One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer r...
I have noticed more than once in life that a taste for the ineffably twee can go hand-in-hand with a distinctly uncharitable outlook on the world, I once shared an office with a woman who had covered the wall space behind her desk with pictures of fl...
The next time you feel that you will never get past the things you’re experiencing now, look back on the trials you’ve experienced in the past and think about how far you’ve come since they happened. Trials won’t last forever, and change will...
We call our country home of the brave and land of the free, but it's not. We give a false portrayal of freedom. We're not free — if we were, we'd allow people their freedom. Prohibiting something doesn't make it go away. Prostitution is criminal, a...
Cooking is like playing a violin. The bow is a tool used to play, as is the knives and other tools you use to prepare. (a chef's knife is even held in the same manner) Spices are the notes used in the score. The way the food is cooked and prepared is...
1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal; 2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it; 3) anything t...
We're not obsessed by anything, you see," insisted Ford. "..." "And that's the deciding factor. We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win." "I care about lots of things," said Slartibartfast, his voice trembling partly with annoya...
Universities, he (William Dershowitz) says, have been absorbed into the commercial ethos. Instead of being intervals of freedom, they are breeding grounds for advancement. Students are too busy jumping through the next hurdle in the résumé race to ...
Here all fear of one another, all timidity about praying freely in one's own words in the presence of others may be put aside where in all simplicity and soberness the common, brotherly prayer is lifted to God by one of the brethren. But likewise all...
Life is too minuscule to waste any proportion of time on wondering what other people think about you. In the introductory place, if they had desirable things going on in their lives, they wouldn't have the time to sit around and talk about you. What'...
I have tried to bring a diverse message for a diverse audience but no matter how different we are as men and women and as ambassadors of our own culture--one thing is transparent and transcendental and that is our drive to yearn for meaningful and fu...
They were no longer standing the way he'd stood them, no longer engaged in the glorious basking that overwhelmed him on the headland. They were leaning toward the light now, craning toward it. He’d been dead wrong about the blitheness. The buttercu...
When you get down to the bottom of it, only about half of what we remember really happened. We tend to modify things to make ourselves look better in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Then, if what we did wasn't really very admirable, we tend t...
Skulduggery placed both hands on the table and leaned over. "You've heard about me. You've heard about the things I've done." The smirk faded a little. "So?" "So the stories you've heard are nothing compared to the truth, and the truth is nothing com...
A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in t...
Artists are agents of chaos. It is the artists job to encourage entropy, to promote chaos. Idols must be killed, icons crushed, beliefs shattered. It is the artists job to encourage legitimate, unadulterated, raw thought and emotion. Art that does no...
I've always said "Writer's Block" is a myth. There is no such thing as writer's block, only writers trying to force something that isn't ready yet. Sometimes I don't write for weeks. And then all of the sudden I'll get a rush of inspiration and you c...
humanity suffers terribly from the demons it has created over lengths of time. we learn from nothing that we do. we create religions, heritage, race, traditions, then they all in turn become our stumbling blocks from becoming one. we suffer from the ...
You know Victoria Beckham. She was in that girl group, and they were about to tell us what they really, really wanted, and I was like "Yes, tell me what you really, really want!" And they were like, "Do you really, really wanna know what I really, re...
Grimm: Cat and Mouse (#1.18)" (2012) Edgar Waltz: You may think I'm a monster, but what I am is necessary. No society would survive without order. Free thought is not free. There's no such thing as revolution. The oppressed always become the oppresso...
And yet, it was still a performance. Odin and I both knew it. It was a kind of play, a dream of how things might have been if he and I had been capable of trusting each other for a change. And so we hunted, and sang, and laughed, and told heavily edi...
