It is extraordinary that nobody nowadays under the stress of great troubles is turned into stone or a bird or a tree or some inanimate object; they used to undergo such metamorphoses in ancient times (or so they say), though whether that is myth or a...
The result of my journey was to bring a certain mental peace. Where there had been chaos there was now order. My mind was at rest. I had a philosophy at last. The words of Christ "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," had a new meaning for me. Not in...
(...) I let go, crying and unable to stop because God was such a dirty crook, contemptible skunk, that's what he was for doing that thing to that woman. Come down out of the skies, you God, come on down and I'll hammer your face all over the city of ...
College had once been my greatest aspiration; it stood for everything my mother did not—intellectualism, feminism, freedom. But being kidnapped had given me plenty of time to think, and somewhere between all that fear and dread, I'd realized that w...
This was now officially the most inane conversation in which Griff had ever been a participant—and that included a drunken debate with Del over ostrich racing. “The color isn’t too awful?” She twisted a fold of the skirt. “The draper called...
Ok," he says. "First lesson." Noah broadens his stance, taking his place firmly on the embassy side of the threshold. "in the United States," he says. Then, with both feet, he leaps on to the sidewalk. "Out of the United States." Quickly, he jumps ba...
My optimism and confidence come not from feeling I'm luckier than other mortals, and they sure don't come from visualizing victory. They're the result of a lifetime spent visualizing defeat and figuring out how to prevent it. Like most astronauts, I'...
I think how we are all broken over one thing or another, how we all limp about, dragging our sorrows & troubles, our failures & disappointments, our perfect loneliness, & how it is when we suddenly open our eyes & see someone next to us dragging thei...
Surely, comrades, you do not want Jones back?" Once again this argument was unanswerable. Certainly the animals did not want Jones back; if the holding of debates on Sunday mornings was liable to bring him back, then the debates must stop. Boxer, who...
Believe," said the rumbling voice. "If you are to survive, you must believe." "Believe what?" asked Shadow. "What should I believe?" He stared at Shadow, the buffalo man, and he drew himself up huge, and his eyes filled with fire. He opened his spit-...
I know for a fact the first UFOs reported in modern times, just before the crash at Roswell, were boomerang shaped and were reported as 'flying saucers' to describe the motion of their flight, like a saucer skipping over water. Yet immediately after,...
It goes back to keeping things equal. Friendship feels really demeaning if one person still likes the other more, which is probably what caused the breakup in the first place. It’s such a misnomer that ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’ have the ...
It seems to me that the moralist is the most useless and contemptible of creatures. He is useless in that he would expend his energies upon making judgments rather than upon gaining knowledge, for the reason that judgment is easy and knowledge is dif...
Gordie, the white boy genius, gave me this book by a Russian dude named Tolstoy, who wrote, 'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' Well, I hate to argue with a Russian genius, but Tolstoy didn't know Indians, ...
The very good people did not convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands - and you hated the things it asked of one; you hated happiness bought by di...
As he paid the hansom and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge in the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the most difficult in marriage. 'After that I suppose we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbin...
But that was last year,” I protested as we walked through school on Tuesday, three days before Halloween. “I’m serious, you know how people are. They forget about things.” “Oh, really?” Roux said, then turned and smiled at a brunette pass...
The acquisition by dishonest means and cunning,' said Levin, feeling that he was incapable of clearly defining the borderline between honesty and dishonesty. 'Like the profits made by banks,' he went on. 'This is evil, I mean, the acquisition of enor...
The love that we feel for each other is not about the worldly things, those materialistic possessions, or great looks either. It’s about the breath I hold at your sheer sight. It’s about the constant drumming of my heart when you come near me, ma...
You have come nearer to mastering a good many aspects of cooking than anyone except a handful of great chefs, and some day it will pay off. I know it will. You will just have to go on working, and teaching, and getting around, and spreading the gospe...
Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be ret...
