I learned that faith isn’t about knowing all of the right stuff or obeying a list of rules. It’s something more, something more costly because it being present and making a sacrifice. Perhaps that’s why Jesus is sometimes called Immanuel - “G...
I miss the honor of serving as a parish pastor. There is nothing quite like it. The most challenging aspect of the job is that you just can't please everybody all the time, no matter how hard you try. But the greatest honor of the office, from my per...
I was never like the rest of you, making plans about the great things I'd do, I never saw myself as anything much, just shy, stupid little Beth, who's only use was at home. Why does everyone want to go away? I love being home, but I don't like being ...
Mailer famously labeled writing the spooky art. He was right. There's a lot of frontal lobe blather, a lot of pencil-sharpening and knuckle-cracking and drafting and chat, but the big decisions are made in the locked subconscious, decisions not just ...
There is one more thing," said Mr. Peabody. "Now you must go and pick up all the feathers." ... "I don't think it's possible to pick up all the feathers," Tommy replied. "It would be just as impossible to undo the damage that you have done by spreadi...
Piper went a little crazy. She cried out with relief and dove straight into the water. What was she thinking? She didn't take a rope or a life vest or anything. But at the moment, she was just so happy that she paddled over to Leo and kissed him on t...
In the harsh veracity of the real world, he was rich, successful, and one of the most desired bachelors in New York—and I was, well, me. A world I hoped wouldn’t tear us apart by pointing out just how different our lives were. “You’re probabl...
Try it on." "It's probably a little snug. Marcie tends to buy down when it comes to sizing." He merely smiled. "It has a slit up the thigh." His smile depened. "Zip it up?" Patch's eyes made a slow assessment of me, sharpening to vivid black. "I'm go...
These books have not made George nobler or better or more truly wise. It is just that he likes listening to their voices, the one or the other, acording to his mood. He misuses them quite ruthlessly - despite the respectful way he has to talk about t...
This was the move that was supposed to sweep me away. She seemed a little out of practice. I guess life with Charley Royce hadn’t exactly been the third reel of The English Patient. It had to be bad if Mickey Dolan was your back-up. Not to put Mick...
Just suppose that the dead do revisit the living. That something approximately to be described as Jim can return to see how George is making out. Would this be at all satisfactory? Would it even be worthwhile? At best, surely, it would be like the br...
People aren’t always what you want them to be. Sometimes they disappoint you or let you down, but you have to give them a chance first. You can’t just meet someone and expect them to be everything you’re looking for and then be angry when they�...
We made up, and I knew just how to do that. I told her, “I feel like dancing. Let me grab my dancing shoes and stick-on mustache (better to tickle your vagina with).” And she replied, “My vagina already has its own mustache.
Then the silence came back, that awful silence that seemed to just take over. In that silence I kept hearing what I had said--heard it repeating itself over and over again like a stuck record. I wanted it to stop. I didn't want to say things like tha...
Napoleon, the greatest of the conquerors, is a sufficient proof that great men of action are criminals, and therefore, not geniuses. One can understand him by thinking of the tremendous intensity with which he tried to escape from himself. There is t...
Gabe realized he was standing there alone, with a goofy smile on his face. Limping inside, he closed the door behind him, her words still lingering in his mind. Gabe wanted more than anything to be able to choose happiness. He wanted a rain storm to ...
There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if could rent one for the holidays. When I was tiny we would by a real tree and stay up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just the right place ...
The Complete Work is essentially dramatic, thought it takes different forms - prose passages in this first volume, poems and philosophies in other volumes. It's the product of the temperament I've been blessed or cursed with - I'm not sure which. All...
We're the Septembers now. The real ones. We are everything to one another. We don't need to say so; it's just true. Sometimes it seems like we're so close we form one single complete person rather than four separate ones. We settle into types- Bridge...
magic swirls about us like an invisible fog of energy that can be tapped by those gifted enough, using a variety of techniques that center on layered spelling, mumbled incantations, and a burst of concentrated thought channeled through the index fing...
I liked him, but since his particular field of interest was Remote Suggestion--the skill of projecting thoughts into people's heads from a distance--I didn't know whether I actually liked him or he was just suggesting I like him, which was both creep...
