Louis was often struck by Gage's speech, not because it was cute, but because he thought that small children all sounded like immigrants learning a foreign language in some helter-skelter but fairly amiable way. He knew that babies make all the sound...
When dreaded outcomes are actually imminent we don't worry about themwe take action. Seeing lava from the local volcano make its way down the street toward our house does not cause worry it causes running. Also we don't usually choose imminent events...
It gets you thinking about the parts in a story we never see" --he cleared his throat-- "the parts around the edges. You bring someone like that boy so alive before us and there he is set loose in our world so that we can't stop thinking of him. But ...
Sometimes the people who’ve owned the books in this shop leave little clues between the pages, and not just love notes or pressed flowers. You might come upon an unused Amtrak ticket tucked between the pages of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes or ...
And indeed there will be time To wonder, 'Do I shed?' and, 'Do I shed?' Time to turn back and stretch out on the bed, And give myself a bath before I'm fed -- (They will say: 'It's the short-haired ones I prefer.') My flea collar buckled neatly in my...
Humanity cannot lift itself by its own bootstraps; there is no such thing as spontaneous generation; life does not come from crystals; poetry does not come from donkeys; international peace does not come from wars; social justice does not come from s...
By erasing any nuance and complexity about porn and sexuality, the virginity movement gives young women only two choices of who they can be sexually: sluts or not sluts. While the first choice doesn't seem attractive, I can guarantee you that most yo...
He knows exactly what I need even when I don’t. I’m not sure how he knows me so well, but he does. He knows that when I try to push him away, it means I need him even more. And when I say I don’t want to talk, it means I really need to. I’m c...
Why? Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Why does the memory of years of happy marriage turn to gall when our partner is revealed to have had a lover all those years? Because such a situation ma...
So what if I don't learn algebra?' 'Someday schools will be open again,' Mom said. 'Things will be normal. You need to do your work now for when that happens.' 'That's never going to happen,' Jon said. 'And even if schools do open up somewhere, they'...
Listen she said, everything ends, every single relationship you will ever have in your lifetime is going to end.... I'll die, you'll die, you'll get tired of each other. You don't always know how it's going to happen, but it is always going to happen...
In fact, certainty exists in very different modes. The kind of certainty afforded by a verification that has passed through doubt is different from the immediate living certainty with which all ends and values appear in human consciousness when they ...
Pounce had it easier than any of us. No one noticed a black cat in the street. He stopped here and there to sniff aught of interest. Wherever our Rat stopped, Pounce was there, close enough to see up the Rat's nose. I was so proud. Now there was a pr...
Love is a connection with another person, either through birth or through something else that I cannot even explain. It is often just an attraction at first. But it goes far deeper than that. It is a determination to care for the other person no matt...
The doctor who heads the trauma unit [at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany] wants to tell a happy story, too. He tells me that war is good for civilian medicine. I've read reports that make the same point: in peacetime, the cutting edge of...
I have so much love for you, I could fill rooms with it. Buildings. You’re surrounded by it wherever you go, you walk through it, breathe it...it’s in your lungs, and under your tongue, and between your fingers and toes...” His mouth moved pass...
Colt, you’re a cop. I’m fairly certain you realize what you are proposing is illegal. As in bigamy.” He laughed. “You don’t legally marry us both. Just one of us. Then the three of us make our own private vows.” “Fine,” she leaned bac...
Thus did I receive, through the singing of these various hymns and the moral education that accompanied them, not only a religious, but a political schooling of sorts. For though the intertwining of morality and politics does not necessarily make for...
It sounds like a lot when you summarize it, but I don't do all of it every day. If you want to know the truth, most days I feel like I'm miserably behind and only doing about half of what I should be doing. But when you look back you can see that you...
Watching someone you love… die? There are no words for how broken that makes a person. It’s like waking up from a bad dream only to find out that it’s you reality, it’s like watching sunlight fade from the sky, like watching death suck the on...
If there was a God he reasoned it would have the same relation to us as we have to blades of grass. Do we make them grow? Yes in the sense that we water the lawn. Do we care for them and worry over them? Again as a lawn but not as individual blades. ...
