new normal. I'm 60 years old, so my expectations of who I am and how I look and how I show up in the world had to shift. Not because I couldn't help it, or not because I did an...
Being doped is a pleasure you pay for. There was always opium there for the people -- in the end it tainted their whole faith. If the Church had not always stood so watchfully behind the ruling powers, there would not have been such attacks against e...
Literature deals with morality but does not necessarily, does not, qua literature, help you to be more moral, either by precept or example. It makes you more aware. Which is to say that it makes you more human by making life more, not less, difficult...
To what extent does anybody control his destiny? Life is very much like falling of the edge of a cliff. You have complete freedom to make all the choices you want to take on your way down. My characters choose to yearn and not lose hope even when the...
The unforeseen is the most beautiful gift life can give us. That is what we must think of multiplying in our domain. That is what should have been talked about in this assembly, and no one has said a word about it ...Art is inconceivable without risk...
How you respond to what is happening in your life can make a difference. Your conduct in the confusion, your resolve while enduring pain and your positive thought process during the tribulation can help you handle what is happening in your life. Thos...
Many lessons can be learned from the history of Western civilization, but one of them is especially clear. Lack of involvement in the affairs of one's society can lead to a sense of powerlessness. In an age that is often crisis-laden and chaotic, an ...
What I mean is, lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most. I mean you can't help it sometimes. What I think is, you're supposed to leave somebody alone if he's at least b...
The institutions of human society treat us as parts of a machine. They assign us ranks and place considerable pressure upon us to fulfill defined roles. We need something to help us restore our lost and distorted humanity. Each of us has feelings tha...
I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections. and it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill. I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self, and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only ...
[Ranger] "How's your mental health?" he asked. "I heard about Soder." [Stephanie] "I'm rattled." "I have a cure." Oh, boy. He put the truck in gear and headed for the exit. "I know what you're thinking," he said. "And that wasn't where I was going. I...
