We need to approach the Bible each day with a spirit of deep humility, recognizing that our understanding of spiritual truth is at best incomplete and to some extent inaccurate ... we should approach the Scriptures in humility and expect the Spirit t...
I don't know how many marriage breakups are caused by these movie-and television-addicted women expecting some bouquets and kissing and hugging and being swept out like Cinderella for dinner and dancing -- then getting mad when a poor, scraggly husba...
To Cassidy, the panopticon wasn't a metaphor. It was the greatest failing on everything she was, a prison she had built for herself out of an inability to appear anything less than perfect. And so she ghosted on, in relentless pursuit of escape, not ...
He smiles at her before ever opening his eyes. The innocence in his face ensnares. Wraps her heart in a cocoon. They did this to him. The Society. Constructed that smile with malicious expectations. Now she must rip it off his face. Because she doesn...
All this, sadly enough, is truer of the more educated, higher-income, professional families. It is here that the competition is the greatest, the expectations most elevated. If the boy would be happier as a telephone linesman or a forest ranger, he i...
People underestimate the importance of dilligence as a virtue. No doubt it has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems. It is defined as "the constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken."... Understood, however, as the pr...
Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees. Then he watched me read. I was used to being observed reading. Someti...
You'd expect academics, people who are by training comfortable with complexity, to be the most resistant to the idea that we're shaped by any single factor. In fact, they are often the worst offenders. Immersed in their own research, shaped by their ...
It was a fairy tale, no fooling. It was unreality becoming real. This frightened her. Because people don't care for unreality becoming real. It pricks their well-fed minds, you see, with something like a hunger pang. They prefer the logical stuffines...
I always think I know the way a novel will go. I write maps on oversized art pads like the kind I carried around in college when I was earnest about drawing. I need to have some idea of the shape of the novel, where its headed, so that I can proceed ...
God, or the 99 Gods, can’t give out miracles to everyone without contradictions. Give to one, take from another. Prayer is pathetic, if you give it any thought. Prayer is nothing but ‘I’m special, gimme what I want’ egotism run amok, ex...
Stuff and nonsense: you must regard this deviation from your plan as part of the adventure that you sought when you decided embark on it in the first place. True adventure does not follow well-trodden paths. Absence of certainty is its essence. Peopl...
I shouldn't be surprised. Catholicism is the ultimate loophole religion (sin, confess, repeat), so it makes sense that a priest would know better than anyone how to work the angles. Still, when you go to confession and say, "Forgive me, Father, for I...
It's amazing what the sound of a voice you've been longing to hear can do to your heart. He spoke five words just now, but in the time it took him to speak those five words, my heart was shredded and minced, then placed back inside my chest with the ...
We too are called to withdraw at certain intervals into deeper silence and aloneness with God, together as a community as well as personally; to be alone with Him — not with our books, thoughts, and memories but completely stripped of everything �...
How can a school prepare you for murderers and mad-men?' Taro asked. 'Friends who would betray you to your death. People in authority who use their power to perform the most unnatural acts. People hating you because you can't do things you aren't sup...
There was old sex in the room and loneliness, and expectation, of something without a shape or name. I remember that yearning, and was never the same as the hands that were on us there and then, in the small of the back, or out back, in the parking l...
The most remarkable thing about a man's dreams is that they will all come true; this has always been the case, though no one would care to admit it. And a peculiarity of man's behaviour is that he is not in the least surprised when his dreams come tr...
I want to tell you a story, Alex." Alex nibbled on his bottom lip, waiting. Wondering now if Mr. Today really understood that Alex was turning him down. "Simber." The old mage said. Alex automatically turned to the door, expecting to see the beast. M...
And as if the professor could read Henry's mind, he said, "It's a curious thing, change. You never get used to it, and you're never sure where it comes from, but you better learn to expect it." "I don't recognize the quotation." Henry frowned, trying...
Today, I feel stronger, learning to live within the natural cycles of a day and to not expect too much of myself. As women, we hold the moon in our bellies. It is too much to ask to operate on full-moon energy three hundred and sixty-five days a year...
