Many of the younger generation know my name in a vague way and connect it with grotesque inventions, but don't believe that I ever existed as a person. They think I am a nonperson, just a name that signifies a tangled web of pipes or wires or strings...
JACK That is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury. ALGERNON Then your wife will. You don't seem to realize, that in married life...
Simon laughed heartily. “I’m afraid the rest of us have to find talents to get our women into bed. Of course once they’re there, I have other talents that keep them right where they are.” “Handcuffs hardly count,” Christian said offhanded...
[A] couple I had known - who were old friends - asked me what I was going to work on next. I told them I wanted to write a near future book about AIDS concentration camps. They were vehement in their response: they thought it was a terrible idea. The...
How much courage does it take to fire up your tractor and plow under a crop you spent six or seven years growing?' he asked himself. 'How much courage to go on and do that after you’ve spent all that time finding out how to prepare the soil and whe...
In a funny way, Dad was always a bow-tie wearer, always a little more traditional than you might imagine. Because even though he had blue hair and tattoos and wore leather jackets and worked in a record store, he wanted to marry Mom back at a time wh...
As far as you are able to gather from hints scattered through these letters, Apocryphal Power, riven by internecine battles and eluding the control of its founder, Ermes Marana, has broken into two groups: a sect of enlightened followers of the Archa...
The staying awake was a great self-sacrificaing gesture of friendship, and wonderfully in keeping with our current mood of intense friendship and religious fervour. We were all in a state of shock. We engaged in a long Dostojevskyan conversations and...
Don't make the mistake of depending on the presence of certain people for your training,' he advised me. 'Teachers come and go. My own teacher, O-Sensei, died not long ago. I could have given up when O-Sensei passed away. Instead, I've continued my p...
She leaned back, closing her eyes and blowing out a thin wisp of smoke. “He was always a good-looking man. Your eyes are from him, the same blue, but you are slimmer of build and have your grandmother’s exotic face rather than his rounder, friend...
Home. One place is just like another, really. Maybe not. But truth is it's all just rock and dirt and people are roughly the same. I was born up there but I'm no stranger here. Have always felt at home everywhere, even in Virginia, where they hate me...
The thing I truly object to,” Kitty said, “and I know this sounds trivial and I don’t care if it sounds a bit snobbish, but I don’t care about these awful people and I do care about this. It’s that the whole world now thinks about Hanmouth ...
One thing you'll learn when you're in the business of selling utter shite to the Great British Public is that there's really no bottom to where they'll go. Shit food, shit TV, shit bands, shit films, shit houses. There is absolutely no fucking bottom...
We were all born to be peaceful citizens of the world. Take care of your global garden and do not allow evil gardeners try to convince you which flowers are ugly and which should be destroyed. This is God's universe and he is the master gardener of a...
Are you in pain, Frodo?' said Gandalf quietly as he rode by Frodo's side. 'Well, yes I am,' said Frodo. 'It is my shoulder. The wound aches, and the memory of darkness is heavy on me. It was a year ago today.' 'Alas! there are some wounds that cannot...
Grandfather looked away from me and out to sea, and when he spoke, it was as though he spoke to himself. “The obligations of normal human kindness – chesed, as the Hebrew has it – that we all owe. But there’s a kind of vanity in thinking you ...
This was very exciting. I'd never had two boys get into a fight over me before. The fact that one of the boys was my stepbrother, however, and held about as much romantic appeal for me as Max, the family dog, somewhat dampened my enthusiasm. And Mich...
Did you know that Bharatiyar used the pen name “Shelley-dasan”? He admired the poems of Shelley so deeply that he wrote under the name “Shelley’s servant”. Wasn’t that a wonderful gesture of humility by someone who was such a great poet h...
Uh, got into a fight with the kitchen or something?” he asked, smirking. I ran my hands through my hair and felt remains of the fruit as I did and cringed. Well, this must be attractive. I motioned for him to come into the living room and shut the ...
A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into; the other functions and faculties may be more godlike, but in point of time they come afterwards. A man dies and is buried, and all his words and actions are forgotten, but the food he has eaten...
The voice welling up out of this little man is terrific, Harry had noticed it at the house, but here, in the nearly empty church, echoing off the walnut knobs and memorial plaques and high arched rafters, beneath the tall central window of Jesus taki...
