Voodou isn’t like that. It isn’t concerned with notions of salvation and transcendence. What it’s about is getting things done. You follow me? In out system, there are many gods, spirits. Part of one big family, with all the virtues, all the vi...
The other night we talked about literature's elimination of the unessential, so that we are given a concentrated "dose" of life. I said, almost indignantly, "That's the danger of it, it prepares you to live, but at the same time, it exposes you to di...
Se un uomo delle SS dovesse prendermi a calci fino alla morte io alzerei ancora gli occhi a guardarlo in viso, e mi chiederei, con un'esperessione di sbalordimento misto a paura, e per puro interesse nei confronti dell'umanità: Mio Dio, ragazzo, che...
With that Nox turned a knob. There was a delay, but that was how the machine worked. First it gathered information about the subject, feeling, sensing—like a fighter in a ring, circling his opponent. Kaleb sensed it, too. It was as if a doctor palp...
What the poet has to say to the torso of the supposed Apollo, however, is more than a note on an excursion to the antiquities collection. The author's point is not that the thing depicts an extinct god who might be of interest to the humanistically e...
A man is born; his first years go by in obscurity amid the pleasures or hardships of childhood. He grows up; then comes the beginning of manhood; finally society's gates open to welcome him; he comes into contact with his fellows. For the first time ...
Via the mediation of the Enlightenment, this movement had changed from a hobby among a tiny literate elite and their secretaries, an ostentatious amusement among princely and mercantile art patrons and their masterly suppliers (who established a firs...
Jeffrey woke up, tied to the high-backed chair in his bedroom, nude. He could hear his wife giggling in the hallway, the hardwood floors creaking with her footsteps with what must have been someone else too. He was gagged, a tight cloth wrapped aroun...
The neural basis for the self, as I see it, resides with the continuous reactivation of at least two sets of representations. One set concerns representations of key events in an individual's autobiography, on the basis of which a notion of identity ...
He could not consent to allow himself to be insulted, still less to allow himself to be treated as a rag, and, above all, to allow a thoroughly vicious man to treat him so. No quarrelling, however, no quarrelling! Possibly if some one wanted, if some...
Sure, occasionally a certain sappy song or romantic movie would come on, and you’d wonder what he or she was up to, but there was no way to know. Of course, you could always pick up the phone (and more recently, text or e-mail), but that would requ...
Come on. I know you're not a stupid man.' 'I'm quite stupid. Ask anyone.' 'Finbar, are there superheroes living among us?' Finbar snorted with laughter and Kenny started to feel a little thick. 'Superheroes? In tights and capes, flying around? If the...
We have an odd relationship with words. We learn a few when we are small, throughout our lives we collect others through education, conversation, our contact with books, and yet, in comparison, there are only a tiny number about whose meaning, sense,...
At first, you fall in love. You wake in the morning woozy and your twilight is lit with astral violet light. You spelunk down into each other until you come to possess some inner vision of each other that becomes one thing. Us. Together. And time pas...
The West Indian is not exactly hostile to change, but he is not much inclined to believe in it. This comes from a piece of wisdom that his climate of eternal summer teaches him. It is that, under all the parade of human effort and noise, today is lik...
Lovers' language, give me an exact and poetic comparison to say what those eyes of Capitu were like. No image comes to mind that doesn't offend against the rules of good style, to say what they were and what they did to me. Undertow eyes? Why not? Un...
Velikost historických osobností nikdy nespočívala v jejich absolutním podrobení konvenci, ale tkvěla naopak v jejich osvobození od konvence a ve spásné svobodě. Vyčnívaly jako vrcholky hor z masy, která setrvávala v zajetí kolektivní...
And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains. I turn my head, and see it,...
Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, br...
Goodwill to all.' I know it's techinically 'goodwill to all men,' but in my mind, I drop the 'men' because that feels segregationist/elitist/sexist/generally bad ist. Goodwill shouldn't be just for men. It should also apply to women and children, and...
PAPER TOWERS The library was on the second floor of the House, not far from my room. It had two floors—the first held the majority of the books and a balcony wrapped in a wrought-iron railing held another set. It was a cavalcade of tomes, all in im...
