The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someo...
The higher Christian churches...come at God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, with authority and pomp, as though they knew what they were doing, as though people in themselves were an appropriate set of creatures to have dealings with God.....
Aside from the obvious, Francesca, what do you want in return for supplying information?” Bones asked, getting back to the subject. “You to take me,” she replied at once. “Not gonna happen!” I spat, squeezing him possessively. Three sets of...
It is vain to think that any weariness, however caused, any burden, however slight, may be got rid of otherwise than by bowing the neck to the yoke of the Father's will. There can be no other rest for heart and soul than He has created. From every bu...
I knew that somewhere God was laughing. He had taken the other half of my heart, the one person who knew me better than I knew myself, and He had done what nothing else could do. By bringing us together, He had set into motion the one thing that coul...
Her mind was present because she was always gone. Her hands were filled because they grasped the meaning of empty. Life was simple. Her husband returned and she served him with indifferent patience this time. When he asked what had happened to her he...
A minute or so passed by--not long, but long enough to make me wonder whether Oliver was setting up mood lighting or hiding dead bodies. Or if someone was up there waiting to stab me again. Or if someone was up there waiting to hand me a crown and te...
After years studying informality in Nigeria, Dutch architect and planner Rem Koolhaas reach the same conclusion. In the West, he writes, “there’s a sense of infinite choice, but a very conventional set of options from which to choose.” By contr...
She removed the shining black disk from its sleeve, holding it by the edges. After she placed it on the turntable and set the arm into motion, she adjusted the volume on the amplifier, flooding the room with sound. She closed her eyes and began to sw...
Think about the word destroy. Do you know what it is? De-story. Destroy. Destory. You see. And restore. That's re-story. Do you know that only two things have been proven to help survivors of the Holocaust? Massage is one. Telling their story is anot...
A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set us a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politic...
Gradually the mist had lifted, and the sun burst forth, a ball of fire radiating the sky with unnaturally incandescent hues. Coral was reminded of the strident brushwork and wild colours of the Fauvist paintings that filled her mother's gallery, whic...
The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers' bathing suits. It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog th...
When you were born, just a fresh babe, and I held you in my arms for the first time, I knew that we had to call you Bridie, after the blessed St. Brigid. I knew because the moment I set eyes on you, I saw you had holy fire in you, exactly like our ow...
All this, sadly enough, is truer of the more educated, higher-income, professional families. It is here that the competition is the greatest, the expectations most elevated. If the boy would be happier as a telephone linesman or a forest ranger, he i...
As soon as (Teddy Roosevelt) received an assignment for a paper or project, he would set to work, never leaving anything to the last minute. Prepared so far ahead "freed his mind" from worry and facilitated fresh, lucid thought.
We know that psychology is tremendously important in war. It is a field unlimited in extent, to which every conscientious soldier should give much time and study. Yet it cannot be learned as one learns mathematics. It must be sensed. Unfortunately we...
Once I got to know you, I would come to find it was that I wouldn’t want to watch another sun rise or set without knowing you’re mine. I don’t have a lot to offer you yet, but without you, I’ll never be anything. Together, we can do anything,...
I have a whole set of problem-solving behaviors and I am anxious to use them, in much the same way that I would stand up on the train to give my seat to someone who seems to need it more than I do: here is something I can address, and I do, and all i...
Some things are only real because they represent what we think. When we learn the truth and think it, the old reality is no longer real to us and loses its hold on us. The truth sets us free.
People underestimate the importance of dilligence as a virtue. No doubt it has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems. It is defined as "the constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken."... Understood, however, as the pr...
