Here was the South Side--a million in captivity--stretching from this doorstep as far as the eye could see. And they didn't even read; depressed populations don't have the time or energy to spare. The affluent populations, which should have their hel...
Everybody who has a baby thinks everybody who hasn't a baby ought to have a baby, Which accounts for the success of such plays as the Irish Rose of Abie, The idea apparently being that just by being fruitful You are doing something beautiful, Which i...
Fifty million people die every year, six thousand die every hour, and over one hundred people die every minute. But when thousands of people die in the same place and at the same time, we are more likely to wonder why God would allow such a thing to ...
The fact that, in the United States, there are people serving ten-year prison terms for growing marijuana plants in their backyards while Wall Street racketeers, who have defrauded millions of people and destroyed the global economy, walk free is a k...
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green pla...
When she reaches down to touch his shoulder—a gesture only a few species and a million or so years removed from lifting a leg and marking him as her territory with a stream of urine—enough bracelets and bangles to lay track across the Australian ...
[M]ay not literature (and, in particular, fiction) be considered a desperate and permanently thwarted effort to produce a unique form of expression? Something like a cry, perhaps, a cry that, somehow, inexplicably contains all the millions of words t...
There is no such thing as self-awareness. Imagine thought retreating into itself to think about itself. It would be easier to imagine a revolver bullet extracting itself from its victim's wound and re-entering the barrel. Yes, it would be easier to i...
This boy - his name was Eric - said he thought it disgusting the way all the girls at my college stood around on the porches under the porch lights and in the bushes in plain view, necking madly before the one o'clock curfew, so everybody passing by ...
A brick could be used to show how patient you are. Somewhere between one brick and a million bricks lies a home. For me, my home is one brick, and I carry it with me wherever I go, because I’m always on the move. Maybe one day, when I’m a wealthy...
In a fallen world marked by human depravity and deep-seated sin, in a world where Hitler and Stalin had recruited millions of followers to commit mass murder, love must harness power and seek justice in order to have moral meaning. Love without power...
I want to mother the world, I thought. I have so much love. Then—I have no business being a mother. I am a selfish woman. Then—I can do this. Millions of women have been mothers. Then—I feel very alone. I do not know what I'm capable of.
Millions of people have been lifted from poverty and have gained access to modern education and health care. We have a universal declaration of human rights, and awareness of the importance of such rights has grown tremendously. As a result, the idea...
Human beings are like the screwed-up children of alcoholic parents in that way, picking up the pieces afterward and trying to make up reasons why. You could argue that’s what makes us interesting, and maybe it is to some alien race studying us from...
Pain? Yes, of course. Racing without pain is not racing. But the pleasure of being ahead outweighed the pain a million times over. To hell with the pain. What's six minutes of pain compared to the pain they're going to feel for the next six months or...
Leonardo believed his research had the potential to convert millions to a more spiritual life. Last year he categorically proved the existence of an energy force that unites us all. He actually demonstrated that we are all physically connected… tha...
I’m a guardian angel. I'm condemned to share the responsibility for my ward’s life, and therefore the ultimate course of the progression of the human species. So you see, while I’m here I cannot change my conduct, I cannot choose for myself, an...
It is part of the pholosophic dullness of our time that there are millions of rational monsters walking about on their hind legs, observing the world through pairs of flexible little lenses, periodically supplying themselves with energy by pushing or...
It was possible in this wonderful city for that nameless little boy -for any of its millions- to have a decent chance to scale the walls and achieve what they wished. Wealth, rank or an imposing name counted for nothing. The only credential the city ...
The world should have stopped, but it didn't. The world kept on going. How can the world just keep on going? An earthquake in India kills a thousand people, and the world keeps on going. A famine in China kills a million people, and the world keeps o...
When modern sociologists talk of the necessity of accommodating one's self to the trend of the time, they forget that the trend of the time at its best consists entirely of people who will not accommodate themselves to anything. At its worst it consi...
