...Baltimore. It's imperfect. Boy, is it imperfect. And there are parts of its past that make you wince. It's not all marble steps and waitresses calling you 'hon,' you know. Racial strife in the sixties, the riots during the Civil War. F. Scott Fitz...
As he drove away, I began to think that what kept us together was perhaps not even our romance with an imaginary France. That was just a veneer, an illusion. Rather, it was our desperate inability to lead ordinary lives with ordinary people anywhere-...
Martin said, "It feels as though part of my self has detached and gone to Amsterdam, where it—she—is waiting for me. Do you know about phantom-limb syndrome?" Julia nodded. "There's pain where she ought to be. It's feeding the other pain, the thi...
My emotions were like a crowd. Give ’em what they want. Barabbas or the J-man. There’s gonna be a crucifixion. Well, more or less. Because if you ask me, purveyor of useless facts, the promise of sex with someone you’re starting to like puts yo...
The concept of time, as it’s commonly understood by normal people with normal jobs and normal goddamn lives, doesn’t exist on the road. The nights spread out like the dark, godforsaken highways that distinguish them, and the days run together lik...
Every one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. Some meaning seems distinct almost within reach, but is elusive; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attach...
To live in any true sense of the word is to reject others; to accept them, one must be able to renounce, to do oneself violence, to act against one's own nature, to weaken oneself; we conceive freedom only for ourselves - we extend it to our neighbou...
Though neither happiness nor respect are worth anything, because unless both are coming from the truest motives, they are simply deceits. A successful man earns the respect of the world never mind what is the state of his mind, or his manner of earni...
All those who prefer peace to power, and happiness to glory should thank the colonized people for their civilizing mission. By liberating themselves, they made Europeans more modest, less racist, and more human. Let us hope that the process continues...
It is, then, not simply a question of black power or white power, but of how meaningfully to reenfranchise power. This, as I think Martin Luther King understood, is the real point, the real gift to America, of the struggle of the black people. In acc...
But we are not going to talk about that right now, because to talk about it I'll have to think about it, and I've thought it to death over the last year. There are parts of my brain that are still tirelessly thinking about it, about her, an entire re...
The essential cultural discrimination is not between having and not having or haves and have-nots, but between the superfluous and the indispensable. Wisdom, it seems to me, is always poised upon the knowledge of minimums; it might be thought to be t...
Fucking Hallmark never wrote anything for how I felt then. When Metallica and the rest of the metal community pitched in to pay for Acrassicauda, the Iraqi heavy metal band, to move to the US is the only thing that comes close. And maybe the late-bre...
And this presence of the Spirit will enlighten not only yellow skin people or white skin people but even black skin people. I believe in the last days the Spirit of God will be poured out in the nations of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Because Jesus ...
Just because you're an adult doesn't mean you're grown up. Growing up means being patient, holding your temper, cutting out the self-pity, and quitting with the righteous indignation.' 'Why do so many people seem to love righteous indignation?' 'Beca...
Leggendo non cerchiamo idee nuove, ma pensieri già da noi pensati, che acquistano sulla pagina un suggello di conferma. Ci colpiscono degli altri le parole che risuonano in una zona già nostra – che già viviamo – e facendola vibrare ci permett...
Do not let your peace depend on the words of men. Their thinking well or badly of you does not make you different from what you are. Where are true peace and glory? Are they not in Me? He who neither cares to please men nor fears to displease them wi...
The cross, therefore, is always ready; it awaits you everywhere. No matter where you may go, you cannot escape it, for wherever you go you take yourself with you and shall always find yourself. Turn where you will—above, below, without, or within�...
Looking at her, thinking of her transported him, which struck him as vile because now it was hard for him not to despise the icy serenity of their earlier relations. And he knew that he should not love her, for she had been someone else whom he was s...
The pleasure I found in reading books was disconcerting...I felt anxious about every new piece of information. I would latch onto one particular detail and start look for references and other versions of it in other writings. I remembered, for exampl...
If outside forces and culture were the reasons behind declining and non-influential churches, we would likely have no churches today. The greatest periods of growth, particularly the first-century growth, took place in adversarial cultures. We are no...
