Mr. Dawes Jr: In 1773, an official of this bank unwisely loaned a large sum of money to finance a shipment of tea to the American colonies. Do you know what happened? George W. Banks: Yes, sir. Yes, I think I do. As the ship lay anchored in Boston Ha...
While still practising law, he'd run a hearse-rental agency. Then, later, he'd bought into a handkerchief factory in Baker Park. Their most famous innovation was the funeral hankerchief, a plain white cotton handkerchief with a black border. Not long...
It must be dawn, and the last breath went out of this body on the table - how long before? Irretrievably gone from this world, as dead as though she had lived a thousand years ago. Men have cut the isthmus of Panama and joined the two oceans; they ha...
Hunger for God compels us to seek the Lord. At times our desire for God overcomes our physical desires, and the ache for God is palpable. Throughout the Scriptures, God is faithful to reward those who search for him. Written during one of King David'...
I take in his smooth cheeks, his rough chin and jaw, the developing wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. 'We fall in love with somebody who maybe seems like a bad match,' Tully says, 'and our friends run around saying 'What does he see in her?' What ...
Why should the spread of ideas and people result in reforms that lower violence? There are several pathways. The most obvious is a debunking of ignorance and superstition. A connected and educated populace, at least in aggregate and over the long run...
In Mongolia, when a dog dies, he is buried high in the hills so people cannot walk on his grave. The dog’s master whispers in the dog’s ear his wishes that the dog will return as a man in his next life. Then his tail is cut off and put beneath hi...
I run my hands through his hair, finally, finally, finally, then bring his head to mine and kiss him so hard our teeth collide, planets collide, kissing him now for each and every time we didn't all summer long. I know absolutely how to kiss him too,...
Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and light…unless all ages and races of men have been delu...
A Manifesto for Introverts 1. There's a word for 'people who are in their heads too much': thinkers. 2. Solitude is a catalyst for innovation. 3. The next generation of quiet kids can and must be raised to know their own strengths. 4. Sometimes it he...
Maybe there’s a heaven, like they say, a place where everything we’ve ever done is noted and recorded, weighed on big karma scales. Maybe not. Maybe this whole thing is just a giant experiment run by aliens who find out human hijinks amusing. Or ...
We don’t like to hurt. And there is no worse pain for fallen people than facing an emptiness we cannot fill. To enter into pain seems rather foolish when we can run from it through denial. We simply cannot get it through our head that, with a natur...
For so long, maybe all my life, I thought only a house could make you whole. I thought I was nothing without an interesting address. I thought I was only as good as my color scheme, my drawer pulls, my floors....it's the knowledge that a house can be...
He watched the fire and if he saw portents there it was much the same to him. He would live to look upon the western sea and he was equal to whatever might follow for he was complete at every hour. Whether his history should run concomitant with men ...
[last lines] John Smith: Usually I'm quoting someone else's words. The least I can do is give you some John Smith originals. They won't be poetic. But they'll be the truth. Yes, prison desensitizes you. But it also forces you to see what's most impor...
Kazuko Yoshiyama: I first fell in love in high school. We became really close as soon as we met. It was like we'd known each other since childhood. But it was over before we became adults. Makoto Konno: Why? Kazuko Yoshiyama: The timing was probably ...
Jack Walsh: Where am I? I'm in Boise, Idaho; no, no, no, wait a minute: I'm in Anchorage, Alaska. No, no, wait: I'm in Casper, Wyoming; I'm in the lobby of a Howard Johnson's and I'm wearing a pink carnation. Eddie Moscone: What the fuck are you talk...
Anything I run across can light up the circuitry of my brain, and set me on an adventure. To research strains of yeast; hiccup fetishists; the proper use of inverse, obverse, converse and reverse; the ratio of main narrative to tangent, of forward ac...
If you stay long enough in one place the whole world passes you by.
Whoever keeps his door locked all the time longs for it to be broken down.
Only when the coffin is closed will we see how long lasting is the name.
