Shark!" I yelled as my feet hit the wet sand. "There's a shark out there! Everyone get out of the water!" Man, you want to see humans move fast? Scream that on a crowded beach and watch what happens. Its amazing the fear people have for a scaly, shar...
The mind cannot fall asleep as long as it watches itself. Only when the mind moves unwatched and becomes absorbed in images that tug it as it were to one side does self-consciousness dissolve and sleep with its healing, brilliantly detailed fictions ...
I love you," she murmured. The words ... it was as though an entire sun had exploded in his chest. He'd been ridiculous. His thrashing thoughts, his grand confusion and torment and helplessness -- it was only love, had always been love, he supposed. ...
Because bread was so important, the laws governing its purity were strict and the punishment severe. A baker who cheated his customers could be fined £10 per loaf sold, or made to do a month's hard labor in prison. For a time, transportation to Aust...
I don't want to know about love.' 'But you should, my child. You need to know about love. The things people will do for love. All truths come down to love, do they not? One way or another, they do. See, there is a difference between love and need. So...
[Obituary of atheist philosopher Richard Robinson] An Atheist's Values is one of the best short accounts of liberalism (a term Robinson accepted) and humanism (a term he ignored) produced during the present century, all the more powerful for its luci...
THE ACCURSED SHIP didn’t sink for a full three hours. By the time it did, I was feeling so traumatized that even watching Dogface die offered little consolation. The dialogue, the acting, the vast emptiness of the whole endeavor! Was that what pass...
The theology of littleness is a basic category of Christianity. After all, the tenor of our faith is that God's distinctive greatness is revealed precisely in powerlessness. That in the long run, the strength of history is precisely in those who love...
Have I said anything I started out to say about being good? God, I don’t know. A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his fam...
If I marry: He must be so tall that when he is on his knees, as one has said he reaches all the way to heaven. His shoulders must be broad enough to bear the burden of a family. His lips must be strong enough to smile, firm enough to say no, and tend...
Fairy tales are more than moral lessons and time capsules for cultural commentary; they are natural law. The child raised on folklore will quickly learn the rules of crossroads and lakes, mirrors and mushroom rings. They’ll never eat or drink of a ...
I had zero idea of what I was doing.. I honestly had no idea where to start. All I knew was I had something I craved to say.. I wanted to create art that lived on longer than I do. Perseverance and teaching yourself, every day through stress and hard...
When they first emerged in their present shape around the turn of the 18th century, the so-called humane disciplines had a crucial social role. It was to foster and protect the kind of values for which a philistine social order had precious little ti...
WEATHERS This is the weather the cuckoo likes, And so do I; When showers betumble the chestnut spikes, And nestlings fly; And the little brown nightingale bills his best, And they sit outside at 'The Traveller's Rest,' And maids come forth sprig-musl...
Ain't all buttons and charts, little albatross. Know what the first rule of flying is? Well I s'pose you do, since you already know what I'm 'bout to say. I do. But I like to hear you say it. Love. Can know all the math in the 'verse but take a boat ...
I meditate, and when I do, Prince Harry appears in my subconscious and meditates with me. It's a little strange but I don't think there's anything I can do about it. Sometimes he's not the only one; the other day it was me, Prince Harry, the Dalai La...
How good is it to remember one's insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of an animal amid billions of animals; and one's abode, the earth, a little grain of sand in comparison with Sirius and others, and one's life span in comparison wi...
But don’t you find it boring to wear only two colors?” “Not at all. I find it liberating. I believe my life has value, and I don’t want to waste it thinking about clothing,” Malcolm said. “I don’t want to think about what I will wear in...
At these words I was utterly stupefied and terror-stricken. I thought to myself, “With what tongue shall I address such majesty, seeing that all men ought to tremble in the presence of even an earthly prince? Who am I, that I should lift up mine ey...
Dogfish I wanted The past to go away, I wanted To leave it, like another country; I wanted My life to close, and open Like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song Where it falls Down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery; I wanted To hurr...
Since Jimmy Carter, religious fundamentalists play a major role in elections. He was the first president who made a point of exhibiting himself as a born again Christian. That sparked a little light in the minds of political campaign managers: Preten...
