Many articles and books on creativity encourage us to 'think out of the box' and get rid of all the restrictions on our thinking. The trouble with this advice is that it is almost entirely wrong. It is very difficult to be creative when 'anything goe...
The person in love finds only a dream, a notion, an ideal. You fall in love with nothing but your own dreams—the only carriers of your true longings. Sometimes you manage to personify your dreams in another. Sometimes it’s not a single-player gam...
I took the money and passed the box across the counter and said politely, ‘Your choice of colour really lacks style.’ I smiled and Beth laughed and the guy asked to see my manager. I got Bert and he leant over the box and looked at the paint and ...
There will never be a good time, financially, to get married, unless you're Shaq or Ray Romano. But somehow people manage. If your man is using money as an excuse not to marry you, it's your relationship that's insecure, not his bank account.
And if, by the end [of this book], you reckon you might still disagree with me, then I offer you this: you'll still be wrong, but you'll be wrong with a lot more panache and flair than you could possibly manage right now.
It takes a while to master the art of hammock-lounging. At first I could only manage five minutes or so before I thought I ought to get out and go and help a child learn how to swim or something. But after observing the Mexicans' capability for stari...
I didn't realize when I brought him back here that you'd inflict more damage." I said, once I'd finished the story. "I was defending your honor." Adrian gave me that devil-may-care smile that always managed to both infuriate and captivate me. "Pretty...
This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don’t jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit....
They were the triumphant and insolent possessors; they had a hall, and a fire, and food and clothing and money, and so they might preach to hungry men, and the hungry men must be humble and listen. They were trying to save their souls- and who but a ...
There was a group of fans who wanted autographs, and several women who managed to write their phone numbers on Wade's hand before he pulled free. Sam sent him an arched brow, but he just shrugged. He got numbers written on him a lot; he'd never figur...
N matter how stressed Claire became, the tropical trees and exotic island flowers decorating the lobby always managed to take her breath away and put her mind at ease. Nature had always been a good de-stressor for her coming in close behind having he...
I, the unfortunate Doctor Polyakov, who became addicted to morphine in February of this year, warn anyone who may suffer the same fate not to attempt to replace morphine with cocaine. Cocaine is a most foul and insidious poison. Yesterday Anna barely...
I hate when a manager falls in love with an employee. Well, if she won’t date me, I just won’t put her on the schedule. If she won’t give me the time of day, I won’t give her any hours.
One of the biggest misconceptions remains that Neil Gaiman spent his youth lurching from bedsit to library and back again, subsisting on a diet of blood-temperature baked beans and the wild leeks he managed to pull from the side of a disused railway ...
When she looked in the glass and saw her hair grey her cheek sunk, at fifty, she thought, possibly she might have managed things better--her husband; money; his books. But for her own part she would never for a single second regret her decision, evad...
I am not sleeping with you." "We could probably manage it, though. Without getting too involved." "No," she said. "But why? I mean, if we're trusted friends? And it doesn't interfere with our responsibilities?" "Did that line ever actually work for y...
I love your independence, I love that you don't swoon, I love that you'll fight me with your last breath if you think I'm wrong, and if I ever have to catch you, I swear I'll make sure you're standing on your feet as quickly as you can manage it.
Glinda waved dismissively. Then she tucked her hand against her mouth and bit her knuckles. It was hard to tell if her pretty ways were studied or innate. "Oh, oh," she managed, "I don't know that I'll see you again- and you remind me so of her.
According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been lef...
My momma says we don’t need a man to do our chores for us, ’cause we are smart and capable and I believe her even though Sara’s mom says men were born to be our slaves, we just have to know how to manage them.
What they don't tell you when you get sober is that if you manage to stay that way, you will bury your friends. Not everyone gets to have a whole new shiny-but-messy life like I have, and I've never come up with a satisfying explanation for why that ...