I do not know by what extraordinary mental accident modern writers so constantly connect the idea of progress with the idea of independent thinking. Progress is obviously the antithesis of independent thinking. For under independent or individualisti...
When you're asked to stay out of a bar you don't just punch the owner--you come back with your army and tear the place down, destroy the whole edifice and everything it stands for. No compromise. If a man gets wise, mash his face. If a woman snubs yo...
summer, after all, is a time when wonderful things can happen to quiet people. for those few months, you’re not required to be who everyone thinks you are, and that cut-grass smell in the air and the chance to dive into the deep end of a pool give ...
When the rich give a party and the meal is finished, a man carries round amongst the guests a wooden image of a corpse in a coffin, carved and painted to look as much like the real thing as possible, and anything from 18 inches to 3 foot long; he sho...
It was at that point Ginny felt a presence and turning to look into his eyes she knew destiny was waiting, just around the corner, over the hill. His dark limpid pools, full of hope and wonder, gazed longingly at her and slowly, as his stare captured...
I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation. I expected — an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There had never been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, jus...
As he drove away, I began to think that what kept us together was perhaps not even our romance with an imaginary France. That was just a veneer, an illusion. Rather, it was our desperate inability to lead ordinary lives with ordinary people anywhere-...
A sense of accomplishment Ahh yes. There's just (Nothing like it) Today, KNOW You can make it happen like no other. It's the Truth. Lean into the direction of your dreams today. Everything is brewing for you, all that you want is on the brink of comp...
Jennings saw this and held the gun up with his fingers splayed placatingly as if to show her that he wasn’t planning on using it. Not yet, anyway. “I don’t want to hurt you again, Lily,” he told her. “So just make sure you don’t do anythi...
Little things matter far more than big ones. We remember them longer. We can’t control the big things. If you think about what’s happened in the past, it will be the small moments that come to the forefront, not the big transitions. The big thing...
Every one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. Some meaning seems distinct almost within reach, but is elusive; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attach...
You have to love and respect your body, just as you must love and respect your soul, before you can truly love and respect the bodies and souls of those you care for. Of course the body itself is no matter to Heaven for the same reason that matter is...
Then it's settled. Once I have taken my last breath - and by the sound and feel of that last cough, it could be just about the time I finish this sentence - possession of the company will be given to Cindy, at which time she has one year to turn a pr...
We don’t have no say, ‘cause we was an afterthought. He yanked us up out o’ man’s ribs, but He made man out the Earth. He made him out the dirt and the mud and made him out the world, so man is the world. Women…women just a part o’ men.�...
When statistics come in saying that only 29 percent of American women would describe themselves as feminist - and only 42 percent of British women - I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of 'liberation for women' is not fo...
As she turned left to the gateway, it occurred to her that swimming was only one of a very large number of things she had no idea what to do. Peter had been right to object to her ignorance. "It's not that I'm lazy," she explained to Waif as they arr...
When the subject turns to abortion, cosmetic intervention, birth, motherhood, sex, love, work, misogyny, fear, or just how you feel in your own skin, women still won’t often tell the truth to each other unless they are very, very drunk. Perhaps the...
When you've spent thirty years entering rooms filled with strangers you feel less pressure than when you've had only half that number of years of experience. You know what the room and the people in it probably hold for you and you go looking for it....
Just because you're an adult doesn't mean you're grown up. Growing up means being patient, holding your temper, cutting out the self-pity, and quitting with the righteous indignation.' 'Why do so many people seem to love righteous indignation?' 'Beca...
I had a dream about you. I was lonely and you were lonely, and you suggested that we could be lonely together. But I just scoffed because if we were lonely together, we wouldn’t be lonely. So I wandered off to be by myself. Then I got hit by a truc...
I had a dream about you. You had just beat me in the 400 Meter IM at the Olympics. But I was competing in a white wedding dress, and you cheated and wore Michael Phelps’ Speedo. Still, I decided to marry you because instead of one ring, you offered...