Meeting writers is always so disappointing. I got over wanting to meet live writers quite a long time ago. There is this terrific book that has changed your life, and then you meet the author, and he has shifty eyes and funny shoes and he won't talk ...
Something happened during Matt's talk. When I sat down I was one person, but by the time he was done, I was someone else. Someone changed. Someone new. Someone I didn't know. My arms were covered in gooseflesh. My stomach was doing this buoyant, top-...
We all experience many freakish and unexpected events - you have to be open to suffering a little. The philosopher Schopenhauer talked about how out of the randomness, there is an apparent intention in the fate of an individual that can be glimpsed l...
Was’ and ‘is’ – in English there is very little difference between these two words. Only one letter more , just two letters different. But it is a lifetime, it is a world of difference. Time does not allow you to take the past along with you....
There will always be ups and downs, twists and turns in our lives. But we have to find the strength to keep moving forward. The past is done, it’s over, and you can’t change it. You can hold on to your memories and learn from them. Look at what�...
Now when Túrin learnt from Finduilas of what had passed, he was wrathful, and he said to Gwindor: 'In love I hold you for your rescue and sake-keeping. But now you have done ill to me, friend, to betray my right name, and call my doom upon me, from ...
He’s got things to do, places to be, realities to believe in. He can feel the phone he’s been told to keep switched off in this communication-free zone vibrating in his pocket and he thanks God for its rebellion and, when the nurse pops out, he q...
People had been working for so many years to make the world a safe, organized place. Nobody realized how boring it would become. With the whole world property-lined and speed-limited and zoned and taxed and regulated, with everyone tested and registe...
What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporat...
Miro, I'm so sorry. I always felt such pity for you humans because you could only think of one thing at a time and your memories were so imperfect and . . . now I realize that just getting through the day without killing somebody can be an achievemen...
I've noticed the Fair Folk often say 'perhaps' when there is a truth they want to hide," Clary said. "It keeps you from having to give a straight answer." "Perhaps so," said the Queen with an amused smile. "'Mayhap' is a good word too," Alec suggeste...
Many of our problems are broadly similar to those that undermined ... Norse Greenland, and that many other past societies also struggled to solve. Some of those past societies failed (like the Greenland Norse) and others succeeded ... The past offers...
Grub Street turns out good things almost as often as Parnassus. For if a writer is hard up enough, if he’s far down enough (down where I have been and am rising from, I am really saying), he can’t afford self-doubt and he can’t let other people...
The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, ...
Gen. Matthew Ridgeway "intended not to impose his will on his men, but to allow the men under him to find something in themselves that would make them more confident, more purposeful fighting men. It was their confidence in themselves that would make...
if I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all since there is a tendency when you really begin to learn something about a thing not to want to write about it but rather to keep on learning about it always and at no ti...
The new fashions sold in department stores had thrown skilled American seamstresses out of work, you see. They’d been displaced by immigrant girls doing piecework for a pittance in terrible sweatshops. I refused to patronize a garment industry that...
It took me a moment. I blinked, and suddenly it swam into focus and I had to frown very hard to keep myself from giggling out loud like the schoolgirl Deb had accused me of being. Because he had arranged the arms and legs in letters, and the letters ...
So you didn’t tell me it was a messed-up idea to keep this all a secret because. . .” Because experience is the only teacher,” Hey-Soos says. “Even if I could have told you, it would have been a lecture. Why do you think kids don’t listen t...
Alicia's sweet friend, Cassie, who never thought of anyone as being a stranger, rushed up to Halloran and kneed him in the groin. The big bad dragon shifter cried out, clutched his crotch, and fell to his knees. Cassie grabbed Alicia's arm and ran wi...
The nature of compassion isn't coming to terms with your own suffering and applying it to others: It's knowing that other folks around you suffer and, no matter what happens to you, no matter how lucky or unlucky you are, they keep suffering. And if ...
