I began to understand that the most worthwhile obsession is an obsession that is actually independent of the object of fixation. The object is only borrowed as a pretext, a means, an environment, through which or in which the obsessed person can proj...
Mine, said the stone, mine is the hour. I crush the scissors, such is my power. Stronger than wishes, my power, alone. Mine, said the paper, mine are the words that smother the stone with imagined birds, reams of them, flown from the mind of the shap...
Recovery does not refer to an absence of pain or struggle. Rather, recovery is marked by the transition from anguish to suffering. In anguish the paralyzed man and I lived without hope. We experienced anguish as futile pain, pain that revolved in cir...
Being such a tiny little girl For a special ace I owe once more thousand years To entangled with his hands Which are warm and Making me glad He is my destiny Now I’m pleading for I’m mingled to be fated with Such a devotee, Who migrated in an ali...
Your mother hollers that you’re going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don’t stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don’t thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not -- you vault down down...
At that shameful stage in the development of our criticism, literary abuse would overstep all limits of decorum; literature itself was a totally extraneous matter in critical articles: they were pure invective, a vulgar battle of vulgar jokes, double...
Audio of interview - "No I haven't been in a ceremony but I've seen the marks on them, I've seen the terror they're in and I've seen how they were before such events happened and how they are when they speak about it, how consistent they are in other...
Yet who reads to bring about an end, however desirable? Are there not some pursuits that we practise because they are good in themselves, and some pleasures that are final? And is not this among them? I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the ...
Life for both sexes - and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement - is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion, it calls for confidenc...
Consciousness, which is the "reflective" element of Norman's conceptual brain, handles the "higher" functions at the metaphorical tip of the very top of that complicated organ. Because consciousness pays a lot of attention to your thoughts, you tend ...
Renouncing false beliefs will not usher in the millennium. Few things about the strategy of contemporary apologists are more repellent than their frequent recourse to spurious alternatives. The lesser lights inform us that the alternative to Christia...
I believe a boy can have anything in life that he wants once he starts working for it. The main thing is not to give up. It makes no difference how tough things get, just bow your back, keep working, and put your heart and soul into it. As you go alo...
Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear, Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear. So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows As yonder lady o'er her fellows ...
Mad! Quite mad!' said Stalky to the visitors, as one exhibiting strange beasts. 'Beetle reads an ass called Brownin', and M'Turk reads an ass called Ruskin; and-' 'Ruskin isn't an ass,' said M'Turk. 'He's almost as good as the Opium-Eater. He says we...
That said, pointing out inaccurate or unrealistic portrayals of women to younger grade school children-ages five to eight-does seem to be effective, when done judiciously:taking to little girls about body image and dieting, for example, can actually ...
Christ, back in Chicago, we don’t make bicycles any more. It’s all human relations now. The eggheads sit around trying to figure out new ways for everybody to be happy. Nobody can get fired, no matter what; and if somebody does accidentally make ...
In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in his cosmic loneliness. And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done." And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was...
Our democratic societies rest on a meritocratic worldview, or at any rate a meritocratic hope, by which I mean a belief in a society in which inequality is based more on merit and effort than on kinship and rents. This belief and this hope play a ver...
This was the danger of sharing your dreams with your parents. If you told them you wanted to learn to play the guitar, all they heard you say was, “I want to learn to play the guitar,” and then they found some practical, convenient, cheap way, of...
Cerise! Come and kiss me, you red haired harpy,” Izrayl bellowed. She smiled and moved to kiss his stubbly cheek. He held her tight and squeezed. “How goes it Old Dog,” Cerise said fondly to her temporary captor. “Still alive,” he grinned s...
After that, all the while Millie was eating the pudding... we both tore Christopher's character to shreds. It was wonderful fun.... He drove everyone mad in Chrestomanci Castle by insisting on silk shirts and exactly the right kind of pajamas. 'And h...
