Let me speak plainly: The United States of America is and must remain a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. Our very unity has been strengthened by this pluralism. That's how we began; this is how we must always be. The ideals of our country...
Arrogance convinced me that by sheer determination, I could conquer helplessness itself. Stubborn and foolish youth, I must admit, for when I look back on those years now, I see quite clearly that rarely did I stand alone. Always there were friends, ...
It’s true: greed has had a very bad press. I frankly don’t see anything wrong with greed. I think that the people who are always attacking greed would be more consistent with their position if they refused their next salary increase. I don’t se...
I'll always remember being called by my mother who beckoned me to look at the screen where a young man was being tortured by the church. Bag over his head, rolling on the ground, crying, suffocating, vomiting while the congression continues yelling c...
His body and his soul appeared to have the strange ability to repel the hours, just as, inversely, a magnet attracts metal. Everything spun about him and fled; he was always the sole centre of an enormous circumference. He kept moving forwards, body ...
It never occurred to me before, but I always thought of time like it was a road, or an empty plane. I could see it and mark it and claim it as mine, but the reason I couldn't travel my own speed was because I was waiting on the present to catch up, I...
That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he ...
If I could take a bite of the whole world And feel it on my palate I’d be more happy for a minute or so... But I don’t always want to be happy. Sometimes you have to be Unhappy to be natural... Not every day is sunny. When there’s been no rain ...
I think that the best kind of change, is the change that comes from the inside and begins it's way out until it emerges on the outside; a change that is born underneath then continues and spreads until it has reached the surface. That's a true change...
Life is similar to a bus ride. The journey begins when we board the bus. We meet people along our way of which some are strangers, some friends and some strangers yet to be friends. There are stops at intervals and people board in. At times some of t...
You know, when I came home after our day in the city, I just crashed, thinking about Remi and how much I missed him. And then the next day was worse, And when you walked up to me at that ice cream machine, I just felt myself crumble inside. Around Re...
And then there are always clever people about to promise you that everything will be all right if only you put yourself out a bit... And you get carried away, you suffer so much from the things that exist that you ask for what can't ever exist. Now l...
I was at ease in everything, to be sure, but at the same time satisfied with nothing. Each joy made me desire another. I went from festivity to festivity. On occasion I danced for nights on end, ever madder about people and life. At times, late on th...
it strikes me that the writers most deeply concerned with the state of literary fiction and its biases against women could do a lot worse than trying to coin some terms of their own: to name the archetypes they wish to invert or criticise and thereby...
There is no quarrel between science and spirituality. I often hear people of science trying to use it to prove the nonexistence of the spiritual, but I simply can't see a chasm in between the two. What is spiritual produces what is scientific and whe...
Do not limit yourself to your own preconceptions of yourself, but throw yourself out onto a blank page that you haven't written on yet, and see what you find out about you, see what story unfolds, see what happens! I always do this, and sometimes it ...
A man that is of ’ Opinion, that this Earth of ours is a Planet, carry’d round and enlightn’d by the Sun, like the rest of them, cannot but sometimes have a fancy … that the rest of the Planets have their Dress and Furniture, nay and the...
What I admire about the modern atheist is not at all his logic, but rather his gift of imagination. There will always be the cartoon versions of Christianity further perpetuated by the extremist atheists who do not possess the humility to ask real sc...
And when you are criticized, as you will be, remind your critics that you have the right to speak your mind. And if they shout you down, as they probably will, then inform them that since they insist on being asses, you will henceforth communicate wi...
They tell me H. is happy now, they tell me she is at peace. What makes them so sure of this? I don't mean that I fear the worst of all. Nearly her last words were, 'I am at peace with God.' She had not always been. And she never lied. And she wasn't ...
I am a product [...of] endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, bo...
