Christians know that joy is more than a feeling or an on-again, off-again sentiment that changes according to the circumstances they face. Followers of Jesus Christ distinguish between lasting joy and situational happiness. Fun and joy are not necess...
What if I mess up?" "Oh, you will. You'll mess up, you'll make mistakes, you'll break things. Some you'll be able to piece together, and others you'll lose. That's all a given. But there's only one thing you have to do for me." "What's that?" "Stay a...
It didn't make you noble to step away from something that wasn't working, even if you thought you were the reason for the malfunction. Especially then. It just made you a quitter. Because if you were the problem, chances were you could also be the so...
When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not...
The nationalism of a small nation can, with treacherous ease, become detached from its roots in what is noble and human. It then become pitiful, making the nation appear smaller rather than greater. It is the same with nations as with individuals; wh...
Nothing like poetry when you lie awake at night. It keeps the old brain limber. It washes away the mud and sand that keeps on blocking up the bends. Like waves to make the pebbles dance on my old floors. And turn them into rubies and jacinths; or at ...
Facing this stuff, in real life is not like school, in school, if you make a mistake you can just try again tomorrow, but out there...when your a second away from being murdered or watching a friend die right before your eyes...you don't know what th...
I’ll make Goyle do lines, it’ll kill him, he hates writing,” said Ron happily. He lowered his voice to Goyle’s low grunt and, screwing up his face in a look of pained concentration, mimed writing in midair. “I... must... not... look... like...
God, it's like reality's completely shifted on me. I used to think I was standing on such solid ground. If I wanted something badly enough, I just worked like hell for it. Now I can't decide what to do, which move to make. All the things I counted on...
Unless you have been very, very lucky, you have undoubtedly experienced events in your life that have made you cry. So unless you have been very, very lucky, you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your c...
...much of poetry in the making is the fiddle with a few items. You lay a word against another and wait. You try another word. And another. Yet another. You wait. You begin again. Listening. Looking. For the elusive inevitable thing which has to arri...
It rubs against me, dipping between my hot lips and makes me whimper with yearning. You remove it dramatically and raise it up, out of my eye line, although I imagine that you are inspecting it. “Yes, definitely a slut, aren’t you?” “Yes, sir...
Hey, look — Harry’s got a Weasley sweater, too!” Fred and George were wearing blue sweaters, one with a large yellow F on it, the other a G. “Harry’s is better than ours, though,” said Fred, holding up Harry’s sweater. “She obviously ...
I always say the truth is best even when we find it unpleasant. Any rat in a sewer can lie. It's how rats are. It's what makes them rats. But a human doesn't run and hide in dark places, because he's something more. Lying is the most personal act of ...
For the first time since I met her, I understand her need to keep her name secret and respect that. Here, someplace other than at home, we can be who we want, be with who we want, as long as it makes us happy. There’s no past today, only this momen...
Lilies used to be a movie theatre, before. Students went there a lot; every spring they had a Humphrey Bogart festival, with Lauren Bacall or Katherine Hepburn, women on their own, making up their minds. They wore blouses with buttons down the front ...
O, blackberry tart, with berries as big as your thumb, purple and black, and thick with juice, and a crust to endear them that will go to cream in your mouth, and both passing down with such a taste that will make you close your eyes and wish you mig...
Prayer is only another name for good, clean, direct thinking. When you pray, think well what you are saying, and make your thoughts into things that are solid. In that manner, your prayer will have strength, and that strength shall become part of you...
Receive this blessing as you go forth this day: “May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” Numbers 6:24
Sometimes the effect arrives thanks to a different kind of breakthrough: a dramatic increase in our ability to MEASURE something, and an improvement in the tools we build for measuring. New ways of measuring almost always imply new ways of making.
You don’t have to sleep with guys,” I whispered, “to make them like you.” Kya stared at me for a moment with heavy eyelids. “You don’t get it, do you, Gracie? I sleep with them so they won’t like me.” My heart broke for her a little m...
