..I met two young guys from the Oregon National Guard... The lieutenant told me about their temporary barracks in an old neighborhood high school. He told me that he was disgusted that kids ever went to school there, and that in Oregon the place woul...
The tape measures and weighing scales of the Victorian brain scientists have been supplanted by powerful neuroimaging technologies, but there is still a lesson to be learned from historical examples such as these. State-of-the-art brain scanners offe...
I was six years old when my mother died. For a long time afterward, the sweet and earthy magnolia scent of her would permeate my dreams. No matter what I was dreaming about, good or frightening, my mother's smell would waft through my nighttime adven...
He was quite a Casanova, no doubt about it. He was in a very good mood today and stopped longer than usual. The girls could see he was gloriously drunk. ’Well, Ragna, why do you think I come here so often?’ asked Rolandsen. ’I’ve no idea,’ ...
I don't know what you do about sex and I don't want to know, but this is not the way to go about it. You're what – fifty-two? Do you think a young girl finds any pleasure in going to bed with a man of that age? Do you think she finds it good to wat...
A formal period in life where there isn’t the worry of another person’s dramas and insecurities can be of great advantage, especially when used for growing into the full and wholesome beings we intended to be when choosing to come to this materia...
At this point we can finally see what's really at stake in our peculiar habit of defining ourselves simultaneously as master and slave, reduplicating the most brutal aspects of the ancient household in our very concept of ourselves, as masters of our...
I' was the last word I was able to speak aloud, which is a terrible thing, but there it is, I would walk around the neighborhood saying, 'I I I I.' 'You want a cup of coffee, Thomas?' 'I.' 'And maybe something sweet?' 'I.' 'How about this weather?' '...
You have been to hell, Ketut?" He smiled. Of course he's been there. What's it like in hell?" Same like in heaven," he said. He saw my confusion and tried to explain. "Universe is a circle, Liss." He said. "To up, to down -- all same, at end." I reme...
But...' Horace looked from one familiar face to another. 'How did you come to..?' Before he could finish the question, Will interupted, thinking to clarify matters but only making them more puzzling... 'We were all in Toscana for the treaty signing,'...
Just say it, she thought. Say what everyone in this bunker is thinking. Say what we all know to be true. The truth that we are all going to die down here, and death is the end. Nobody wakes up to a heaven or paradise. Your life will be gone. You will...
It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, an...
And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beating and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are h...
Samuel Vimes dreamed about Clues. He had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They got in the way. And he distrusted the kind of person who’d take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, “Ah, my...
How fun it would be to bounce on the back of Lidewij Vliegenthart’s bike down the brick streets, her curly red hair blowing into my face, the smell of the canals and cigarette smoke, all the people sitting outside the cafés drinking beer, saying t...
I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I ...
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda .... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, t...
Ive told you before and my feelings haven't changed. I love you Sakura. Even if I cant match up to Natsume, my feelings would not lose to his. Even if we part ways and you forget about me, I will always think of you. Even if I grow old and leave this...
We typically misunderstand what's wrong about consumerism. It's not that it makes us love material things too much. To be a good consumer, you have to desire to get lots of things, but you must not love any of them too much once you have them. Consum...
What you need to drive out an old passion, is a new passion, a greater passion. What you need is an over-mastering positive passion. [...] Just as Rachel was Jacob's over-mastering passion, the passion of his life, Jesus is our "Rachel". To the degre...
I wished I was old. I was tired of being so young, so stupidly knowing, so stupidly forgetful. I was tired of having to be anything at all. I felt like the Internet, full of every kind of information but none of it mattering more than any of it, and ...
