What you study is more important than how you study. Students are subordinate to materials, much like novice cooks are subordinate to recipes. If you select the wrong material, the wrong textbook, the wrong group of words, it doesn't matter how much ...
It is not certain whether the effects of totalitarianism upon verse need be so deadly as its effects on prose. There is a whole series of converging reasons why it is somewhat easier for a poet than a prose writer to feel at home in an authoritarian ...
I believe that the best way to create good living conditions for any animal, whether it's a captive animal living in a zoo, a farm animal or a pet, is to base animal welfare programs on the core emotion systems in the brain. My theory is that the env...
The only way to make a library safe is to lock people out of it. As long as they are allowed to read the books 'any old time they have a mind to,' libraries will remain the nurseries of heresy and independence of thought. They will, in fact, preserve...
Mrs. Allan's face was not the face of the girlbride whom the minister had brought to Avonlea five years before. It had lost some of its bloom and youthful curves, and there were fine, patient lines about eyes and mouth. A tiny grave in that very ceme...
A month ago it would have been my dream just to be in his bedroom watching a movie, but now it’s torture because I want so much more. It’s like my entire conscious state has been reduced to this toxic blend of hope and uncertainty. I hate that I ...
He had the tool to break down the walls that imprisoned his people. He had the tool to rip away the veil to the Holy of Holies so that his flock could come before the Lord and be cleansed, made whole, transformed, and have a personal, loving relation...
She was the lover of two mighty kings. She was their Chalice. The certainty of the knowledge settled over her shoulders like a weighty mantle. She might not know where she came from, but she knew where she was going. She knew who she wanted to be, wh...
Provided the gods of Rome are given their due, it doesn't really matter to them whether their worshippers believe in them or not. Having taken part in the official rituals, a citizen is free to worship whatever other deities he pleases. Rom'es gods a...
She shook off his grip. "I am what I am, and I don't particularly care what you think of me.” "Well, I care what you think of me. I care enough that I stayed at this disgusting party for you. And I care enough that I'd attend a thousand more like i...
We're no longer young men. We've lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at...
Have you thought about what it means to be a god?" asked the man. He had a beard and a baseball cap. "It means you give up your mortal existence to become a meme: something that lives forever in people's minds, like the tune of a nursery rhyme. It me...
The human heart is like india-rubber; a little swells it, but a great deal will not burst it. If "little more than nothing will disturb it, little less than all things will suffice" to break it. As in the outer members of our frame, there is a vital ...
I’ve always been fascinated by science—anatomy, quantum physics, space and time theory. I don’t understand these things, but the mystery is a part of what attracts me to them. That the world I live in now is complex beyond my understanding only...
I laugh, and it’s laughter, not light, that casts out the darkness building within me, that reminds me I am still alive, even in this strange place where everything I’ve ever known is coming apart. I know some things—I know that I’m not alone...
The street signs”, she replied simply. I simply felt stupid. “When you learn how to read, you can read Stop, Go, and the colors matter too!” “Yeah?”, (sigh). “Yup! That leaf is green, it means Go. The yellow like the bus means careful. Th...
The longer I think about a food industry organized around an animal that cannot reproduce itself without technical assistance, the more I mistrust it. Poultry, a significant part of the modern diet, is emblematic of the whole dirty deal. Having no se...
To seek in the great accumulation of the already-said the text that resembles 'in advance' a later text, to ransack history in order to rediscover the play of anticipations or echoes, to go right back to the first seeds or to go forward to the last t...
It’s not other people’s job to make you happy and fulfilled; it’s yours. It’s important to always be nice and respectful of others, but it’s even more important to be nice and respectful toward yourself. You have to live with yourself the r...
There is nothing left to seek for in this world when it can be exchanged for another one. No thought of gain or loss, winning or losing, success or failure ever had any meaning. Fantasy is not real and dreaming is not Being One. You are ready to Awak...
After a great blow, or crisis, after the first shock and then after the nerves have stopped screaming and twitching, you settle down to the new condition of things and feel that all possibility of change has been used up. You adjust yourself, and are...
