I feign knowledge of writing: that I know something about it, that I should have learned something after all these years, that I might know something tomorrow. I read too much and write too little, or write too much and live too little. I have no cla...
Considering how much we are all given to discuss the characters of others, and discuss them often not in the strictest spirit of charity, it is singular how little we are inclined to think that others can speak ill-naturedly of us, and how angry and ...
We must also remember that in every little village-god and every little superstitious custom is that which we are accustomed to call our religious faith. But local customs are infinite and contradictory. Which are we to obey, and which not to obey? T...
Loving Sarah was like reading a particularly good book. That pressing and overwhelming need to just devour it as fast as possible is matched only by the need to savour it slowly and completely, lest all come to an end too soon. The all-consuming emot...
Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening had changed something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred. It must not be the same with her a...
How small and neat and comically serious the other men looked, with their grey-flecked crew cuts and their button-down collars and their brisk little hurrying feet! There were endless desperate swarms of them, hurrying through the station and the str...
A challenging career suddenly seemed more productive to me because I could measure the results of my work. These precious little ones had endless needs. They were busy little sinful creatures who demanded all of my body, time, life, emotions, and att...
Oh, how clearly I see your faults! Such distinctly highlighted flaws; it's as if the sun and moon mean to keep them illuminated in my eyes. My mind is quick to spell out a simple remedy for those defects. But alas, poor me! My own faults―which I on...
Plunged up to the ears in work, good friend!" thought Oblomov as he watched him depart. "Yes, and blind and deaf and dumb to everything else in the world! Yet by going into society and, at the same time, busying yourself about your affairs you will y...
The biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three on them sitting ...
Those who are truly alive are kindly and unsuspecting in their human relationships and consequently endangered under present conditions. They assume that others think and act generously, kindly and helpfully, in accordance with the laws of life. This...
You'll have a good, secure life when being alive means more to you than security, love more than money, your freedom more than public or partisan opinion, when the mood of Beethoven's or Bach's music becomes the mood of your whole life … when your ...
It is high time for the living to get tough, for toughness is indispensable in the struggle to safeguard and develop the life-force; this will not detract from their goodness, as long as they stand courageously by the truth. There is ground for hope ...
Although my road to writing seems like it may have come easily, there were a few bumps in that road. I didn’t get a lot of encouragement from friends, although my family were great supporters. I also had many…what you would call “mind-boggling�...
You're beautiful, but you're empty...One couldn't die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she's the one I've watered. Since ...
You are beautiful, but you are empty... One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you ot...
They understand death, they stand there in the church under the skies that have a beginningless past and go into the never-ending future, waiting themselves for death, at the foot of the dead, in a holy temple. - I get a vision of myself and the two ...
Barret thinks- he thinks, briefly- of turning around and leaving the park; of being, this time, the vanisher, the man who leaves you wondering, who offers no explanation, not even the sour satisfaction of a real fight; who simply drifts away, because...
I must thank you for it all. I might not have gone but for you, and so have missed the finest study I ever came across: a study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon. There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourl...
Depression is not dramatic, but it is total. It’s sneaky - you almost don’t notice it at first. Like a cat burglar, it comes in through an open window while you’re sleeping. It takes little things at first; your appetite, your desire to return ...
Aurora sagged. "Why is it," she asked, "that every time I'm with you two we end up stealing something big?" "We always return it," Donegan said, a little defensively. "Maybe not always in one piece or necessarily to the right person but return it we ...
