Exactly. That's what's been happening here for the past ten thousand years: You've been doing what you damn well please with the world. And of course you mean to go right on doing what you damn well please with it, because the whole damn thing belong...
How, then, does the written word work? What part of a reader absorbs it - or should that be a double question: what part of a reader absorbs what part of a text? I think that underneath, or alongside, a reader's conscious response to a text, whatever...
That's not a lucky thing, Cecil," said Teresa, "it's a sacred thing." "What's the difference?" Cecil asked. Teresa smiled. "Roughly this," she said. "A thing is magic if you get what you want through it; but if it is blessed you get what God wants th...
What a familiarity with the construction of Turing test bots had begun to show me was that we fail - again and again- to actually be human with other humans, so maddeningly much of the time.
When the most important things in our life happen we quite often do not know, at the moment, what is going on. A man does not always say to himself, "hullo! i'm growing up." It is only when he looks back that he realises what has happened and recogni...
Your past doesn't actually exist. What you think is your past is a tiny blip of electricity in your brain happening right now. And if that's happening now, what's actually happening right now isn't really happening for you at all. This is what it is ...
Oh God, this is my fantasy! Where those just-friend boys suddenly realize they love me.' 'I don't know if this was like .' 'What happened?' He thought for a moment. 'Well. I realized I loved her.' Hannah gasped. 'Oh God, that's so sweet.
Robbed of a rapt audience, advertisers know that influencing how you spend what to do while depends on having some control over how you spend the resources in your head.
Target your random acts of kindness, to keep a tally of who owes what
In the end,” Callum said, his voice soft, gentle, “it all comes back to you. You protect them [your pack], you love them, you live for them, and someday, you die. That’s what it means, Bryn-girl, to be what we are [to be Alpha]. It’s lonely. ...
I wondered, as I wondered so often when I was that age, who /I/ was, and what exactly was looking at the face in the mirror. If the face I was looking at wasn't me, and I knew it wasn't, because I would still be me whatever happened to my face, then ...
The way I remember it the tribe got paid some huge amount." "That's what they said to him. He said, What can you pay for the way a man lives? He said, What can you pay for the way a man is? They didn't understand.
It was hard to tell if he was lying, or really believed his own bullshit. “We’re good for each other. You give me what I need. I give you what you need. No one needs to know what that is because it’s a secret between us. So we put on our suit. ...
Sorting out what's good and bad is the province of ethics. It is also what keeps priests, pundits, and parents busy. Unfortunately, what keeps children and philosophers busy is asking the priests, pundits and parents, "Why?
What do you want me to do? Arrest them all?” “When you can, absolutely.” “And when I can’t?” “Do whatever is necessary to remove their ability to act against us—against humanity.” “You mean kill them.” Her expression darkened in...
I'm supposed to be a man but I can't help thinking no one ever showed me what that is supposed to look like. Maybe that is why I ride the middle all the time—never offending anyone, never getting a hard time, but never much standing out either.
I didn’t make choices based on what I liked or didn’t like. I simply accepted what they chose for me. My role had always been to react and adapt to what was decided by other people, by outside circumstances, or in my mind, by God. My voice went u...
That was what humans did: They left on another messages through time, pressed between pages or carved into rock. Like reaching out a hand through time, and trusting in a phantom hoped-for hand to catch yours. Humans did not last forever. They could o...
The problem with a lot of people is that what they think is a virtue is actually a vice in disguise. It's much easier to convince yourself that you're reasonable and civilised, than soft and weak, isn't it?
How does "Let go and let God" measure up against Scripture? Remember, the test isn't what sounds deep, what sounds holy, or even what makes sense to us. For the Christian, the test is Scripture.
I hate stupidity, but what I hate even more is when people actually brag about it.
