Poor Cook, thought Captain, I must be kinder to her. She makes a splendid pet. How faithful she is! I always say you can't get the same love from a dog that you can from a human. So clever, too. I believe she understands every word I say. I believe t...
It is necessary to find one's own way in New York. New York City is not hospitable. She is very big and she has no heart. She is not charming. She is not sympathetic. She is rushed and noisy and unkempt, a hard, ambitious, irresolute place, not very ...
The majority enjoy a young girl as they enjoy a glass of champagne, at one effervescent moment-oh, yes, that is really beautiful, and with many a young girl that is undoubtedly the most one can attain, but here there is more. If an individual is too ...
Except they kept asking me questions like 'What is your biggest source of conflict about the Pope?' Or 'Has the Pope ever tried to suppress your scientific work?' Completely out of left field! "They didn't want to hear me tell them how much Pope Bene...
That night I looked Stephanie [Burt] up online and started reading more about her work...I kept encountering a striking factoid...: she’s often cited as the most influential poetry critic of her generation. And she’s openly trans. This is not the...
At the house, I park and run upstairs and they're still in bed, but the T.V in the adjacent room is on, a concert -Augustana singing Boston playing subtly on Vh1. I disrobe and slip back under the sheets behind Peyton, wrapping my hands around her to...
I have always swung back and forth between alienation and relatedness. As a child, I would run away from the beatings, from the obscene words, and always knew that if I could run far enough, then any leaf, any insect, any bird, any breeze could bring...
The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and d...
what if you get most of what the eye sees? what if love came in seeds? what if we plant them and they grow trees? what if they form hearts instead of leafs? what if hate was to freeze? what if there was no honeybees? what if your heart stops when you...
The world needs people who have survived mistakes, tragedies, and trials to help the rest of us through. Where would we be if Victor Frankl had never experienced what he did during the war? He wouldn’t have used his experiences to benefit millions ...
He stops rocking the cage. "Oh, come on, Callie. It won't be fun if we don't rock it. In fact, the more we rock it, the better it'll feel." His voice drops to a deep whisper. "We can rock it nice and slow or really, really fast."... "Do I have your p...
When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an ‘idol,’ something you are actually worshiping. When such a thing is threatened, your anger is absolute. Your anger is actually the way the id...
New York! I say New York, let black blood flow into your blood. Let it wash the rust from your steel joints, like an oil of life Let it give your bridges the curve of hips and supple vines. Now the ancient age returns, unity is restored, The recocili...
But yester-night I prayed aloud In anguish and in agony, Up-starting from the fiendish crowd Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me: A lurid light, a trampling throng, Sense of intolerable wrong, And whom I scorned, those only strong! Thirst of reve...
I told you before, Jem, that you would not leave me. And you are still with me. When I breathe, I will think of you, for without you I would have been dead years ago. When I wake up and when I sleep, when I lift up my hands to defend myself or when I...
We are not consumers. For most of humanity’s existence, we were makers, not consumers: we made our clothes, shelter, and education, we hunted and gathered our food. We are not addicts. “I propose that most addictions come from our surrendering ou...
We are only chance visitants to this jungle of blind mutations. The natural world existed when we did not, and it will continue to exist long after we are gone. The supernatural crept into life only when the door of consciousness was opened in our he...
I had lied to myself from the very beginning, deceived myself into believing that I was being fanciful and overly imaginative. Surely such monstrosities only existed in nightmares? Yet I had lived through a nightmare these past months, and that was n...
You want to know how to stop this killer? Forgive yourself, and he’ll disappear from your life forever.” “Thanks. I’ll be sure to do that.” And I know: 1. This is almost the same conversation I’ve had with myself many times before. 2. Gor...
Mademoiselle De Lafontaine – in right of her father, who was a German, assumed to be psychological, metaphysical and something of a mystic – now declared that when the moon shone with a light so intense it was well known that it indicated a speci...
This Christian claim [of universal validity] is naturally offensive to the adherents of every other religious system. It is almost as offensive to modern man, brought up in the atmosphere of relativism, in which tolerance is regarded almost as the hi...
