My chest tightens: seeing him so upset breaks my own heart. 'Don't you ever wish you could make that bit go away?" I say, feeling angry at the past. 'That you could erase those painful memories, forget they every happened, just remember the happy tim...
All of a sudden I became aware of a little star in one of those patches and I began looking at it intently. That was because the little star gave me an idea: I made up my mind to kill myself that night. I had made up my mind to kill myself already tw...
The Army's new pitch was simple. Good pay, good benefits, a manageable amount of adventure... but don't worry, we're not looking to pick fights these days. For a country that had paid so dear a price for its recent military buccaneering, the message ...
John Locke, called the Father of Liberalism, made the argument that the individual instead of the community was the foundation of society. He believed that government existed by the consent of the governed, not by divine right. But the reason governm...
Doesn’t he look just like a ring wraith?” she said thoughtfully. “Are you kidding?” replied Cathy, “I most certainly won't be carol singing at your door this Christmas if you've got one of those ugly things hanging on it!” “No, from Lor...
I brought them up here to illustrate the point of conformity: the difficulty in maintaining your own beliefs in the face of others. Now, those of you -- I see the look in your eyes like, "I would've walked differently." Well, ask yourselves why you w...
What did one see if one looked in any depth into the world of this writer's fiction? Elegant self-control concealing from the world's eyes until the very last moment a state of inner disintegration and biological decay; sallow ugliness, sensuously ma...
Writing is such an industry now. In many ways, that's a good thing, in that it removes all the muse-like mystique and makes it a plain old job, accessible to everyone. But with industry comes jargon. I was aware that jargon was starting to fill those...
I open my eyes and for the first time stare openly at my own reflection. My heart rate picks up as I do, like I am breaking the rules and will be scolded for it. It will be difficult to break the habits of thinking Abnegation instilled in me, like tu...
[The Doctor] pulled the thing out of Prince Boris's mouth, waving it around. 'Oh. Blimey. This is not a spatula. What is it?' I [Amy] stared at the stubby thing. It looked like the world's chunkiest novelty gift pen... I coughed. 'That, Doctor, is th...
As I look back over the other best friendships I've had that also ended, I wonder if, in addition to simply having a finite amount of time for such intimacy, we also have certain periods in our lives in which we seek out people who seem to embody the...
Cixi was not at the coronation. The majestic main part of the Forbidden City was out of bounds to her – because she was a woman. She still could not set foot in it, even though she was now the de facto ruler. In fact, when her sedan-chair went with...
And in Kandahar he was taught about survival, about fighting and killing and hunting, and he learned much else without being taught, such as looking out for himself and watching his tongue and not saying the wrong thing, the thing that might get him ...
Now look here, Smithers. They's two kind's of stealing. They's the small kind, like what you does, and the big kind, like I does. Fo' de small stealing dey put you in jail soon or late. But fo' de big stealin' dey puts your picture in de paper and yo...
Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once yo...
I look at the Augusteum,and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all. It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated. The Augusteum warns me to not to get attache...
If the moderns really want a simple religion of love, they must look for it in the Athanasian Creed. The truth is that the trumpet of true Christianity, the challenge of the charities and simplicities of Bethlehem or Christmas Day never rang out more...
It's funny. When we were alive we spent much of our time staring up at the cosmos and wondering what was out there. We were obsessed with the moon and whether we could one day visit it. The day we finally walked on it was celebrated worldwide as perh...
The warm night claimed her. In a moment it was part of her. She walked on the grass, and her shoes were instantly soaked. She flung up her arms to the sky. Power ran to her fingertips. Excitement was communicated from the waiting trees, and the orcha...
This, since junior school, had been virtually my only experience of women—as fantasy figures. Reading about women in fantasy novels had set me an even more unrealistic point of view. The doesn't help, with its sexless visions of elf maidens who may...
You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go round the earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it goes, and turning towards the sun in the course of each twenty-four hours, not only Japan, and the...
