They ordered punch. They drank it. It was hot rum punch. The pen falters when it attempts to treat of the excellence thereof; the sober vocabulary, the sparse epithet of this narrative, are inadequate to the task; and pompous term, jewelled, exotic p...
Measured in terms of the World Bank poverty standard, the number of poor people in China fell from 652 million to 135 million between 1981 and 2004 - in other words, more than half a billion people were lifted out of poverty. The number of poor peopl...
Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente, y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te toca. Parece que los ojos se te hubieran volado y parece que un beso te cerrara la boca. . Como todas las cosas están llenas de mi alma emerges de las cosas, l...
It's over," Keelie said. Too bad. But I want you to know, I will always love you." She narrowed her eyes and said, "When you look at me and say that, are you thinking of Dolly Parton or Whitney Houston?" Burt Reynolds," he said. She nearly spit out h...
Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind ...
Monastic spirituality concentrated on private disciplines, as if detaching oneself from "the world" (i.e. society) might make one holier. Anabaptist piety was similar in that regard. However, Calvin thought of sanctification as a family affair. How c...
Each leaf that brushed his face deepened his sadness and dread. Each leaf he passed he'd never pass again. They rode over his face like veils, already some yellow, their veins like slender bones where the sun shone through them. He had resolved himse...
Having her in my arms feels like coming home. I am not one to believe in all that love at first sight bullshit, but even as cynical as I am, I can recognize something bigger than lust at work. My body wants her; that is no secret, but the level of wa...
Now when Túrin learnt from Finduilas of what had passed, he was wrathful, and he said to Gwindor: 'In love I hold you for your rescue and sake-keeping. But now you have done ill to me, friend, to betray my right name, and call my doom upon me, from ...
Could God have justified Himself before human history, so full of suffering, without placing Christ's Cross at the center of that history? . . . But God, who besides being Omnipotence is Wisdom and--to repeat once again--Love, desires to justify Hims...
Look, we say stuff to women all the time. We say we’ll call them, then we don’t. We tell them they’re beautiful, then spend the evening looking at other women. We say we don’t love them when we do, and say we do when we don’t. Christ, if I ...
It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so m...
Each day when you wake up you have a choice: You can have a good day, or you can have a bad day. So you might as well have a good one.
Back on the ferry, I sip some vodka on the rocks and have a chat with God. Me: (desperately) What the *&%$# am I going to do? God: Me: (surprised) Really? After all those Sundays of being a back up singer for Jesus, you got nothing to say? God: Me: (...
She looked up and their eyes locked. “Want to be my birthday present?” she asked in a breathy whisper. Chase’s mother didn’t raise any fools. He released her hips and trailed his hand down her arm until their fingers entwined. “Let’s get ...
It's despair at the lack of (I'm cheating, I didn't say all these things - but I'm going to write what I want to say as well as what I did) feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a...
The first verse that comes to mind that refutes all of Calvin’s points is “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Whoever means whoever. Not just some, not just the elect; that means that anyone who wants to come to God and repe...
See, a marriage needs love. And God. And a little money. That's all. The rest you can deal with. It's not about black or white. It's about God and don't let anyone tell you different. All this Jungle fever! Shoot! The Jungle fever goes away, honey, a...
I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden ...
...In Paris she found Magnus, who was living in a garret apartment and paiting, an occupation for which he had no aptitude whatsoever. He let her sleep on a mattress by the window, and in the night, when she woke up screaming for Will, he came and pu...
"Four be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne. Three ...
