These aren't still shots; the camera is always moving. And the scene is always just slipping out of sight, as if in spite of myself I were always descending a hill, rounding a corner, stepping into the street with a companion who urges me on, while I...
Maybe what stopped people from voting wasn't a lack of information about the candidates or a feeling that the outcomes of races didn't matter or a sense that a trip to the polls was inconvenient. What if voting wasn't only a political act, but a soci...
The paradox of love is that to have it is to want to preserve it because it's perfect in the moment but that preservation is impossible because the perfection is only ever an instant passed through. Love like travel is a series of moments that we imm...
I know it's not strictly sex that accounts for my straying the motive usually attributed to men. I think it's just too tempting to have two lives rather than one. Some people think that too much travel begets infidelity: Separation and opportunity te...
Frank closed his troubled blue eyes and tipped his head back, but quickly regretted it. The moment he blocked out the light of the campfire, he was back on the smoke cover land. The ground beneath him seemed to be reaching up, eager to soak the life ...
He meant everything he said, when he said it. But this is his default. And it won out. Right now you're depressed about one thing. Before you were depressed about everything. These are good times for you." "I'm afraid of loving again. I'm afraid I've...
A contemporary Catholic opponent of Martin Luther complained, "Even tailors and shoe-makers – even women and ignorant persons, who could read but little – studied it (the German Bible) with the greatest avidity as the fountain of truth. Some comm...
All zoos, even the most enlightened, are built upon the idea both beguiling and repellent—the notion that we can seek out the wildness of the world and behold its beauty, but that we must first contain that wildness. Zoos argue that they are fighti...
I tried to map the cultural trends leading up to it but as I did they grew, interconnecting and weaving backwards and sideways out to everything. Next to the megalithic institutionalized shredding of people's humanity, marked by tombstone malls and s...
The routines of almost all famous writers, from Charles Darwin to John Grisham, similarly emphasise specific starting times, or number of hours worked, or words written. Such rituals provide a structure to work in, whether or not the feeling of motiv...
Recordaba con precisión cada una de las cosas que me había dicho y de un «espero que nos veamos pronto» sacaba la certidumbre de que él sufría mi ausencia tanto como yo la suya y que se pasaba los días contando el tiempo que le faltaba para ve...
The fatal misconception behind brainstorming is that there is a particular script we should all follow in group interactions.... [W]hen the composition of the group is right—enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpr...
[Obituary of atheist philosopher Richard Robinson] An Atheist's Values is one of the best short accounts of liberalism (a term Robinson accepted) and humanism (a term he ignored) produced during the present century, all the more powerful for its luci...
For Attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run their fingers through it once a day. For poise, walk with ...
WEATHERS This is the weather the cuckoo likes, And so do I; When showers betumble the chestnut spikes, And nestlings fly; And the little brown nightingale bills his best, And they sit outside at 'The Traveller's Rest,' And maids come forth sprig-musl...
[from ] In those days also people loved, envied, sought truth and virtue, and where carried away by passions; and there was the same complex mental and moral life among the upper classes, where were in some instances even more refined than now. If we...
Nobody knows what the whales may have to click and clack about, but it could be a form of voting-time to stop here and synchronously dive down in search of deep water squid, now time to resurface, move on, dive again. Clans also seem to caucus on whi...
Legends of the Silver Stallion had been told for years now, whenever mountain stockmen met round the campfires or on the winding hill tracks. Songs were sung about him to the cattle and both songs and tales had become even stranger since his supposed...
Last night I heard a robin singing in the rain, And the raindrop's patter made a sweet refrain, Making all the sweeter the music of the strain. So, I thought, when trouble comes, as trouble will, Why should I stop singing? Just beyond the hill It may...
High Pasture Come up--come up: in the dim vale below The autumn mist muffles the fading trees, But on this keen hill-pasture, though the breeze Has stretched the thwart boughs bare to meet the snow, Night is not, autumn is not--but the flow Of vast, ...
You can make a successful run for political office in this country without an especially thick résumé, any exceptional talent for expressing yourself, a noteworthy education or, for that matter, a basic grasp of science. But you better have religio...
