What makes us the strongest tribe on the continent is the fact that a group that opposes these values--a group that would have mankind remain in the new dark ages--is permitted to grow, permitted to exist...and, after it becomes a violent terrorist o...
She is a mess, her dress once pulled together long and fresh, now drooping and awkwardly weighted to one side of her head. "What happened? Are you okay?" The women clamor around her. Nick walks out in perfect order and perfect swagger, passing her wi...
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 ...
I am a lama," said the man in yellow. "It is lamas who identify incarnate Buddhas. If I say the Lord Chenresi is among us, some will listen. Some of high rank will confirm my word. It is a good thing for religion to have manifestations--which have be...
LONG LIVE... In my country, tender proofs of spring and badly dressed birds are preferred to far-off goals. Truth waits for dawn beside a candle. Window glass is neglected. To the watchful, what does it matter? In my country, we don't question a man ...
It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the W...
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...
Books can be immensely powerful. The ideas in them can change the way people think. Yet it was the Nazis and Stalin's officers who committed terrible crimes, and not Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto - and of course, the Manifesto contained many ...
I can’t walk away from someone I love without saying ‘I love you’ one last time. I’ve known how very much I’ve loved you for a long time. You think I’m a child and I know nothing about the world or about love. But I know about love. I kno...
You're letting me go?" He curled his upper lip, his expression painfully bitter as he took a step back from me. "Apparently... I never had a hold of you." He turned sharply, and without another word striding down the street into the dark. Braden neve...
And then there is that day when all around, all around you hear the dropping of the apples, one by one, from the trees. At first it is one here and one there, and then it is three and then it is four and then nine and twenty, until the apples plumme...
You replace every molecule of every cell in your body within the course of only one year. I am not being flip when I refer to the "new you." It is quite literally possible, no matter how bad you are feeling or eating today, to be utterly transformed ...
He could pass off the inferior bottles on tables seven and four. Table seven knew nothing of wine, sending back a bottle of Riesling as "corked" because it had bits of cork in it, the imbeciles. Table four had gulped down a very special old pale bran...
I realised I never wanted to leave her side, and I never wanted her to have to struggle to be released from her sadness. I could never suggest she required release; for she did not require release. It was a true thing, this sadness of hers; a true th...
What I really needed wasn't a dose of school spirit; it was a glass of water, an aspirin the size of my fist, and the answers to the history exam that I hadn't studied for the night before. "As long as I'm dreaming," I muttered, my words lost to the ...
This is perhaps as good a place as any to point out that what distinguishes many reformers from those who cannot accept their proposals is not their greater philanthropy, but their greater impatience. The question is not whether we wish to see everyb...
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...
See, Brutus, for me, it’s not good enough to just guess as to whether there’s a heaven or how to get there. I’m not going to take Julian’s word for it, or Aaron’s word for it, or anyone else’s word for it. I’m going to find out for myse...
My birthday is coming up. I was born on March 5th, 1982. Humans have come a long way since then—nearly 30 years, if my math is good. And my math better be good, because if my math’s no good, what’s that leave? I mean aside from English, art, sc...
But doesn't that make sense? That the infinite would be, indeed... infinite? That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pieces of the eternal picture at any given time? And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and c...
They were quiet for a while, eating, then Oromis asked, "Can you tell me, What is the most important mental tool a person can possess?" It was a serious question, and Eragon considered it for a reasonable span before he ventured to say, "Determinatio...
