Perhaps you can feel if you can’t hear,” was her fancy. “Perhaps kind thoughts reach people somehow, even through windows and doors and walls. Perhaps you feel a little warm and comforted, and don’t know why, when I am standing here in the co...
Behavior precedes belief - that is, most people must engage in a behavior before they accept that it is beneficial; then they see the results, and then they believe that it is the right thing to do....implementation precedes buy-in; it does not follo...
There are a lot of things animals do that we can't," she says, "like flying and camouflage, and we've adapted, through technology ... It's funny when people say something is natural, or not. Compared with what? Compared with when? It's this vanity of...
Like most doctors, the fanciest ones, he seemed offensively healthy, as if he kept the real secret of vitality to himself. He would live forever and people would crumble and die around him. You were supposed to feel like death after seeing him, in te...
I miss women,” he went on. “I miss that kind of intimacy. But I think whatever people do; they do in search of pleasure. Or trying to get rid of pain or fear, which is the same thing, basically. Everything, everything is really about that. Everyt...
Whether Hindus or Greeks, Egyptians or Japanese, Chinese, Sumerians, or ancient Americans -- or even Romans, the most "modern" among people of antiquity -- they all placed the Golden Age, the Age of Truth, the rule of Kronos or of Ra or of any other ...
I like "Julie Gold's song "From a Distance". Her song reminds me of the world as seen through an observer's eye. Seen from a distance, we are people in the same band playing music for everyone. We are artists who play the most beautiful instruments i...
It was wonderful to see the sparkle back in her eyes. He wanted to keep it there. For the first time in years he’d found himself actually caring about how someone else felt. He’d been spending so much time being a tough successful businessman tha...
The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with — nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, ...
I've never heard of anybody getting rid of their prized Exile postcards, much less actually writing on them and sending them through the mail to a girl. I watched these two, laughing over this story at the same kitchen table they've shared for thirty...
My reading and studying and retellings of old stories didn't do anything except help me think better. I was at least thoughtful. Too thoughtful, my friends said. And all I thought about was myths and old paintings that made me feel drunk on wine or s...
It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known ca...
Mikolay took his wand out, touched the cage’s lock and said: “Eis Izras” three times. The door opened at once, unfortunately making lots of noise and waking the humans up. Mikolay knew a few powerful hexes and he was able to create small flying...
Gossip is never fatal until it is denied. Gossip goes on about every human being alive and about all the dead that are alive enough to be remembered, and yet almost never does any harm until some defender makes a controversy. Gossip's a nasty thing, ...
To be human is to be 'a' human, a specific person with a life history and idiosyncrasy and point of view; artificial intelligence suggest that the line between intelligent machines and people blurs most when a puree is made of that identity.
Derek, you just don't say things like that to a woman. Keep going this way and you'll spend your life alone." "Don't change the subject. Andrea is cool. And she smells nice. It will be okay." Apparently I was supposed to sniff people to determine the...
I have fourteen black wives an' one white, de chiefest one. I would sure enough shoo her away dis minute if you tek her place in my bed tonight, Mama Sam Moon." Was sex all these people ever thought about? I guess life was short back then, and nobody...
He'd once known a man who said that life hinged on the moment, that everything changed in the blink of an eye. Tesseract knew the truth of that as well as anybody. It was in those moments that he struck, after all, snatching people's lives away. He'd...
Though I imagine we're killing ourselves right now in all manner of ways that'll seem insane to people in the future. And as doors to the next world go, a bog ain't a bad choice. It's not quite water and it's not quite land - it's an in-between place...
The unfortunate are not as miserable as the world imagines. That urchins, the handicapped, orphans, prisoners and others are much happier than people think. And that language is a trap, that a dark evolutionary force has created languages to limit hu...
Someone once told me people write down stories because they would like to forget, and those who read are those who would like to remember. Maybe I’m not ready to forget, and maybe you’re not ready to remember. This is what I recall; I’m sorry i...
