None of the things I have mentioned can make a foolish man wise or a bad book good. But when they are properly used they remind us that the act of reading is an act of confidence, and almost of conspiracy, between one human being and another. That co...
I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men." "Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you p...
Eva walked along the wall that held all of Michael's books. Shelves of science texts - physics, astronomy, a full set of Darwin's writings, new works in biomedical genetics - these were at the bottom, and books on philosophy and religion at the top. ...
When it's summer, people sit a lot. Or lie. Lie in the sense of recumbency. A good heavy book holds you down. It's an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic. Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to ...
The times do not call for grassroots political activism, as if the next election might be enough to reverse a massive cultural earthquake. They do not call for working a few more speeches, another letter to the editor, another fundraiser, the next vo...
The act of true reading is in its very essence democratic. Consider the nature of what happens when we read a book - and I mean, of course, a work of literature, not an instruction manual or a textbook - in private, unsupervised, un-spied-on, alone. ...
[a torpedo is racing toward them] Capt. Vasili Borodin: Torpedo impact, 20 seconds. Captain Ramius: [to Ryan] What books? Jack Ryan: Pardon me? Captain Ramius: What books did you write? Jack Ryan: I wrote a biography of, of Admiral Halsey, called "Th...
The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plug...
The end of commercial fishing is predicted long before the middle of the 21st century.
We've come a long way. Power dressing now is designed to let the woman inside us come through.
In my experience, the ex-military guys came in two types. The first grew long hair, sprouted beards, and indulged in all the things they hadn't been able do while they'd been in the armed forces. The second did their best to pretend they never got ou...
Life can surprise you. You want something with every ounce of blood that flows in your veins, and then one day it's yours. Right there before you. Everything. You break out in a cold sweat with the undeniable realization that what you really want is ...
A loose definition of the Tea Party might be fifteen million pissed-off white people sent chasing after Mexicans on Medicaid by the small handful of banks and investment companies who advertise on Fox and CNBC.
As long as they killed people with conventional rather than nuclear weapons, they were praised as humanitarian statesmen. As long as they did not use nuclear weapons, it appeared, nobody was going to give the right name to all the killing that had be...
I wondered how long it took for a baby to become yours, for familiarity to set in. Maybe as long as it took a new car to lose that scent, or a brand-new house to gather dust. Maybe that was the process more commonly described as bonding: the act of l...
Back in my day, which was about a week and a half ago, we took our lumps and we got back up and we cried like babies and quit and then put on weight.
Thirty seconds of pure awareness is a long time, especially after a lifetime of escaping yourself at all costs.
Self-discipline is often disguised as short-term pain, which often leads to long-term gains. The mistake many of us make is the need and want for short-term gains (immediate gratification), which often leads to long-term pain.
Not that she means anything by it, he knows. This is simply her lifelong habit of moderation at work, her need to tamp everything down to the routine, the modest, the tepid everyday. He understands the whole concept of boundaries, but there’s a poi...
TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT To make a long story short I leave all my possessions to the Municipal Slaughterhouse to the Special Unit of the Police Department to Lucky Dog Lotto So now if you want you can shoot
Cultivate the distance. Nurture the silence. Let it grow until your fragile heart is as far and inaccessible as his marbled emotions. Don't talk. Don't move. Sit still. If he shows up, lie. Believe your own excuses. And if he tries to charm his way b...
