History deals with situations and figures not imaginary but real. It demands therefore a combination of qualities unnecessary to the poet or writer of romance - glacial judgment coupled with fervent sympathy. The poet may be an uninspired illiterate,...
Hundreds of thousands of people live in my library. Some are real, others are fictional. The real ones are the so-called imaginary characters in works of literature, the fictional ones are their authors. We know everything about the former, or at lea...
Quit worrying about hell or dreaming about heaven as they are both present inside this very moment. Why worry so much about the aftermath, an imaginary future, when this very moment is the only time we can truly and fully experience the presence and ...
I like bubbles in everything. I respect the power of silence. In cold or warm weather I favor a mug of hot cocoa. I admire cats―their autonomy, grace, and mystery. I awe at the fiery colors in a sunset. I believe in deity. I hear most often with my...
In fact the flexibility of our memories makes it relatively easy because we can meld all these different memories together seamlessly to invent a new imaginary scene, one which we have never even contemplated before, let alone witnessed. The flexibil...
From then on, as long as I was at Ault, I would never be alone. Martha and I would get along, our friendship would last. I felt certainty and relief. Years later, I heard a minister at a wedding describe marriage as cutting sorrow in half and doublin...
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...
You are the strangest girl I've ever met," he said, like he thought I was joking. He picked up his water bottle and gave me a sideways glance. "Have you ever kissed anybody?" he asked, and took a sip. I smirked. "There aren't a whole lot of opportuni...
Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by...
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...
Bricks could be used to make a billion dollars. It’s easy! All you need to do is fill up a shopping cart full of bricks, park it outside of a grocery store, and wait for the coming hyperinflation. Then, when some soccer mom walks by with a shopping...
(Speaking about ponies engaging in a game of running around and chasing a ball with "imaginary riders") Along with everything else about it, it seemed to be a parable for life. Going forwards and backwards and round in circles, striving ever forward ...
Even at that time the hope of leaving behind messages in bottles on the flood of barbarism bursting on Europe was an amiable illusion: the desperate letters stuck in the mud of the spirit of rejuvenesence and were worked up by a band of Noble Human-B...
The diaries of opium-eaters record how, during the brief period of ecstasy, the drugged person's dreams have a temporal scope of ten, thirty, sometimes sixty years or even surpass all limits of man's ability to experience time--dreams, that is, whose...
I looked at Mum and realized -- -- that she was telling an untruth. A untruth. And I remember thinking in that instant how thrilling and grown-up it must be to say something so untrue, as opposed to the little amateur fibs I was already practiced at ...
Why keep in touch with them? That's what I want to know,' asked Larry despairingly. 'What satisfaction does it give you? They're all either fossilized or mental.' 'Indeed, they're not mental,' said Mother indignantly. 'Nonsense, Mother... Look at Aun...
We must all allow ourselves the fantasy of projection from time to time, a chance to clothe ourselves in the imaginary gowns and tails of what has never been and never will be. This gives some polish to our tarnished lives, and sometimes we may choos...
That evening he plays with the children, cleans the hamster's cage with them, gets them into their pyjamas, and reads to them three times over, once together, then to Jake on his own, then to Naomi. It is at times like these that his life makes sense...
We have inhabited both the actual and the imaginary realms for a long time. But we don't live in either place the way our parents or ancestors did. Enchantment alters with age, and with the age. We know a dozen Arthurs now, all of them true. The Shir...
You do love him," I said, and she swung her gaze back to me. "I do." She smoothed her hand over her thighs, flattening imaginary wrinkles from the linen. "Even though he's not your family." Saylor laughed, a surprisingly husky sound. "Don't you love ...
But this first clumsy attempt showed her that the imagination itself was a source of secrets: once she had begun a story, no one could be told. Pretending in words was too tentative, too vulnerable, too embarrassing to let anyone know. Even writing o...
