There was indeed a caste system in Maycomb, but to my mind it worked this way: the older citizens, the present generation of people who had lived side by side for years and years, were utterly predictable to one another: they took for granted attitud...
Tolerance, which is one form of love of neighbor, must manifest itself not only in our personal relations, but also in the arena of society as well. In the world of opinion and politics, tolerance is that virtue by which liberated minds conquer the e...
Ever reviled, accursed, ne'er understood, Thou art the grisly terror of our age. "Wreck of all order," cry the multitude, "Art thou, & war & murder's endless rage." 0, let them cry. To them that ne'er have striven The 'truth that lies behind a word t...
I am a sailor, you're my first mate We signed on together, we coupled our fate Hauled up our anchor, determined not to fail For the heart's treasure, together we set sail With no maps to guide us, we steered our own course Rode out the storms when th...
People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal w...
I surrendered my identity in your eyes. Now I'm just like everybody else, and it's so funny, the way monogamy is funny, the way someone falling down in the street is funny. I entered a revolving door and emerged as a human being. When you think of me...
If you could possibly understand how precious and powerful your experience of this one lifetime as yourself is, you wouldn't be trying to go anywhere else. If you could know the perfection of time and space, You would slow each moment down To drain e...
My dis-interest in what people speak of as "women's problems," "women's literature." Have women a special sensibility? No. There are individuals uniquely talented & uniquely equipped to interpret the complex symbolism of the world but they are certai...
Many journalists now are no more than channelers and echoers of what George Orwell called the 'official truth'. They simply cipher and transmit lies. It really grieves me that so many of my fellow journalists can be so manipulated that they become re...
When my father was 17, he went to Montreal and found these submarine sandwich shops that were really successful, and weren't in Toronto [his home town]. So he went to my grandparents and said: "Look, you have to give me the seed money to open up one ...
Faith is a light. You could be experiencing one of the darkest nights of the soul, lost, confused with no answers, no guidance. Those are all dark thoughts that we have had when we felt the most alone. But we escaped because we believed. That's the p...
Life is a winding mess full of incredible tribulation and nightmarish trials and testing fields. But there is reason for great joy and great peace in the storm of present Earth, in this opaque infinitely complex, though desperately simple sin infeste...
Yes, My Son, man is a piece of wood, that can be used for everything, from the moment he’s born until the moment he dies, he’s always ready to obey, send him there and he goes, tell him to halt and he stops, tell him to turn back and he retreats,...
Falar do passado é o mais fácil que há, está tudo escrito, é só repetir, papaguear, conferir pelos livros o que os alunos [escrevem] nos livros ou nas chamadas orais, ao passo que falar de um presente que a cada minuto nos rebenta na cara, fala...
The moral conscience that so many thoughtless people have offended against and many more have rejected, is something that exists and has always existed. It was not an invention of the philosophers of the Quartenary, when the soul was little more than...
I never wanted a too die for house, or a too die for car. I always wanted a too die for life. If you were to die tomorrow would you feel like you did everything you wanted to? Loved everyone and meant it? Lived with honesty and integrity? Stood up fo...
Stahl trailed him upstairs, across a mezzanine, and out into the darkness of the sloping balcony. Tom gave the aisle his torch so his guest could see. On the screen below a woman's head was wavering, two or three times larger than life. A metallic vo...
If you describe yourself as "Atheist," some people will say, "Don't you mean 'Agnostic'?" I have to reply that I really do mean Atheist. I really do not believe that there is a god - in fact I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference...
It’s destiny; the stars have aligned perfectly to bring us together as friends. You cannot argue with what’s meant to be, once the stars have spoken, it is absolute,” he uttered, all smug and knowing. Shocked that he used the word destiny, I co...
In times of crisis, you get a public reaction that is incoherence on stilts. On the one hand, most people know that the government is not in the oil business. They don't want it in the oil business. They know there is nothing a man in Washington can ...
Many veterans feel guilty because they lived while others died. Some feel ashamed because they didn’t bring all their men home and wonder what they could have done differently to save them. When they get home they wonder if there’s something wron...