Carter's renowned 1979 "malaise speech" [...] is little remembered for what it actually was: a call to arms for fixing our nation's dire energy future. "Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977--never" [....
Persephone is just a name for a spirit of beauty at a certain time in history. I'm sure we could argue a biblical place for her if it matters. Your wife has the name of that pagan goddess, but the fact remains that she's your mortal bride in the Year...
The smell of the sea, of kelp and fish and bitter moving water, rose stronger in my nostrils. It flooded my consciousness like an ancestral memory. The swells rose sluggishly and fell away, casting up dismal gleams between the boards of the pier. And...
Allow intelligent design into science textbooks, lecture halls, and laboratories, and the cost to the frontier of scientific discovery—the frontier that drives the economies of the future—would be incalculable. I don't want students who could mak...
Andy Dufresne: 'That's the beauty of music. They can't get that from you...haven't you ever felt that way about music?' Red: 'I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it though. Didn't make much sense in here.' Andy: 'Here's where...
Dangerous as a lightning strike, as lethal as a pair of crisscrossing short swords, William whispered, “You’re about to find out how your liver tastes, my friend.” “I have tasted it already,” Zacharel said, his voice its usual monotone. The...
Both of us take a moment to put our thoughts in order. I'm staring down at my glass when the pause in conversation is interrupted. “Come with me, now!” He grabs hold of my drink just as I’m about to take a swig, and puts it back down on the bar...
Why don’t you just spit it out?” she said sharply. “Just say what I know you’re dying to say— ” “All I’m trying to say is that if you hadn’t used those powers in the first place, Gemdorin would never have known about them, the drago...
Martha said, "Do you have any idea of the kind of surprise your brothers are in for sooner or later? Or are you doing it on purpose?" Cord put his hat on and pulled it low, hiding his eyes. "Grown man walks around with his eyes shut tight, he shouldn...
Have you ever considered what Adam and Eve were doing when they got into so much trouble? As I read the story, they were shopping. The forbidden fruit was not scattered throughout the garden, not in many places, not in multiple locations, but one pla...
...we, and I mean humans, are meaning makers. We do not discover the meanings of mysterious things, we invent them. We make meanings because meaninglessness terrifies us above all things. More than snakes, even. More than falling, or the dark. We tri...
[I]t must be owned, that liberty is the perfection of civil society; but still authority must be acknowledged essential to its very existence: and in those contests, which so often take place between the one and the other, the latter may, on that acc...
My mother has made choices in her life, as we all must, and she is at peace with them. I can see her peace. She did not cop out on herself. The benefits of her choices are massive-a long, stable marriage to a man she still calls her best friend; a fa...
Gundar seemed to come to a decision. "Well, as my old mam used to say, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck." "Very wise," Halt said. "And what exactly do your mother's words of wisdom have to do ...
You live," I said, "Knowing you will die. Everyone lives every day knowing they could die at any moment. And yet they carry on. They lift their heads high and carry on and build a beautiful, amazing world. What for, if there is no point? Bravery. Cou...
She remembered the way the damp, coarse sand had clumped to her legs and hands, and burrowed beneath her nails and into the folds of her clothes, and she had wondered why the British children in her storybooks were always excited about going to the b...
Life is a valuable and unique opportunity to discover who you are. But it seems as soon as you near answering that age-old question, something unexpected always happens to alter your course. And who it is you thought you were suddenly changes. Then c...
Time, I think, is like walking backward away from something: say, from a kiss. First there is the kiss; then you step back, and the eyes fill up your vision, then the eyes are framed in the face as you step further away; the face then is part of a bo...
Sometimes it all becomes too much. Your body and mind will just give way. Part of you may want to blissfully fade into nothing, but you never do. After a while all the memories and emotions make you shut down but never fully disappear—it’s safer ...
See? Nothing to it." "I see all right," Carly said, her tone full of awe. She gaped at him. "What?" "Um..." "Jesus, Carly, what is it?" He spun around to make sure there wasn't something behind him that would justify her reaction and the look of impr...
Do you know why the leaves change colour, Makin?" They did look spectacular. The forest had grown around us as we traveled and the canopy burned with colour, from deepest red to flame orange, an autumn fire spreading in defiance of the rain. "I don't...
