One day, an unusually exciting event interrupted the rhythm of our regular middle-class teenage lives. A Russian woman, the mother of a girl in our class, was run over by a New York City bound train right in the center of town. Our classmate left sch...
In Astrology, the moon, among its other meanings, has that of "the common people," who submit (they know not why) to any independent will that can express itself with sufficient energy. The people who guillotined the mild Louis XVI died gladly for Na...
Scientific theories never dictate human values, but they can often cast new light on ethical issues. From a sexual selection viewpoint, moral philosophy and political theory have mostly been attempts to shift male human sexual competitiveness from ph...
If you don't know for sure, then what's the big thing about trying stuff out?" Jamie said, looking not at me but looking out at that statue, just like Hennitz. I still didn't have any of the right words. "It's more like maybe I do know and I'm still ...
You’re a dreamer, boy,” he said. “Your mind is on the moon, and from the looks of things, it’s never going to be anywhere else. You have no ambitions, you don’t give a damn about money, and you’re too much of a philosopher to have any fee...
It must be constantly remembered that the Qu r’ān is not just descriptive but is primarily prescriptive. Both the content of its message and the power of the form in which it is conveyed are designed not so much to "inform" men in any ordinary sen...
But it wasn't the right season to lift off. Not yet. I sat in my apartment and looked out over the city, and I just didn't feel any passion to write about the place. I didn't give a damn about local politics; I wasn't moved by the issues. I missed ho...
I have observed this in my experience of slavery, - that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to m...
I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them. Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly and language became an obstacle. It became clear that it would be necessary to invent a new language... I would pause at every sen...
One of the effects of original sin is an instinctive prejudice in favour of our own selfish desires. We see things as they are not, because we see them centered on ourselves. Fear, anxiety, greed, ambition and our hopeless need for pleasure all disto...
I bet you think fellas are the ones to remember a girl -- don't you?" He shook his head hurriedly, that he'd always thought that. "Fellas have all the fun 'n she just sees one right after another, so it seems like HE'D remember her, better 'n SHE'D r...
There's also a possibility that the landlord is in there right now, wearing women's undergarments. Or a drug addict is inside stealing jewelry.Or a boatload of recent Chinese immigrants without a television watching Russia play Finland in hockey and ...
I kind of hate Nick right now, too, but there's someone else higher on my list, someone I hate more than Saddam Hussein and any asshole named Bush combined, hate more than that fuckhead who canceled 'My So-Called Life' and left me with a too-small bo...
Reason is God's crowning gift to man, and you are right To warn me against losing mine. I cannot say— I hope that I shall never want to say!— that you Have reasoned badly. Yet there are other men Who can reason, too; and their opinions might be h...
An honorable human relationship – that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love" – is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other. It i...
He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and t...
The staircase that was revealed was lit with a soft red glow. I feel like I'm walking down into a porn movie," V muttered as they took the steps with care. Wouldn't that require more black candles for you," Zsadist cracked. At the bottom of the landi...
Never in a million years would he have imagined her to look at him like that - eyelids batting of their own volition and her lips puckering in expectation as she leaned slightly forward. Yet here she was doing precisely that - it was much too comical...
What would my first sergeant do if he came across me and another girl getting it on? He'd want pictures. He'd want to join in. He'd want me and this other girl to double-team him right then and there. On the other hand, since most heterosexual men ar...
When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we a...
On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a...
