Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies — for example, O...
The compelling thing about making art—or making anything, I suppose—is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid , a thing, a substance in a world of substances. Circe, Nimbue, Artemis, Athena, all the old sorceresses: they...
Dont ever be impressed with goal setting; be impressed with goal getting. Reaching new goals and moving to a higher level of performance always requires change, and change feels awkward. But take comfort in the knowledge that if a change doesn't feel...
Heart weeps. Head tries to help heart. Head tells heart how it is, again: You will lose the ones you love. They will all go. But even the earth will go, someday. Heart feels better, then. But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart....
Pluto was a well-known fixture in Bad Münstereifel, at least among those who lived in the old part of town. A large, foul-tempered, and unsterilized inky-black tomcat, he had once made it onto the front page of the local free paper (admittedly durin...
We think of 1789 as the date of the French Revolution, and the storming of the Bastille as its defining event. Yet as late as halfway through 1792, most of the familiar images of the revolution had yet to occur. Louis XVI was still king, and the Asse...
I picture it like Judgement Day,' he says finally, his eyes on the water. 'We'll rise up out of our bodies and find each other again in spirit form. We'll meet in that new place, all of us together, and first it'll seem strange, and pretty soon it'll...
Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelat...
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal,...
Now he understood what it was to be a man: that it was to be weak as well as strong, to be foolish sometimes and wise sometimes, to know love as well as to kill. And he had learned that there were other paths for him, other gods who called in the dee...
We are all trophies of God’s grace, some more dramatically than others; Jesus came for the sick and not the well, for the sinner and not the righteous. He came to redeem and transform, to make all things new. May you go forth more committed than ev...
If you walk 100 miles into the life you don't want. Often, you must walk those same 100 miles to get out of that life. This is the answer to why the journey to fulfillment is often so difficult. However, if you can find a shortcut, a new path, you ca...
If it weren't for me, she wouldn't have to take jobs like this. She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar. I felt my guilt like a brand.... I had seen girls clamor for new clothes and compla...
However modest one may be in one's demand for intellectual cleanliness, one cannot help feeling, when coming into contact with the New Testament, a kind of inexpressible discomfiture: for the unchecked impudence with which the least qualified want to...
What I'm realizing is that a broken heart isn't a solitary event. There is the initial shatter, but then there are repeat breaks, creating more and more shards. A word that reminds you of what you used to have, a smell that reminds you of your dreams...
It seems like our town has closed down these days leading up to the funeral. Old people still sit on their porches and talk, but their conversations aren't sprinkled with laughter anymore. Since the new, little kids haven't played outside, as if thei...
I know California isn't a real destination. You can't get there from New Jersey, not simply by following a line drawn on a map. The process of arrival is more subtle and complex. It involves acts of contrition. You must appease the gods. You must fin...
• Judge less–or at least later. • Give new ideas and images a chance. • Understand that everyone has his own truth or her own. • Remember: you are not married to any belief, opinion, or ideology. • Expect to discover something delicious e...
The website didn't say how much brains--or even how many--I should eat, only that I should eat them in 48 hours OR ELSE. Why doesn't anyone pay attention to details anymore? Would it be so hard to add a simple line like, BTW, Maddy, 3 pounds of brain...
Conversely, the red plant itself burns a brighter red when set off by the green than when it grows among its peers. In the bed I always reserved for poinsettia seedlings, there was little to distinguish one plant from its neighbours. My poinsettia di...
Since the Enlightenment, the political order is an order of freedom. The political structures are no longer given, previous to man's freedom, but are rather realities based on freedom, taken on and modified by man. . . . This new definition of politi...
