But yester-night I prayed aloud In anguish and in agony, Up-starting from the fiendish crowd Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me: A lurid light, a trampling throng, Sense of intolerable wrong, And whom I scorned, those only strong! Thirst of reve...
When getting my nose in a book Cured most things short of school, It was worth ruining my eyes To know I could still keep cool, And deal out the old right hook To dirty dogs twice my size. Later, with inch-thick specs, Evil was just my lark: Me and m...
Two people whose opinion I respect told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. This certainly says something about the state of Christianity today. I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it ...
I had lied to myself from the very beginning, deceived myself into believing that I was being fanciful and overly imaginative. Surely such monstrosities only existed in nightmares? Yet I had lived through a nightmare these past months, and that was n...
Superorganism. A biologist coined that word for our great African ant colonies, claiming that consciousness and intelligence resided not in the individual ant but in the collective ant mind. The trail of red taillights stretching to the horizon as da...
To me, the conclusion that the public has the ultimate responsibility for the behavior of even the biggest businesses is empowering and hopeful, rather than disappointing. My conclusion is not a moralistic one about who is right or wrong, admirable o...
What have you done to my cat?" Magnus demanded... "You drank his blood, didn't you? You said you weren't hungry!" Simon was indignant. "I did not drink his blood. He's fine!" He poked the Chairman in the stomach. The cat yawned. "Second, you asked me...
I am with you. I'm not going anywhere." "Is there anything special you want to see? Paris? Budapest? The Leaning Tower of Pisa?" Only if it falls on Sebastian's head, she thought. "Can we travel to Idris? I mean, I guess, can the apartment travel the...
Above all, it seems to me wrongheaded and dangerous to invoke historical assumptions about environmental practices of native peoples in order to justify treating them fairly. ... By invoking this assumption [i.e., that they were/are better environmen...
Oh, anywhere, driver, anywhere - it doesn't matter. Just keep driving. It's better here in this taxi than it was walking. It's no good my trying to walk. There is always a glimpse through the crowd of someone who looks like him—someone with his ...
There are more stars than there are people. Billions, Alan had said, and millions of them might have planets just as good as ours. Ever since I can remember, I’ve felt too big. But now I felt small. Too small. Too small to count. Every star is mass...
He had set up a telescope on a corner of the roof, and we went up to take a look. This is time travel, he said, narrowing an eye to set the lens. Because the light is old. We're seeing back in time. No, we said, wrinkling our noses. We are seeing rig...
In the morning, when she wishes me to wake, she crouches on my chest, and pats my face with her paw. Or, if I am on my side, she crouches looking into my face. Soft, soft touches of her paw. I open my eyes, say I don't want to wake. I close my eyes. ...
Once in a golden hour I cast to earth a seed. Up there came a flower, The people said, a weed. To and fro they went Thro’ my garden-bower, And muttering discontent Cur’d me and my flower. Then it grew so tall It wore a crown of light, But thieves...
You think that drinking with a serial killer takes you into the midnight currents of the culture? I say bullshit. There's been twelve TV documentaries, three movies and eight books about me. I'm more popular than any of these designed-by-pedophile po...
The time and space in which I have been working on this cosmopolitan project have convinced me that the disparity between the ideal of cosmopolitan theology and the current sociopolitical configuration of hospitality, welcoming others, unconditional ...
I have a handful of prayers that I pray all the time... One is that God will put my books into the right hands at the right times. I've prayed this prayer thousands of times, and God has answered it in dramatic fashion countless times. The right book...
Boomer took bites of all six varieties, contemplating each one and "guring out the order in which he would then eat them. “I like the brown one and the lighter brown one and the almost-brown one. I’m not so sure about the minty one. But really, I...
You really think love needs to have a future?” “Absolutely.” “Good,” Lily said. “So do I.” “Good,” I echoed, leaning in. “So do you.” “Don’t repeat what I say,” she told me, swatting at my arm. “Don’t repeat what I say...
I realized at that moment - observing his form move further away without once turning back - that I’d already begun to rebuild the imaginary wall between us. I was shielding my heart with stone cold feelings again, the only way I knew to protect it...
But to be a parent is to live in the past-present-future all at once. It is to hug your children and be intensely aware of how much smaller they felt last year ... even as you wonder how much bigger they will feel the next. It is to be a time-shifter...
