Outside the hospital, a young girl who was selling small bouquets of daffodils, their green stems tied with lavender ribbons. I watched as my mother bought out the girl's whole stock. Nurse Eliot, who remembered my mother from eight years ago volunte...
Etre homme, c'est précisément être responsable. C'est connaître la honte en face d'une misère qui ne semblait pas dépendre de soi. C'est être fier d'une victoire que les camarades ont remportée. C'est sentir, en posant sa pierre, que l'on con...
Never let a red line become the cage from which there is no escape. Constricting yourself in statements without any actions coming forth in the future in not engaging in compromise or negotiation will hang you on a tightrope by your own tongue. More ...
I had more to say,” Sin said, still looking frustrated. “But it doesn’t come out right when I try. I always say the wrong things.” Boyd nodded but he was so caught by their proximity, by the green of Sin’s eyes, that at first he struggled w...
The cost for my survival must have been hundreds of millions of dollars. All to save one dorky botanist. Why bother? Well, okay. I know the answer to that. Part of it might be what I represent: progress, science, and the interplanetary future we've d...
I knew I was a grain of sand in the vast desert that never ended and he was a sparkling star in the sky. I was a fish who couldn’t breathe in air and had to stay in dark waters forever while he was a majestic bird who soared so high that he barely ...
Of course one’s sense of identification with the nation is inflected by all kinds of particulars, including one’s class, race, gender, and sexual identification. … But [regarding] national character …, aside from references to a national aest...
True love can't be shaken completely, and inwardly binds, and even blinds you to another person endlessly. No matter what they do, you want to work it out; to hold them closely; to have them beside you. You can't stand to be in arguments with them. Y...
Wrong Question: How to love? Right Question: Why am I afraid to love? Wrong Question: Why do you love me? Right Question: Do I love myself as much as you do? Wrong Question: Why does love hurt? Right Question: Why do I live in fantasies and expect so...
We lose our ability to live fully if we neglect or ignore our responsibility to the other people who share this planet with us. We simply cannot reach our full potential without the insights and observations that other people--our teachers--have to g...
Today I prayed for Boston, for America, my home away from home. Today, I realized how lucky we Sri Lankans are to have peace in our country. How I feel today, hearing of the bombs going off in the city brings back memories of how I used to feel four ...
Look at it this way—before any of this wood became parts of the shelves or the desk or the chair, all of it was in pieces—just pieces of wood. But the wood was full of potential. It could be shaped into anything that a carpenter wanted it to be s...
Poor Cook, thought Captain, I must be kinder to her. She makes a splendid pet. How faithful she is! I always say you can't get the same love from a dog that you can from a human. So clever, too. I believe she understands every word I say. I believe t...
In ordinary perception, the senses send an overwhelming flood of information to the brain, which the brain then filters down to a trickle it can manage for the purpose of survival in a highly competitive world. Man has become so rational, so utilitar...
My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day. I told them this story: In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every...
Walker and Timothy sat quietly for a very long time. “Why do so many people make it so hard for anyone to help them or to love them?” Walker asked finally. Timothy chuckled. “Ah, Walker—if I could explain all of humanity’s foibles, I’d be...
A mi la literatura m'ha canviat, m'ha donat una profunditat de consciència que no tenia. M'ha ajudat a veure el món d'un altra manera, m'ha fet més gran el cor. I aquesta passió la sento i la veig en altres persones, inclosos els joves. Les grans...
[...] there is one inexorable law of technology, and it is this: when revolutionary inventions become widely accessible, they cease to be accessible. Technology is inherently democratic, because it promises the same services to all; but it works only...
Yet in another and still more definite sense despair is the sickness unto death. It is indeed very far from being true that, literally understood, one dies of this sickness, or that this sickness ends with bodily death. On the contrary, the torment o...
I stayed in bed for over an hour looked at things on my phone I felt slightly anxious about nothing particular I walked downstairs and poured coffee into a jar I asked a person on the internet if I should take drugs I took drugs before the person had...
i want the moon tattooed on my wrists my grandmother keeps asking me to pray, i don’t have the heart to tell her that my poems are the only God i have left in me my mother keeps leaving without saying goodbye i wish she’d let me cut my hair in th...
