Very soon she'll join all the others who know the secret and will not tell it. Or cannot. Or try and fail because they do not know enough. They can be recognized. White faces, dazed eyes, aimless gestures, high-pitched laughter. The way they walk and...
POOR ANGUS Oh what do you do, poor Angus, When hunger makes you cry? "I fix myself an omelet, sir, Of fluffy clouds and sky." Oh what do you wear, poor Angus, When winds blow down the hills? "I sew myself a warm cloak, sir, Of hope and daffodils." Oh...
Our young people, raised under the old rules of courtesy, never indulged in the present habit of talking incessantly and all at the same time. To do so would have been not only impolite, but foolish; for poise, so much admired as a social grace, coul...
She was silent; the great wings almost stopped moving; only a delicate stirring seemed to keep them aloft. "Listen, then," Mrs. Whatsit said. The resonant voice rose and the words seemed to be all around them so that Meg felt that she could almost re...
The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personal...
The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the barking of a dog, produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. It depends on your appetite for sound. Just as a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than confectionery to a ...
I didn't mean to tell you," Mrs. Whatsit faltered. "I didn't mean ever to let you know. But oh, my dears, I did so love being a star!" "Yyouu are sstill verry yyoungg," Mrs Witch said, her voice faintly chiding. The Medium sat looking happily at the ...
How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously. Frailly. In thin stripes. It hangs like a glass cage. It is a hoop to be fractured by a tiny jar. There is a spark there. Next moment a flush of dun. Then a vapour as...
I am almost a hundred years old; waiting for the end, and thinking about the beginning. There are things I need to tell you, but would you listen if I told you how quickly time passes? I know you are unable to imagine this. Nevertheless, I can tell y...
She looks at me, square in the eye. Taking aim. And then she pulls the trigger. “Because I hated you.” The wind, the noise, it all just goes quiet for a second, and I’m left with a dull ringing in my ear, like after a show, like after a heart m...
Remember that if I were born of the underworld, you were born of flowers. You are the blood the forest feeds upon, and it is you who gave the woods their dark magic. Time doesn’t exist, and in another world I never left you. I’ve transformed your...
Turing presented his new offering in the form of a thought experiment, based on a popular Victorian parlor game. A man and a woman hide, and a judge is asked to determine which is which by relying only on the texts of notes passed back and forth. Tur...
In war," answered the weaver, "the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffer...
I smashed his hand as hard as I could with the Wiffle bat. "Ow!" he screamed. Carson was rubbing his red palm, inspecting it for damage. "That hurt," he shrieked. "You really hurt me." "Right back at you," I said. "Good-bye Carson." He frowned, massa...
Many people close themselves off from the world when they are under pressure. That is understandable. I have gone through periods when I didn’t want to meet people because I didn’t feel good about my situation in life and that made my life even m...
The willingness to undertake such action cannot be based on certainties, but on those possibilities glimpsed in a reading of history different from the customary painful recounting of human cruelties. In such a reading we can find not only war but re...
I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and...
John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall. But I don't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so! Besides, it is such an u...
Here is a story that’s stranger than strange. Before we begin you may want to arrange: a blanket, a cushion, a comfortable seat, and maybe some cocoa and something to eat. I’ll warn you, of course, before we commence, my story is eerie and full o...
I had to go back and reread the page a few times. As I read it, I kept drifting out of the book, out of the booth, and coasting on the green crest of the song, to the momentary idea that any point on Earth was mine for the visiting, that I'd lucked o...
The children mingled with the adults, and spoke and were spoken to. Children in these families, at the end of the nineteenth century, were different from children before or after. They were neither dolls nor miniature adults. They were not hidden awa...
