My first job, which I had to take when not more than fifteen, was assistant to a fruit peddler. It seemed all right to me until a little girl told me snootily, 'We never deal with peddler!' Thereupon I resigned, ashamed of what I was doing.
The room-service Caesar salads with soggy croutons, the distant relatives who show up at readings pitching weird, far-fetched investment schemes, the fans who have you sign a book to 'Cathy' and then tell you, 'No, it's Kathy with a K' - it gets chal...
When we have a favorite writer, it's always the places where they grew up, lived, worked, and that they recreated on the page that we most want to visit and commune with. Faulkner's Mississippi, Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles, etc. The mind of the re...
At the beginning of a novel, a writer needs confidence, but after that what's required is persistence. These traits sound similar. They aren't. Confidence is what politicians, seducers, and currency speculators have, but persistence is a quality foun...
No matter how you cut them, paste them, rotate them, or distort them, lip syncing and air-guitar playing are fundamentally foolish activities, and anyone seen to be engaging in them with anything approaching a straight face is, by definition, taking ...
Size matters in fiction, but so does lack of size. Everything else being equal, fat novels tend to be perceived as serious, very thin ones as more honest, more real. Writers address these age-old expectations by filling their big books with philosoph...
I've been quite happy. Look, here are my proofs. Remember that I am indifferent to discomforts which would harass other folk. What do the circumstances of life matter if your dreams make you lord paramount of time and space?
Although Jesus Christ was Himself the Creative Deity, by whom all things were made, as man He humbled Himself--set aside His divine prerogatives and walked this earth as man -- a perfect demonstration of what God intended man to be--the whole persona...
There are two strategies available in a partisan political environment for communities working for justice. You can join the Democratic Party - and, once inside the tent, work to bend it more to your will. Or you can not join the Democratic Party - a...
The Abbe Paul looked at Agnes rather as Alain had, with respect. 'How sensible. People are desperate to probe mysteries which for the most part are best left unprobed. It is the modern curse: this demented drive to explain every blessed thing. Not ev...
Sins of ignorance or infirmity are to be admonished in a different way than intentional sins of malice of intention. The assurance of forgiveness is not to be offered carelessly by those whose conscience is seared, but to penitents who come contritel...
Milena found Cilia outside, holding her bamboo box. Milena hugged her. ‘I’m sorry about your shins,’ she said. Milena lifted the lid of the box, and saw it, the precious paper, ruled in staves. People were generous. Milena had never believed th...
It takes four angels to oversee an apocalypse: a recorder to make the book that would be scripture in the new world; a preserver to comfort and save those selected to be the first generation; an accuser to remind them why they suffer; and a destroyer...
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time en...
If he had the cleft tongue of a devil, or the snake hair of a Medusa, or the matted hair of a wolf-monster, Akhmed might understand. But Ramazan had two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, pairs of arms and legs and ears, hair greasy, but not slimy and certai...
In alien lands I keep the body Of ancient native rites and things: I gladly free a little birdie At celebration of the spring. I'm now free for consolation, And thankful to almighty Lord: At least, to one of his creations I've given freedom in this w...
I guess it’s time.” While Cress’s thoughts continued to churn through the horrible things that could happen to her, she felt herself being suddenly spun around and dipped backward, a supportive arm scooping beneath her back. She yelped and caug...
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom," says Paul. And we are most in line with the Spirit, most faithfully obedient, when instead of trying to manipulate people into faith, we simply live in that freedom and let the Spirit do the work of...
It was suicide, wasn't it?" "In an involuntary sort of way," said Vorob'yev. "These Cetagandan political suicides can get awfully messy, when the principal won't cooperate." "Thirty-two stab wounds in the back, worst case of suicide they ever saw?" m...
My lord said, amongst other things, that he did not propose to burden the doctor with the details of his genealogy. He consigned the doctor and all his works, severally and comprehensively described, to hell, and finished up his epic speech by a pung...
One voyage to the East and a man could live as rich as a lord until the end of his days. When he'd been younger, Davos had dreamed of making such voyages himself. But the years went dancing by like moths around a flame, and somehow the time had never...
