We talked about talking. (We had been interrupting Ms. Diz a lot). She said that when someone is talking, you listen with your ears. And save your questions for the end. Then you use your mouth. Even if you see something that is a miracle. Like a squ...
Scientific theories are tested every time someone makes an observation or conducts an experiment, so it is misleading to think of science as an edifice, built on foundations. Rather, scientific knowledge is more like a web. The difference couldn’t ...
It’s an irritating reality that many places and events defy description. Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence, like a love affair you can never talk about. For a while after,you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemb...
There was a problem: No one cared about human rights anymore, not at home or abroad. They cared about growth--hoped for and celebrated in all the newspapers, invoked by zealous bureaucrats in every self-serving television interview. On this matter, t...
Believe it or not, some of us have piercings and tattoos and dye our hair because we think it looks pretty, not for any deep sociological reason. This isn't an act of protest against cultural or social repression. It's not a grand, deliberately defia...
These dear souls came not to Sabbath school because it was popular to do so, nor did I teach them because it was reputable to be thus engaged. Every moment they spent in that school, they were liable to be taken up, and given thirty-nine lashes. They...
All of us had problems, it seemed, whose sources were untraceable, crossing over one another like the trajectories of countless raindrops in a storm, blending to create a fog of delusion and counter-delusion. Powerful forces and connections were undo...
If I learned anything about her it was that she lived with a vehemence most of us never have the courage for." Banks tells me. "But there was something about her that precluded an ordinary existence. In some ways, I'm not surprised she's dead. A job,...
And that fear I'd felt, the disembodying confusion, seemed to be a drug I was now addicted to, because moving through the ordinary world- watching CNN, reading the Times, walking to Sant Ambroeus to have a coffee at the bar- made me feel exhausted, e...
While my chosen form of story-writing is obviously a special and perhaps a narrow one, it is none the less a persistent and permanent type of expression, as old as literature itself. There will always be a certain small percentage of persons who feel...
I can see,’ Miss Emily said, ‘that it might look as though you were simply pawns in a game. It can certainly be looked at like that. But think of it. You were lucky pawns. There was a certain climate and now it’s gone. You have to accept that s...
The threats that resurfaced in the past 10 years were not an aberration. Al Qaeda and terrorism or one such threat, but it was actually not the most serious threat that the United States faced. The president can and should speak of foreseeing an era ...
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...
Having always observed that most of them who constantly took in the weekly Bills of made little other use of them than to look at the foot how the burials increased or decreased, and among the what had happened, rare and extraordinary, in the week cu...
I want to be the guy in a movie who's, I don't know, out walking his rabbit on a leash (I don't have a rabbit) and knows exactly how to strike up a quirky, compelling conversation. Though maybe if you're walking a rabbit on a leash, you don't even ha...
Remember, whatever you focus upon, increases...When you focus on the things you need, you'll find those needs increasing. If you concentrate your thoughts on what you don't have, you will soon be concentrating on other things that you had forgotten y...
Consider A Move The steady time of being unknown, in solitude, without friends, is not a steadiness that sustains. I hear your voice waver on the phone: The voice zeroes through my ear, and waits. What should I say? There are ways to meet people you ...
It was being a runner that mattered, not how fast or how far I could run. The joy was in the act of running and in the journey, not in the destination. We have a better chance of seeing where we are when we stop trying to get somewhere else. We can e...
Renee: “The Greek government doesn’t know that I found anything that day in the temple. And they for sure wouldn’t want to know about the little mess I left behind.” She grimaced. Trout: “Little mess? You started a freakin’ cave in, you m...
In time, the hurt began to fade and it was easier to just let it go. At least I thought it was. But in every boy I met in the next few years, I found myself looking for you, and when the feelings got too strong, I'd write you another letter. But I ne...
Some people get a kick out of reading railway timetables and that's all they do all day. Some people make huge model boats out of matchsticks. So what's wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?" "Kind of ...
