I had a dream about you. You smiled at me from across the room, and I captured your smile in a camera obscura. I said if you ever wanted to see your smile again, you’d better pay me the one-time sum of 2,000 gold coins. You took in the news and fro...
I have a hat for it, actually." Elliott made a vague gesture with one hand. "Well, it's more of a full-body suit, really." "Is that a euphemism for a condom?" "No." He marched past me and lay down on the bed. "My mother knitted me a willy-warmer a fe...
. . . I realized with a growing and startling sense of clarity that the seminary was educating and training me for a world that no longer existed. Moreover, the posture of this particular brand of Christianity toward the surrounding culture was one o...
Now, paper and pencils," said Miss Marcy, clapping her hands. Writing paper is scarce in this house, and I had no intention of tearing sheets out of this exercise book, which is a superb sixpenny one the Vicar gave me. In the end, Miss Marcy took the...
We sometimes fail to realise that when we pray to Allah we are in fact performing a great act of ibadah (worship). On the surface it might seem as if we are asking out of self-interest, but we are really proving the sincerity of our belief in the tau...
History is about winners, not about losers. History is about assessing distortions, not copying out truths. History has much to say about the way the powerful handle power, for power engenders records. History is about evidence, and evidence flagrant...
All of my works are steps on my journey, a struggle for truth that I have waged with pen, canvas, and materials. Overhead is a distant, radiant star, and the more I stretch to reach it, the further it recedes. But by the power of my spirit and my sin...
We all colour devotion according to our own likings and dispositions. One man sets great value on fasting, and believes himself to be leading a very devout life, so long as he fasts rigorously, although the while his heart is full of bitterness;–an...
Here is the life you have tried to throw away. Here is your second chance. Here is the destiny you have tried to shake off by inventing a hundred false roles, a hundred false identities for yourself. It will look at first like disaster, but is really...
Not one of the orthodox ministers dare preach what he thinks if he knows a majority of his congregation think otherwise. He knows that every member of his church stands guard over his brain with a creed, like a club, in his hand. He knows that he is ...
A few years ago the Deists denied the inspiration of the Bible on account of its cruelty. At the same time they worshiped what they were pleased to call the God of Nature. Now we are convinced that Nature is as cruel as the Bible; so that, if the God...
It is a painful thing to say to oneself: by choosing one road I am turning my back on a thousand others. Everything is interesting; everything might be useful; everything attracts and charms a noble mind; but death is before us; mind and matter make ...
The sun's champagne streamed from one body into another. And there was a couple on the green silk of the grass, covered by a raspberry umbrella. Only their feet and a little bit of lace could be seen. In the magnificent universe beneath the raspberry...
I don't want to hear about the endless struggles to keep sex exciting, or the work it takes to plan a date night. I want to hear that you guys watch every episode of The Bachelorette together in secret shame, or that one got the other hooked on Break...
I wanted to write something that made no linear sense. None. Zero. Something that was 87% pure nonsense, 12% pure alcohol, and 3% orange juice, for a chaser. That formula is accurate, give or take 2% for the milk. In my experience, comedy is 2/3rds t...
Jules told them, "I used to be a camper here myself," but she was confronted with a squeal of feedback, and even when she repeated her words, she saw that it didn't matter to them that she, a middled-aged woman with a sweater draped over her T-shirt ...
Out of the choked Devonian waters emerged sight and sound and the music that rolls invisible through the composer's brain. They are there still in the ooze along the tideline, though no one notices. The world is fixed, we say: fish in the sea, birds ...
Don't you feel as though you could love everything starting tomorrow, and everything could love you, if only you took an action to set into motion the coming of our new tomorrow and its tomorrow and that one's tomorrow? Shotgun loaded hand on the pum...
...Bin Laden's quotes from the Quaran resonated in my brain: "When you meet the unbelievers, strike them in the neck." "If you do not go out and fight, God will punish you severely and put others in your place." "Wherever you find the polytheists, ki...
It is true that the subliminal in man is the largest part of his nature and has in it the secret of the unseeen dynamisms which explain his surface activities. But the lower vital subconscious which is all that this psycho-analysis of Freud seems to ...
the aforesaid disagreement between these men sprang from a misunderstanding. And the cause of it is that each thinks he is better than the other, when as a matter of fact there is no real difference between them except perhaps some trifling variation...
