Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep. Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, ...
Contrasts The windows of my poetry are wide open on the boulevards and in the shop windows Shine The precious stones of light Listen to the violins of the limousines and the xylophones of the linotypes The sketcher washes with the hand-towel of the s...
Have you ever felt as if your dreams were more memorable, more alive, than what you knew to be reality? Have your dreams ever seemed so tangible as to make you question upon waking if you’d truly only dreamt them? Have they at times been addictive ...
....[T]he night terrors were no match for the glory of waking up to a new day in the Land of Israel. In every conscious moment, Yael was aware that she was living through times that would form the legends and myths of future generations. Just as her ...
But into the first decades of the twentieth century, even at the New York Times, it was uncommon for journalists to see a sharp divide between facts and values. Yet the belief in objectivity is just this: the belief that one can and should separate f...
It must be murder to be an aging beauty, a former Tadzio, to see your future as an ignored spectator rushing up to meet you like the hard pavement. What a small sip of gall to be able to time with each passing year the ever-shorter interval in which ...
He believed he understood, for the first time, why people say life is a dream: if you live long enough, the events of a lifetime, like the events of a dream, cannot be communicated, simply because they are of no interest to anyone. Human beings thems...
Yong is the outer manifestation of something. Ti is the underlying essence. Technology is a yong associated with a particular ti that is ... Western, and completely alien to us [the Chinese]. For centuries, since the time of the Opium Wars, we have s...
It makes sense. It's all there. Everything that's beautiful or wise or significant has been written down at some time or other. How can anybody have the gall or the self-satisfaction to ignore all that? Who would want to? You read to feel alive, to b...
Until then I had always thought of loneliness as something negative—an absence of company, and, of course, something temporary... That day I had learned that it was much more. It was something which could press and oppress, could distort the ordina...
A lang, lang time ago…” MacPhee began, ignoring St.Vincent’s low groan, “there was a bonnie maid called Malvina. She was the betrothed of Oscar, the braw warrior who won her heart. Oscar bade his beloved tae wait for him while he went tae see...
The contemplation of consciousness—which is the contemplation of no-thing whatsoever—is endlessly fascinating. It’s like staring at a candle in a dark night—you find yourself mesmerized by something that is unchanging yet infinitely compellin...
That was the worst period of all: it is my profession to imagine, to think in images: fifty times through the day, and immediately I woke during the night, a curtain would rise and the play would begin: always the same play, Sarah making love, Sarah ...
To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New Y...
Some people say it is a shame. Others even imply that it would have been better if the baby had never been created. But the short time I had with my child is precious to me. It is painful to me, but I still wouldn't wish it away. I prayed that God wo...
Cathy's lies were never innocent. Their purpose was to escape punishment, or work, or responsibility, and they were used for profit. Most liars are tripped up either because they forget what they have told or because the lie is suddenly faced with an...
Increasingly, we will be faced with a choice: whether to keep the oceans for wild fish or farmed fish. Farming domesticated species in close proximity with wild fish will mean that domesticated fish always win. Nobody in the world of policy appears t...
In a sense I want the same thing that my grandfather wanted, that people should not suffer. Yet I am not like him. He remade himself so that he could live for eternity. Yet he never defeated the eternal enemy - no, not the cyborgs or the robots. The ...
A farm includes the passion of the farmer's heart, the interest of the farm's customers, the biological activity in the soil, the pleasantness of the air about the farm -- it's everything touching, emanating from, and supplying that piece of landscap...
You're not like other Wasps." "Aren't I?" Aagen smiled, but it was a painful smile. "No doubt you've killed my kinsmen by the score." "A few," Salma allowed. "Well, next time you shed my kinden's blood, think on this: we are but men, no less nor more...
Whether or not the fame of Gilgamesh of Uruk had reached the Aegean – and the idea is attractive – there can be no doubt that it was as great as that of any other hero. In time his name became so much a household word that jokes and forgeries wer...
