"Like the grand eagle, you spread your wings And put forth the effort to do great things. Looking skyward you dared to challenge the wind, Harnessing power to help you ascend. With an eye on the goal, fixed in flight, You climbed to an impressive hei...
The little poets sing of little things: Hope, cheer, and faith, small queens and puppet kings; Lovers who kissed and then were made as one, And modest flowers waving in the sun. The mighty poets write in blood and tears And agony that, flame-like, bi...
I like to call a spade a spade in politics and in everything else. That's why the zionists and the americans... The top officials hate Saddam Hussein. The White House is lying once again. He's a liar. He's the world's number one liar. He said there w...
Kindness is like a muscle, the more we exercise it the better we are at it. Kindness starts as a thought but ends as an action. Acting kindly toward others is the only real way to let people know we care about them and their happiness. Without action...
My view [is] that what morality boils down to is, 'Don’t harm, and do help.' And now the question is, 'Can creatures like chickens and cows be harmed?' And the answer is, 'Of course they can.' Consequently, I think it’s immoral to harm them. And ...
Then she sat as if paralyzed, thinking. She had never in her life felt such a longing. She wanted Mikael Blomkvist to ring the doorbell and ... what then? Lift her off the ground, hold her in his arms? Passionately take her to the bedroom and tear of...
...The world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don't be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don't be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don't swat. Don't even think about swatting. If you f...
Others may sit around and wait for magic to happen… I like to get up early and work towards my goals and dreams. Every morning I plant the seeds of what the haters call ‘luck.’ Now, I love magic as much as the next guy, but I realized a long ti...
[What Rushdie took away from reading Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum]: Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be ruthless. Argue with the world. ...
Remember to delight yourself first, then others can be truly delighted." This was my mantra when I published my first book in 1990, and still holds true. When we focus on the song of our soul and heart, then others will be touched similarly. Sometime...
Being tame is what we're taught: ... put the crayons back, stay in line, don't talk too loud, keep your knees together, nice girls don't... As you might know, nice girls DO, and they like to feel wild and alive. Being tame feels safe, being wild, uns...
Writing is a habit, an addiction, as powerful and overmastering an urge as putting a bottle to your lips or a spike in your arm. Call it the impulse to make something out of nothing, call it an obsessive-compulsive disorder, call it logorrhea. Have y...
What people don't understand about depression is how much it hurts. It's like your brain is convinced that it's dying and produces an acid that eats away at you from the inside, until all that's less is a scary hollowness. Your mind fills with dark t...
Every single person is vulnerable to unexpected defeat in this inmost emotional self. At every moment, behind the most efficient seeming adult exterior, the whole world of the person's childhood is being carefully held like a glass of water bulging a...
I used to hope that if I went to church long enough, all my inside weight would go away. That ain't right. Jesus may have come to take away our sins, but he left our feelings right where they've always been. I still have inside me some of what I've a...
I think you could fall in love with anyone if you saw the parts of them that no one else gets to see. I don't know, like if you followed them around invisibly for a day and you saw them crying in their bed at night or singing to themselves as they ma...
My Papa's Waltz: The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held...
Wide reading is important. You don’t have to like it, but it’s important to grapple with things you don’t understand. I’ve been spending the last six months getting up an hour early to try to understand economics because I need to. I don’t ...
And finally the glass that contains and spills this stuff continually while the drinker hunches before it, while the bartender gathers up empties, gives back the drinker's own face. Who knows what it looks like; who cares whether or not it was young ...
If you think Atticus Finch went home at night and slept easy because he knew he was doing the right thing, you're wrong....Because even one voice in a wilderness of ignorance is a voice that is heard by someone. Because every woman and man, no matter...
I also know that not everyone will like what I do, and that there are many people who do love my work, and so I write for them, and for my own pleasure, and try not to brood too much over those who have different tastes. And I have written enough boo...