Families are wonderful institution," he said. "I value mine more than I can possibly say. But each of us has an individual life to live, our own path to tread, our own destiny to forge. You can imagine, if you will, how my family wished to shelter an...
Uncommon success is found on the spiritual plane; you can't get there through common convention or following others. Hard work is not enough; many work slavishly-hard for little reward. Intelligence is insufficient; how many educated and brilliant pe...
If money management isn't something you enjoy, consider my perspective. I look at managing my money as if it were a part-time job. The time you spend monitoring your finances will pay off. You can make real money by cutting expenses and earning more ...
I think a lover, when broken, is given a gift not a scar, not a poem, not a rhyme (unless it fits.) I think as humans, we see a set of hues but when wounded, we see something more: deeper shades of hurt and worry, colors never seen before. Because I ...
I’m never sad when a friend goes far away, because whichever city or country that friend goes to, they turn the place friendly. They turn a suspicious-looking name on the map into a place where a welcome can be found. Maybe the friend will talk abo...
I no longer believed that Valentino would continue to build anything at all. Instead, he would merely leave behind the empire of hope that he had constructed in each of our minds. Leonardo's empire boasted cities more perfect than Plato or Augustine ...
Hers was an unconditional love– so long as you kept the food coming. Realizing that what attracted her to me needn’t have been anything more complicated than my having a warm body to nestle in and plentiful food in her bowl, still I felt that she...
One of my goals is to reduce the possible negative moments in life that I can have direct influence over. Bad situations and events will inevitably happen in everyone's life, at some point, but your reaction can affect the situation more than the ini...
He returned in a moment with a phone, a high-end model that probably cost way more than hers. His cell phone wallpaper was an abstract artwork with lots of colorful circles and blots—Kandinsky, maybe, or Miro? She always got those two confused. She...
There were times when I would sob until I shook, until my eyelids were so swollen that it pained me to open them, and through hiccoughs, trembling, I would hiss, don’t touch me! as he moved to place a gentle hand on my shoulder. There were times wh...
Before you either turn away in disgust or wink knowingly at one another, you should know that the artist insists that this is a picture about love. Filial love. The old man has been condemned by the Roman senate to die of hunger, and his daughter has...
If we cannot agree on what was important yesterday, what more on events that happened a hundred or three hundred years ago? The point here is that history is open ended and we cannot be sure about the past. So why study history? Because it teaches us...
Once again she would arrive at a foreign place. Once again be the newcomer, an outsider, the one who did not belong. She knew from experience that she would quickly have to ingratiate herself with her new masters to avoid being rejected or, in more d...
Over the years, my church gave me passage into a menagerie of exotic words unknown in the South: "introit," "offertory," "liturgy," "movable feast," "the minor elevation," "the lavabo," "the apparition of Lourdes," and hundreds more. Latin deposited ...
If we had always thought from a so-called practical angle – we would’ve never had anything new in this world. We would’ve hidden under the security of practicality and taken no risk, we would have never discovered heart transplantation as a new...
Michael looked embarrassed. “No, I don’t really… I mean in real life, I don’t do that. I read BDSM once in a while, but honestly, I prefer the sweeter romances.” “Sure. I believe you. Bondage Ben.” “Stop it.” Michael laughed. “Cra...
Sigmund Freud once asserted, "Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expre...
Feelings, whether of compassion or irritation, should be welcomed, recognized, and treated on an absolutely equal basis; because both are ourselves. The tangerine I am eating is me. The mustard greens I am planting are me. I plant with all my heart a...
Megan wanted to groan. "You guys are smothering me." Braden leaned against the wall, watching it all, never speaking. Sexy and silent. Okay, so he had a few things going for him. "Get used to it," Her father's voice brooked no refusal. "Until I leave...
You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The ...
I press my lips to hers with such delicacy; I want her to feel everything she’s ever deserved to feel at the hands of someone else. She deserves to feel beautiful. She deserves to feel important. She deserves to feel cared for. She deserves to feel...
