Call no man lucky until he is dead, but there have been moment of rare satisfaction in the often random and fragmented life of the radical freelance scribbler. I have lived to see Ronald Reagan called “a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda” by hi...
Jacques practically choked on his coffee. Did she just suggest what I think she did? “Jerard is a close friend of mine. He’s a great...” He stopped the worthless chatter about Jerard. He had to know. “Are you a submissive?” Her eyes flicked...
On the other hand, all those doubts which I had felt before I entered the cottage as to whether these creatures were friend of foe, and whether Ransom were a pioneer or a dupe, had for the moment vanished. My fear was now of another kind. I felt sure...
Think about what it would mean to fight," he said. "Say we barricade ourselves here in the hotel and refuse to leave. They come at us with their Weapon, whatever it is. Some of us are hurt, some die. We go out to meet them with whatever weapons we ca...
I hadn’t gone to Andover, or Horace Mann or Eton. My high school had been the average kind, and I’d been the best student there. Such was not the case at Eli. Here, I was surrounded by geniuses. I’d figured out early in my college career that t...
Personally, if I were trying to discourage people from smoking, my sign would be a little different. In fact, I might even go too far in the opposite direction. My sign would say something like, "Smoke if you wish. But if you do, be prepared for the ...
Bella. "Nathan Malone is dead." He caught her shoulders, shook her. "No!" she screamed back. And she couldn't hit him. She wanted to, and she couldn't. "look at me," he yelled. "Look at me, Bella. What happened killed the man you loved. All that is l...
Like a comet pulled from orbit, As it passes a sun. Like a stream that meets a boulder, Halfway through the wood. Who can say if I've been changed for the better? But because I knew you, I have been changed for good It well may be, That we will never...
Secularity is a way of being dependent on the responses of our milieu. The secular or false self is the self which is fabricated, as Thomas Merton says, by social compulsions. 'Compulsive' is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to...
Nice work in their, Herondale, setting the place on fire," Gabriel observed. "Good thing we were there to clean up after you, or the whole plan would have gone down in flames, along with the shreds of your reputation." "Are you implying that shreds o...
We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the ris- ing generation. I am an oldster myself and might be expected to take the oldsters' side, but in fact I have been far more impressed by the bad manners of par- ents to children than by those of child...
I do not understand why I was held back from Sedona for so many years. My spirit was broken down, and I lost everything, friends, pets, pieces of myself were lying everywhere. I felt like a massive failure from Boston, then a failure because I could ...
Stories don’t teach us to be good; it isn’t as simple as that. They show us what it feels like to be good, or to be bad. They show us people like ourselves doing right things and wrong things, acting bravely or acting meanly, being cruel or being...
Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends' embarrassment, ...
Men grow up expecting to be the hero of their own story. Women grow up expecting to be the supporting actress in somebody else's. As a kid growing up with books and films and stories instead of friends, that was always the narrative injustice that up...
Do we take less pride in the possession of our home because its walls were built by some unknown carpenter, its tapestries woven by some unknown weaver on a far Oriental shore, in some antique time? No. We show our home to our friends with the pride ...
As a young man I started searching for my own identity by looking into family, friends and inside Myself. My mother always taught us to live free even when confined, meaning “never let anyone break you down physically or mentally.” Since my livin...
...a bad diet will eventually kill our dreams. It's essential that we constantly evaluate the nutritional value of what we are feeding ourselves. It may come down to how many hours of television we're viewing, the quality of the programs we're watchi...
When I started to draw, most of my influences were from other painters and illustrators, so I was drawing landscape at second hand, really. The trees were Rackham trees, or trees that I had seen in paintings rather than from my own observation...and ...
There are a lot of ways for a novelist to create suspense, but also really only two: one a trick, one an art. The trick is to keep a secret. Or many secrets, even. In Lee Child’s books, Jack Reacher always has a big mystery to crack, but there are ...
