There is a deep sense in which we are all ghost towns. We are all haunted by the memory of those we love, those with whom we feel we have unfinished business. While they may no longer be with us, a faint aroma of their presence remains, a presence th...
In the case of Michel Angelo we have an artist who with brush and chisel portrayed literally thousands of human forms; but with this peculiarity, that while scores and scores of his male figures are obviously suffused and inspired by a romantic senti...
Where's your dog?" Peter's voice came from within the gushing stream of water. Justin thought he must have misheard. "Pardon?" "Your dog." "Yes?" "Isn't he with you today?" Justin looked at Peter. "Ha bloody ha." Peter stuck his head out of the strea...
Usually, Shakespeare gives me goose bumps. The guy knows everything. Like some ancient angel quill-ing out blueprints life. Hiding it in fiction. And usually I love the sound of the words, the way they dance on the page. Today, they fall flat. My att...
It seems that a profound, impartial, and absolutely just opinion of our fellow-creatures is utterly unknown. Either we are men, or we are women. Either we are cold, or we are sentimental. Either we are young, or growing old. In any case life is but a...
I have seen many cases like N. during the five years I've been in practice. I sometimes picture these unfortunates as men and women being pecked to death by predatory birds. The birds are invisible - at least until a psychiatrist who is good, or luck...
How thin the air felt at the forest's edge, how ghostly the trees that guarded their realm.... The whole world seemed as delicate as a dandelion seed, and as fleeting.... How sad to know that the figment village of my imagination would not vanish whe...
We pass and leave you lying. No need for rhetoric, for funeral music, for melancholy bugle-calls. No need for tears now, no need for regret. We took our risk with you; you died and we live. We take your noble gift, salute for the last time those line...
The Renaissance did not break completely with mediaeval history and values. Sir Philip Sidney is often considered the model of the perfect Renaissance gentleman. He embodied the mediaeval virtues of the knight (the noble warrior), the lover (the man ...
In the centre of Bond was a hurricane-room, the kind of citadel found in old-fashioned houses in the tropics. These rooms are small, strongly built cells in the heart of the house, in the middle of the ground floor and sometimes dug down into its fou...
If a child sees something in a parent that the child aspires to, he or she will copy that parent and be content. If a children feel that a parent is living a life that shows compassion and understanding, patience and love, that child will not have to...
Horgias nodded, his lips drawn back in a smile that was a wolf’s snarl. ‘They want us all flogged. Why us?’ ‘Lupus,’ Syrion said. ‘The other centurions hate him, even among the Fourth. He’s too distant. He doesn’t drink with them or w...
You're a dumb shit. There's a million first girls for a million different first things. There's the first girl you slow-dance with, and the first girl you go to bed with. There's the first girl to give you a kiss, and then the first one you take home...
He had a charm about him sometimes, a warmth that was irresistible, like sunshine. He planted Saffy triumphantly on the pavement, opened the taxi door, slung in his bag, gave a huge film-star wave, called, "All right, Peter? Good weekend?" to the tax...
She had dispersed. She was the garden at Prem Nivas (soon to be entered into the annual Flower Show), she was Veena's love of music, Pran's asthma, Maan's generosity, the survival of some refugees four years ago, the neem leaves that would preserve q...
Jesus Hollywood believed in a lot of things. He believed that stars were ghosts of family long since past and that he was more likely to die from an asteroid falling from the sky than another human being getting the better of him. He believed that ch...
Here's the thing,' he said, his face strained. 'It's just that I've been treading really carefully around you and this whole Cordy thing all day, just like Mort told me to. And I had to make sure you saw her and were okay with it and got home safe �...
I glanced up at the trees too. Dead. Every one of them gray and white, needles rusted, leaves shriveled at the tips of branches. All the life sucked out of them. Not just the trees. All the plants, ferns, grasses and brush were shriveled, brown, barr...
During the persecutions under the Emperor Domitian, John was summoned to Rome, where he was tortured by immersion in a pot of boiling oil and subsequently banished to the island of Patmos in the Aegean sea. It was there he wrote his Apocalypse. It wa...
When I was extremely young and shockingly stupid, I thought you weren't supposed to ever get angry at anybody you cared about (lest you suspect I'm exaggerating the "shockingly stupid" part, I also thought Mount Rushmore was a natural phenomenon). I ...
There are many ways of attaining the various levels of human bliss. But one of the highest states of mental, spiritual and physical happiness is readily reached by way of a good meal, pleasant company, and easy seats by a good log fire. (Preferably t...
