Look at this fog. The damp gets right into your bones. It's doing my chest no good at all. I'll need a vapour bath." Bryant pulled down his scarf and peered over the sodden hedge. Dew had formed on his bald head and ears. He resembled a minor Tolkien...
We poetically construct our identity as human beings, together with our values, largely through reciprocal relationships with animals. They provide us with essential points of reference, as well as illustrations of the qualities that we may choose to...
Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his s...
…have poets write about you as if you are alive. Scientifically, it is absolutely true, you are alive. You have a pulse, the waves, and a metabolism, the food chain. A personality, a character, a consciousness, and a sense of purpose…try this- tu...
In this course I have tried to reveal the mechanism of those wonderful toys — literary masterpieces. I have tried to make of you good readers who read books not for the infantile purpose of identifying oneself with the characters, and not for the a...
In the first few pages, Kundera discusses several abstract historical figures: Robespierre, Nietzsche, Hitler. For Eunice's sake, I wanted him to get to the plot, to introduce actual "living" characters - I recalled this was a love story - and to lea...
Nothing matures a Man like RESPONSIBILITIES, Nothing humbles him like MISSED OPPORTUNITIES, What makes him are his CHOICES, And nothing changes him like LOVE. Nothing defines a Man like his CHARACTER, Nothing teaches him like his EXPERIENCE, What dri...
You cannot have your news instantly and have it done well. You cannot have your news reduced to 140 characters or less without losing large parts of it. You cannot manipulate the news but not expect it to be manipulated against you. You cannot have y...
Mr. Morris's poem is ushered into the world with a very florid birthday speech from the pen of the author of the too famous ,—a circumstance, we apprehend, in no small degree prejudicial to its success. But we hasten to assure all persons whom the ...
Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life’s secrets. It’s the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our own ego: our divid...
The question you’ll need to ask yourself as your heart is filled with fear is: “Do you know God’s heart?” Do you know Him that intimately? Do you trust Him with all of your heart, instead of leaning unto your own understanding? Most of us don...
We do need to bring to our writing, over and over again, all the abundance we possess. To be able, to be ready, to enter into the minds and hearts of our own people, all of them, to comprehend them (us) and then to make characters and plots in storie...
The children mingled with the adults, and spoke and were spoken to. Children in these families, at the end of the nineteenth century, were different from children before or after. They were neither dolls nor miniature adults. They were not hidden awa...
I like to skip prewriting. I love just jumping into the actual writing process. Then I revise/edit and fix what I need to. Then the following steps; proofread and publish. Of course before you just go into writing, it would be a good idea to do some ...
Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer's heart. I want a novel so poetic that I do not have to turn ...
Don't be fool enough to think you can know a person's character after a few moments of observation. You have no idea where his life began or how his saga has unfolded thus far. Only his present state can you witness. To judge him at a glance is like ...
Notwithstanding the extravagance of some of their characters, these nineteenth-century novelists describe a world in which inequality was to a certain extent necessary: if there had not been a sufficiently wealthy minority, no one would have been abl...
You have people out here trying to tell you to accept imperfections and that nobody is perfect (except for a dead/make-believe entity?) but if you are telling yourself that you are not perfect, aren't you downgrading your own character? Why would you...
As a historian, I found myself all too often treating my historical subjects like fictional characters, malleable entities that could be made to do one thing or another, whose motivations could be speculated upon endlessly, and whose missing actions ...
Dissection ... teaches us that the body of man is made up of certain kinds of material, so differing from each other in optical and other physical characters and so built up together as to give the body certain structural features. Chemical examinati...
(March 2010 ) In terms of story, the only audience I have in mind is me. I’m very much aware that I can’t please everyone when it comes to story, so I might as well try to please myself. But in terms of communication with the reader, I am very aw...
