During the persecutions under the Emperor Domitian, John was summoned to Rome, where he was tortured by immersion in a pot of boiling oil and subsequently banished to the island of Patmos in the Aegean sea. It was there he wrote his Apocalypse. It wa...
As we parted at the Natural History Museum in London, I asked Richard Fortey how science ensures that when one person goes there's someone ready to take his place. He chuckled rather heartily at my naiveté. 'I'm afraid it's not as if we have substit...
None of us asked for this life. I, of all people should know that our paths were chosen for us and we were just along for the ride, doing what was necessary and expected. There were far greater forces at work here. He was playing my heartstrings, whi...
It's idiotic, it's crazy. If you die and then you're just nothing, there isn't any point to anything. Why do we live at all if we die and stop being? Father wasn't ready to be stopped. No one's ready to be stopped. We don't have *time* to be ready to...
Often when he was not working he had come here and sat an entire afternoon, lulled by the din and music from the other rooms into a state of vague ecstasy, while he contemplated the small sheet of water outside the window. It was that happy frame of ...
Grace: Outside, deep in the woods, I heard a long keening wail, and then another, as the wolves began to howl. More voices pitched in, some low and mournful, others high and short, an eerie and beautiful chorus. I knew my wolf's howl; his rich tone s...
- Got us a full moon too coming tomorrow night. Just make things a whole lot worse. All we need. - Why is that? - What’s that, Marshal? - The full moon. You think it makes people crazy? - I know it does.- Found a wrinkle in one of the pages and use...
At the tattoo parlor, my friend worked with needle and ink applying a design to the skin on his client's back, as the three of us sat discussing our spiritual desires and ambivalence about religion. In the midst of our conversation, the man under the...
When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that par...
Actually, nothing hurts like hearing the word slut, unless it is hearing the word rape dropped about carelessly. Again, a word I wouldn't have thought much about, except that when I was in high school a girl gave her senior speech on her best friend'...
Dorothea, with all her eagerness to know the truths of life, retained very childlike ideas about marriage. She felt sure that she would have accepted the judicious Hooker, if she had been born in time to save him from that wretched mistake he made in...
Out in the stone-pile the toad squatted with its glowing jewel-eyes and, maybe, its memories. I don't know if you'll admit a toad could have memories. But I don't know, either, if you'll admit there was once witchcraft in America. Witchcraft doesn't ...
At night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look out over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying in his own aircraft to the stratosphe...
What is morality? It is not the following of enjoined rules of conduct. It is not a question of standing above temptations, or of conquering hate, anger, greed, lust and violence. Questioning your actions before and after creates the moral problem. W...
Boys will always be boys,’ he said. ‘The relationship obviously wasn’t meant to be.’ He told me I should trust that the break-up was for the best, even if I couldn’t see that yet. As with every form of suffering, heartache brings with it ca...
The fences I thought meant security were the walls of a prison instead…A fearful spirit is never from the Lord (2 Timothy 1:7). It’s the prison, not the cliff, that’s the scary place. It’s awful to realize that my female anxieties can hinder ...
I believe you!' the artiste exclaimed finally and extinguishes his gaze. 'I do! These eyes are not lying! How many times have I told you that your basic error consists in underestimating the significance of the human eye. Understand that the tongue c...
Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him-mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread:...
I've never understood it,' continued Wilfred Carr, yawning. 'It's not in my line at all; I never had enough money for my own wants, let alone for two. Perhaps if I were as rich as you or Croesus I might regard it differently.' There was just sufficie...
I thought about that while he made his next calls, while I kept on with the newsletters. I thought about it during Sunday service at Word of Life, and during study hours in my room, with the Viking Erin and her squeaky pink highlighter. What it meant...
A man going quietly about his business all day long expends far more muscular energy than an athlete who lifts a huge weight once a day. This has been proved physiologically, and so the social sum total of everybody's little everyday efforts, especia...
