Sometime I'm going to do an essay called 'The Virtues of Amateurism' for all of those people who wish they earned their living in the arts. The market kills more artistic people than anything else. It's a world of safety out there, for most people. T...
People spend their entire lives fearing the very thing you apparently crave. They do anything they can to delay the process or fool themselves into believing it’s farther away than it actually is. With every passing year, with every milestone, they...
The [commercial] strip is marketed with the come-on of comfort (the Comfort Inn) and with the promise of a home on the road, a home where nobody knows your name and they're glad to see you as long as you can pay. The strip lives in the contradiction ...
In many ways. . .the completeness of biography, the achievement of its professionalization, is an ironic fiction, since no life can ever be known completely, nor would we want to know every fact about an individual. Similarly, no life is ever lived a...
The word “idiot” comes from a Greek root meaning private person. Idiocy is the female defect: intent on their private lives, women follow their fate through a darkness deep as that cast by malformed cells in the brain. It is no worse than the mal...
We can say without exaggeration that the present national ambition of the United States is unemployment. People live for quitting time, for weekends, for vacations, and for retirement; moreover, this ambition seems to be classless, as true in the exe...
I remembered Papa talking about Stalin confiscating peasants' land, tools, and animals. He told them what crops they would produce and how much they would be paid. I thought it was ridiculous. How could Stalin simply take something that didn't belong...
Deal with all this, live with myself, you mean? I honestly don't know. I stand often enough at the abyss of my soul, asking that same question, looking down into the dark crevices where the black monsters dwell on the bottom. They gaze up at me, and ...
People cry, Bran.” “They do,” he said in a very low voice. “And when my mother’s cries turn into wails, Mattalina, a lot of people die. And she has to live with the blood of every one of those deaths coating her days, her nights, her clothe...
He said, speaking more to himself than to me: 'It was knowledge I sought. Knowledge which is clean and pure, far above the cheating and deceiving in which most men spend their lives.' And do you not find it,' I asked, 'this knowledge which you prize?...
He leaned back in his seat throwing his hands behind his head; sort of an open offer for the entire bar to get a good look at what he was working with and it was quite impressive. God why did he have to have tattoos? Or the killer smile he was so bla...
You know what I really love the most in life? Food. Yep, just food. I love the cooking of food, the eating of food, the talking about food, the thinking about food, and the dreaming about food. Food, food, food. That’s what I love. Can there be any...
It almost seems as though this roiling world is conspiring to test our patience at every turn. In fact, it is. With this in mind, we would be wise to look on our imperfect environment as a teacher rather than an antagonist. It constantly shows us tha...
I will be satisfied to the extent that I see everything I have as a gift from God. Here is the truth: Everything you have – your money, talent, friendships, marriage, children, material possessions, health, home, bike, car, even the country you liv...
You have been given a second chance to start your life over. You can't throw this opportunity away. If you do you will be a colossal fool. If you get the chance to do something and don't do it then you'll simply live with regret. That's a worse situa...
The person senses what it feels like to be free from inhibitions. At the same time he feels connected and integrated – with his body and, through his body, with his environment. He has a sense of well-being and inner peace. He gains the knowledge t...
You are reformed, you may be a better man, but you are not a different man. How can you convince yourself of such a thing when you are so conversant with the theology of your faith? From one end of this life to the other, you carry with you all that ...
I've enjoyed every age I've been, and each has had its own individual merit. Every laugh line, every scar, is a badge I wear to show I've been present, the inner rings of my personal tree trunk that I display proudly for all to see. Nowadays, I don't...
Miss New Mexico stared, dumbfounded. "Stand out? Stand out? I have a freaking tray stuck in my forehead!" She broke into fresh sobs. Taylor clapped for attention. "Miss New Mexico, let's not get all down in the bummer basement where the creepy things...
God's command to have dominion over every living thing is a call to service, a test of responsibility, a rule of love, a cooperation with nature, whereas Satan's use of force for the sake of getting gain renders the earth uninhabitable. Brigham Young...
Happier are all men than the dwellers in Faerie – or the gods, for that matter…Better a life like a falling star, bright across the dark, than a deathlessness that can see naught above or beyond itself…the day draws nigh when Faerie shall fade,...
