After Napoleon's 1815 defeat at Waterloo, Europeans had created nation-states in the image and likeness of Napoleon. The new states became the foci of popular affection, even worship. All organized themselves as Napoleon had France, and as Hegel had ...
For me, the times that I dressed provocatively had been empowering. It felt good. It's those times that I felt comfortable in my own skin. Like really, really comfortable. And let's face it, body self-esteem issues are a hurdle many women struggle to...
People know that Mr. Ellison had a tough beginning, they are aware of a little boy who strived for acceptance, who wished to be like all the other little boys on the block, but found himself always falling short. Unlike majority of children who are c...
I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surp...
Fame is not so impossible for people with charisma, passion and talent. Being famous just means you have fans, and even one or two is enough to make you someone special. Ask a music fan who the best guitarist of all time is, and while one group insis...
My parents, and librarians along the way, taught me about the space between words; about the margins, where so many juicy moments of life and spirit and friendship could be found. In a library, you could find miracles and truth and you might find som...
Let it all go to waste… For what I long for, I’m bound to resign! Bittersweet is, like the taste of wine, This Love’s captivating taste. Let my heart be tormented by wonder It will never manage to attain. On my window symphony of rain, Open sea...
Daybreak has extraordinary hypnotizing influence, On us, idealistic observers. When red sun slowly reveals on the rivers surface, like in a mirror, It reminds of two lovers embracing, Just by looking into each others eyes. In such deep and serious co...
when your actions towards acquiring leadership in any country portrays blatant mischief orchestrated towards disregarding the concepts of the constitution, you do not only become guilty of hijacking power which rightfully belong to the people, but al...
We sow the seed. We watch the plant grow. We take care of it. And when it become a tree, we kill it to make our furniture. And still the plant doesn’t know we exists or why we killed it because it doesn’t have senses like us to feel, see and hear...
You know, you hear about these movements for women, and for children, and for people who are any race but white, and you think that it's about time that men got a movement. Think about it. Guys can't play the piano, or dance, or sing. We can't cry, o...
When you don't have something anymore, you learn to live without it." That's what my dad told me that first night after he found me sleeping inside a closet underneath a pile of my mom's clothes. All the different smells of her were still there and t...
Faith is a state of openness or trust. To have faith is like when you trust yourself to the water. You don’t grab hold of the water when you swim, because if you do you will become stiff and tight in the water, and sink. You have to relax, and the ...
Most days, I’ve got this impermanence thing down just great. It doesn’t bother me; what’s to bother? Most days, I sit comfortably with the knowledge that I’ll die alone, and I feel nothing so strongly as my embrace of my nothingness. Most day...
The language I learned was pretty, full of passivity and silence. I had no proper language for the issues of blood and anger, yet much of what went on when I was a child made me angry. There were no words a nice girl could use to describe anger; her ...
The brain, he writes, is like Kublai Khan, the great Mongol emperor of the thirteenth century. It sits enthroned in its skull, "encased in darkness and silence," at a lofty remove from brute reality. Messengers stream in from every corner of the sens...
He asked me if I ever prayed-- and I lied. Then he asked me if I ever got an answer, or a sign that my prayer was heard-- and I told him the truth. "Yeah... me neither." His hands sounded like leather as he slowly rubbed some warmth into his knotted ...
For I was reared in the great city, pent with cloisters dim, and saw naught lovely but the sky and stars. But thou, my babe! Shalt wander like a breeze By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags Of ancient mountains, and beneath the clouds, Which i...
I've been very influenced by folklore, fairy tales, and folk ballads, so I love all the classic works based on these things -- like 's 19th century fairy stories, the fairy poetry of , and 's splendid book . (I think that particular book of hers wasn...
I think no more than a week after I started writing I ran into the first block. It's hard to describe it in a way that will be understandable to anyone who is not a neurotic. I will try. All my life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire...
I see wrong. Wrong in the way that our color of skin define whether or not we deserve recognition, wrong that my sister feels like she doesn't fit in because every magazine claim you have to be thin, wrong because 2 wrongs never made a right. I never...
