when you're a kid, they tell you that it's what's on the inside that counts. Looks don't matter . But that's not true. Guys like Phoebus in The Hunchback, or Dorian, or the old Kyle Kingsbury-- they can be scumbags to women and still get away with it...
The old sailors who traveled Earth's seas were said to have loved the ocean. The great captains said they were married to the sea or called the sea their mistress. Modern sailors held no such fantasies about outer space. Space did not love or hate, i...
What is required as we travel towards full unemployment is not new legislation but a gradual change of mental attitude, a shift in values. As our taste for idling grows, we will refuse to work for old-fashioned bosses who demand a five-day, 40-hour, ...
Past middle age, some friends suggested that I should have my eyebags removed, the deepening creases on my face stretched. I often examined my face in the mirror, imagining how I'd look if I followed the suggestion. I decided to retain the old mug. I...
When I was 5 years old, hanging out with my friends who were all older than me, like 8 or 9, I was joking around like, 'Yeah, when I'm 20 that's a perfect age to go pro.' That's what I had in my head. Then I turn pro at 13. It's all been a mystery an...
Over time, a noisy lifestyle and stress make you old. The stress, noise and rush that often accompany working life, family life and social life can be too much for your nervous system and brain, which also need rest and cleansing.
For home had a way of shifting, of changing shape and temperature. Home was homeless. It could exist anywhere, because its only substance was familiarity. If it was broken by long journeys or tornadoes it emerged again, reinvented itself with new dec...
With the smell so close, the ocean came into view only a few moments later, sometimes peeking between old brick buildings with bright blue eyes, other times peering for a lingering moment like long lost relatives seeing one another for the first time...
But the summer had been a very happy one, too -- a time of glad living with summer suns and skies, a time of keen delight in wholesome things; a time of renewing and deepening of old friendships; a time in which she had learned to live more nobly, to...
In a time of disorder [Laertes] has returned to the care of the earth, the foundation of life and hope. And Odysseus finds him in an act emblematic of the best and most responsible kind of agriculture: an old man caring for a young tree. (pg. 123, Th...
All you need, you think, is a breather, a few minutes standing up at the bar like in the old days, having a harmless bottle of beer. Only the bottle of beer isn't harmless; it's a trigger. It sets off that crazy thing in your mind that made you a dip...
Archer had reverted to all his old inherited ideas about marriage. It was less trouble to conform with the tradition and treat May exactly as all his friends treated their wives than to try to put into practice the theories with which his untrammelle...
Anybody is liable to rheumatism in her legs, Anne. It's only old people who should have rheumatism in their souls, though. Thanks goodness, I never have. When you get rheumatism in your soul you might as well go and pick out your coffin.
His eyes went again to the crucifix above his head, reflected in the mirror. The strained arms, the arched spine. All that effort to open the gates of heaven for us and we (he thought) probably spend out first hours among the heavenly hosts settling ...
Incidentally, I have also learned a bit about the importance of avoiding feminine embarrassment ('Daddy,' wrote Sophia when she enrolled at the New School where I teach, 'people will ask "why is old Christopher Hitchens kissing that girl?"') and shal...
Summer in Honolulu brings the sweet smell of mangoes, guava, and passionfruit, ripe for picking; it arbors the streets with the fiery red umbrellas of poincianta trees and decorates the sidewalks with the pink and white puffs of blossoming monkeypods...
Neville kicked aside the broken fragments of his own wand as they walked slowly toward the door. "My gran's going do kill be," said Neville thickly, blood spattering from his nose as he spoke, "dat was by dad's old wand...
New Englanders began the Revolution not to institute reforms and changes in the order of things, but to save the institutions and customs that already had become old and venerable with them; and were new only to a few stupid Englishmen a hundred and ...
It's the silliness--the profligacy, and the silliness--that's so dizzying: a seven-year-old will run downstairs, kiss you hard, and then run back upstairs again, all in less than 30 seconds. It's as urgent an item on their daily agenda as eating or s...
I guess that's the lesson in all of this-not to be eighty years old, looking back on your life, wondering if you made the right choice or how your life might have been different if you'd done one thing and not another.
That's one of the first things that comes out of young people's mouths when they're in love. FOREVER. And that's cool, it's all good-until you get old enough to realize what forever is.
