I was at the annual meeting of a state library association a few years later, when the children were in the process of leaving the nest, and one of the librarians asked me, "What do you think you and Hugh have done which was the best for your childre...
It's just as easy to be lonely in a city as out in the wilderness. Easier, really. It's harder to get to know someone when you meet in a crowded place. People can freely ignore you in the city; they can assume they don't have any responsibility for y...
Afterwards, in bed with a book, the spell of television feels remote compared to the journey into the page. To be in a book. To slip into the crease where two pages meet, to live in the place where your eyes alight upon the words to ignite a world of...
Fifteen minutes later, a meeting was called. "Okay, look." Deb's face was dead serious. "I know I just joined this project, and I don't want to offend anyone. But I'm going to be honest. I think you've been going about this all wrong." "I'm offended,...
My wife told me she’d meet me at the mall, and I said, “Don’t be silly. We’ve already met. What, do you think I’d marry a stranger?
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that lin...
How does one develop compassion for someone with a completely different set of values without reading something from their point of view? Books are one of the ways in which we can truly get into the heads of people we would never meet in our ordinary...
Phillip Murray and Wanda Saxton meet in the last scene under the rainy awning, their wrong wife and fiance finally story-lined away, and walk out together into the downpour - we know from the first scene, Christmas eve, that both of them like walking...
I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.
There is nothing noble about suffering except the love and forgiveness with which we meet it. Many believe that if they are suffering they are closer to God, but I have met very few who could keep their heart open to their suffering enough for that t...
That chain of relationships made me think of how connections are made--you read a book, you meet a person, you have a single experience, and your life is changed in some way. No act, therefore, however small, should be dismissed or ignored.
The best compliment came from Knopf's Sonny Mehta. We were at lunch in New York with my editor, Gary Fisketjon, it was my first time meeting Sonny, and after ordering our food, he turned to me and said, 'Adam, I read 'Mr. Peanut' in two days; every p...
Of course, in my mind, violence would have been better, but since that wasn’t an option, I decided to play along. “It’s okay, handsome. I’ve only been here a few minutes. I’d like to introduce you to Dick.” “No, it’s…” Richard tri...
Increasingly, Christian life seems to be nothing more than a particular way of behaving, a code of good conduct. Christianity is increasingly alienated, becoming a social attribute adapted to meet the least worthy of human demands - conformity, steri...
Relationships are a development and a dance between our inner male and female sides. It is a balance and a dance between love and freedom, between aloneness and relating, between strength and receptivity, between closeness and distance, between intel...
don't expect too much from me, cos i might not meet up to your expectations, don't underestimate me, cos i just might do the unexpected, don't expect the truth from me always cos am human, and don't even try to judge me, cos you have not gone trough ...
I'm obsessive. That's the word for me. I obsess - perhaps to the point where it's moderately dysfunctional. I tend to put a book through about 100 revisions. If anything, that's an understatement. If there's another author out there who does this sor...
If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God w...
Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, Live ...
It facilitates labor and thought so much that there is always the temptation in large schools to omit the endless task of meeting the wants of each single mind, and to govern by steam. But it is at frightful cost. Our modes of Education aim to expedi...
Death shows no favor. He is very fair: exacting the same advantages to all. Age, race, gender, or economic status does not cause discrimination within the company of Death. Of all marketing companies on the Earth, Death has surpassed them all: ensuri...
