But you want to know about the influence of books on my life, and as I’ve said, there was only one. Seneca. Do you know who he was? He was a Roman philosopher who wrote letters to imaginary friends telling them how to behave for the rest of their l...
Teachers who complain 'These kids have no work ethic' couldn't be farther off the mark. The problem is not that these kids lack a work ethic; the problem is that some of them see no connection between a work ethic and school. None of them would think...
Occasionally I looked up towards some vast old apartment with its shutters still open and where amphibious men and women, adapting themselves each evening to living in an element different from their daytime one, swam about slowly in the dense liquid...
You've done her a service to teach her that romantic love is largely made of illusion." [said Mina.] "Is it?" Alessandra asked, unable to suppress a worried sigh. Mina looked at her as if she knew exactly what Alessandra was thinking. "I said 'romant...
Why, Tom - us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people - we go on.' 'We take a beatin' all the time.' 'I know.' Ma chuckled. 'Maybe that makes us ...
Many skills, as every successful entrepreneur knows, cannot be taught in school. They require doing. Sometimes a life of doing. And where money-making is concerned, nothing compresses the time frame needed to leap from my-shit-just-sits-there-until-i...
Over the green squares of the fields and the low curves of a wood there rose in the distance a grey, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long tim...
It was one thing to make a mistake; it was another thing to keep making it. I knew what happened when you let yourself get close to someone, when you started to believe they loved you: you'd be disappointed. Depend on someone, and you might as well a...
I think you can love a person too much. You put someone up on a pedestal, and all of a sudden, from that perspective, you notice what's wrong - a hair out of place, a run in a stocking, a broken bone. You spend all your time and energy making it righ...
Why is it that you guys are so conservative in your views, in the face of the almost complete lack of understanding of what is going on in your field?” I asked. The answer was as simple as it was surprising. “If we [cosmologists] don’t accept s...
Sin’s cold, calculating, and dangerous. She scares the shit outta me. I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley and that’s the truth. Compared to her, you’re a damned Sun angel.” “You just don’t know her,” Cass said in a soft voice,...
...You believe that the kind of story you want to tell might be best received by the science fiction and fantasy audience. I hope you're right, because in many ways this is the best audience in the world to write for. They're open-minded and intellig...
I just wondered where you —” Ron broke off, shrugging. “Nothing. I’m going back to bed.” “Just thought you’d come nosing around, did you?” Harry shouted. He knew that Ron had no idea what he’d walked in on, knew he hadn’t done it ...
Is there somebody out there? Amy, is that you?” her mother called. “No. Tell me this isn’t happening.” Quinn rested his forehead against hers. “Has she got a wiretap on you or something? I swear, she’s like a walking hard-on detector.” ...
To the everlasting credit of the people of District 12, not one person claps. Not even the ones holding betting slips, the ones who are usually beyond caring. Possibly because they know me from the Hob, or knew my father, or have encountered Prim, wh...
There are very few, very fuckin' few people, Kia, who get what's precious in this world. They work their asses off for pure shit and think they'd fight and die to keep it. You don't fight and die for shit. You fight and die for things that matter. Yo...
I think of what wild animals are in our imaginations. And how they are disappearing — not just from the wild, but from people’s everyday lives, replaced by images of themselves in print and on screen. The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animal...
It wasn’t until someone kicked his legs that Nik woke up. Alek, snoring beside him, his head resting on his shoulder. Ban snoring on the other couch, the noise rivaled only by the dog. He looked into the impossibly cranky face of Zach Sheridan. “...
...once I realized that Australia’s top highway speed of 110 kilometers per hour was the same as going 65 in the U.S., all my hardened American enthusiasm for speed went limp until it felt like the car was hardly moving at all. Even worse, most str...
Will this be in the examination, Mr Hecker?" was the limit of my students' interest in any given subject. If it was going to be in the test they took notes, if it was not going to be in the test they did not take notes. Their silent, depthless stares...
Since the Leeburg Pike [at Tyson's Corner] carries six to eight lanes of fast-moving traffic and the mall lacks an obvious pedestrian entrance, I decided to negotiate the street in my car rather than on foot. This is a problem planners call the 'driv...
