And the air is new. And everything, instant by instant, is as it is, preparing to appear. [...] This is the only way I can live now. To be reborn moment by moment. [...] I die at every instant, and I am reborn, new and without memories: live and whol...
Cyrilly expected Sylvia – as an intelligent and ambitious young woman – to walk around pale-mouthed and flat-shoed. She saw intellectual inclinations and a taste for fashion as mutually exclusive and assumed that Sylvia would not mind missing fas...
Out of the blue Sylvia said, ‘People are like boxes. You would like to open them up and see what’s inside, but you can’t.’ Sylvia was interested in people and recognizing how individuals create their own kind of camouflage- the ‘lids on the...
Then I think of Charlie and our first New Year’s apart, and how I miss him. I miss him so much, but it’s confusing, because I missed him long before he was dead, and that’s the bitch of it all. I missed him long before he was dead.
Academically brilliant persons usually make excellent managers and bureaucrats as they can efficiently implement the vision of the government or world leaders by following the prescribed methods. However, they may prove to be poor leaders, for they m...
And the New York Journal of Commerce, half-playfully, half-seriously, wrote: "Let us go to war. The world has become stale and insipid, the ships ought all to be captured, and the cities battered down, and the world burned up, so that we can start ag...
How do I feel today? I feel as unfit as an unfiddle, And it is the result of a certain turbulence in the mind and an uncertain burbulence in the middle. What was it, anyway, that angry thing that flew at me? I am unused to banshees crying Boo at me. ...
...'undertow'. It describes (...) how underneath our own everyday lives - the shopping and squabbles and weeding and trips to the vet - there's a sense of being dragged slowly off, not against our will but regardless of it. And fighting the undertow,...
As much as Jefferson loved France residence abroad gave him greater appreciation for his own nation. He was a tireless advocate for things American while abroad, and a promoter of things European while at home. Moving between two worlds, translating ...
Conspiracy theorists like to claim NASA’s moon landing was faked. Well of course it was! But the biggest conspiracy of all is the Columbus landed in the new world in the late 15th century. There is no new world. It simply doesn’t exist. And Ameri...
A new poll found that 84% of American people were disgusted by Congress, and my only thought is, Are 16% of Americans insane? If they’re not disgusted, they should eat a bowl of vomit soup. It’s fresh, as I just made it after reading the latest p...
The women in the kitchen sang: Sarampión toca la puerta. Viruela dice: ¿Quién es? Y Escarlatina contesta: ¡Aquí estamos los tres! The cook would sometimes shout a little madly, “Sing it again!” And the women would sing again: Measles knocks ...
Observe how many people evade, rationalize and drive their minds into a state of blind stupor, in dread of discovering that those they deal with- their "loved ones" or friends or business associates or political rulers- are not merely mistaken, but e...
Many myths and religions have some kind of threat of retribution from their god or gods, and their doctrines warn of the dangers of doing various forbidden things. Why? Because memes involving danger are the ones we pay attention to! As oral traditio...
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York th...
Aye, say thou fool? Then fool, good Sir, am I. But when thou sayest fool remember well That fools do walk in foolish company. So if I am a fool, perhaps ’tis true That other fools around me may be found.
And really, how insulting is it that to suggest that the best thing women can do is raise other people to do incredible things? I'm betting some of those women would like to do great things of their own.
It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a ...
Darwinism gives no moral guidelines about how we should live or how doctors should practice medicine. A Darwinian perspective on medicine can, however, help us to understand the evolutionary origins of disease, and this knowledge will prove profoundl...
Whoever is full of wisdom is naturally compassionate; in fact we recognize that someone has gained spiritual wisdom by seeing their compassionate behavior. . . . Individuals and countries with power need to develop wisdom and compassion, for without ...
That's right,' Mel said. 'Some vassal would come along and spear the bastard in the name of love. Or whatever the fuck it was they fought over in those days.' Same things we fight over these days,' Terri said. Laura said, 'Nothing's changed.
