Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselv...
Let’s face it: suffering discredits goodness. I’m agnostic in practice though faith-based in theory. I used to pray but now know he’ll do what he darn well pleases when he darn well pleases. Will he listen? Maybe. We have a book that says so, b...
All my life I had lived on the presumption that there was no existence beyond... flesh, the moment of being alive... then nothing. I had searched in superstition... But there was nothing. Then I heard the sound of my own life leaving me. It was so......
Krebs, who knew some Russian and at one stage in his career had been embraced by Stalin, was "a smooth, surviving type." And so, with almost incredible effrontery, he tried to talk to Chuikov as an equal, opening the conversation with the general com...
Shunting closer, I snuggle into his chest, soaking up his fresh woodsy scent. His arms encircle me and pull me close. “You always smell like home,” I whisper under my breath. Smooth, soft fingers tilt my chin upward, and I’m startled when my fa...
Darius held Stark back from launching himself at Neferet, and Duantia spoke quickly into the rising tension. 'Neferet, I think we can all agree that there are many unanswered questions about the tragedy that occured on our island today. Stark, we als...
In 1995, each cast at The Second City was made up of four men and two women. When it was suggested that they switch one of the companies to three men and three women, the producers and directors had the same panicked reaction. 'You can't do that. The...
Papa, why are you selling our goats? I like these goats." "A week ago the price was five hundred, now it's four hundred. I'm sorry, but we can't wait for it go any lower." Mankhalala and the others were tied by their front legs with a long rope. When...
Within my heart a garden grows, wild with violets and fragrant rose. Bright daffodils line the narrow path, my footsteps silent as I pass. Sweet tulips nod their heads in rest; I kneel in prayer to seek God's best. For round my garden a fence stands ...
These comments recall Turkle's distinction between two kinds of "transparency" in technological cultures. Modernist transparency is the notion that users can and should have access to the inner workings of a technology. It evokes the aesthetic of ear...
Isn't one of the first lessons of good elocution that there's nothing one can say in any rambling, sprawling rant that can't, through some effort, be said shorter and better with a little careful editing? Or that, in writing, there's nothing you can ...
Oh, once you’ve been initiated into the Elderly, the world doesn’t want you back.” Veronica settled herself in a rattan chair and adjusted her hat just so. “We—by whom I mean anyone over sixty—commit two offenses just by existing. One is ...
All's well that ends well.' 'Assuming there's an end somewhere,' Aomame said. Tamaru formed some short creases near his mouth that were faintly reminiscent of a smile. 'There has to be an end somewhere. It's just that nothing's labeled "This is the e...
Understanding the world too well, you see too many options and become as indecisive as Hamlet. No matter how far we progress, we remain part animal, and it is the animal in us that fires our strategies, gives them life, animates us to fight. Without ...
My parents say you’re no good, Elijah.” I exhaled and killed the cigarette in the grass. Laughing, Eli’s eyes went to my lips and his hands touched my bare midriff. “Really? And what do you say?” He had brought his lips so close to mine tha...
Avoiding awareness of our own reality is often an attempt to deny thoughts, desires, or intentions that we feel will threaten or contradict the needs of those with whom we feel strong attachment. We instinctively hide feelings and thoughts we assume ...
The library turned out to be a very pleasant place, but it was not the comfortable chairs, the huge wooden bookshelves, or the hush of people reading that made the three siblings feel so good as they walked into the room. It is useless for me to tell...
It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were; all the rest of the people in the world, the t...
I have had an aversion to good spelling for sixty years and more, merely for the reason that when I was a boy there was not a thing I could do creditably except spell according to the book. It was a poor and mean distinction, and I early learned to d...
I just don’t understand how you can get so much comfort from a religion whose language does so much harm.”…I realized that what troubled me most was her use of the word “comfort,” so in my reply I addressed that first. I said that I didn’...
Studying the world's oldest writing for the first time compels you to wonder about what writing is and how it came about more than five thousand years ago and what the world might have looked like without it. Writing as I would define it serves to re...
