We all try to camouflage the monotony, But it takes a lot of energy. To insist on being special all the time. When we're so much like one another anyway. Our triumphs are the same. Our pain. Try for a moment to feel what relief there is in the ordina...
Real life, life finally uncovered and clarified, the only life in consequence lived to the full, is literature. Life in this sense dwells within all ordinary people as much as the artist. But they do not see it because they are not trying to shed lig...
I don't really know that this story has a whole lot of things happen in it. It doesn't really. It's just a record of how things were in my life during this last winter. I guess things happened, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Everything that he was saying sounded incredible, but Frank knew enough about politics to know that governments got away with what they did because they counted on ordinary citizens dismissing events as being too incredible and implausible.
All geniuses are peculiarly inclined to solitude, to which they are driven as much by their difference from others as the inner wealth with which they are quipped, since among humans, among diamonds, only the uncommonly great are suited as solitaires...
Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.
…Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I don't know what will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. We're more popular than Jesus now. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it...
Wine lovers have known for centuries that decanting wine before serving it often improves its flavor. Whatever the dominant process, the traditional decanter is a rather pathetic tool to accomplish it. A few years ago, I found I could get much better...
Logan stopped and gazed skyward as the kite began to soar above them, and when he clapped his hands at Ben's obvious joy, she was strucked by the simple truth that sometimes the most ordinary things could be made extraordinary, simply by doing them w...
Oh, and 13.1 million American people had their homes foreclosed. Because their debt, it turns out, was real; it was only the debt within the financial sector that was imaginary. It was only the people who generated the crisis who got three magical wi...
Bin Laden always wanted to get rid of Mubarek and Ben Ali and Gaddafi and so on, claiming that they were all infidels working for America, and in fact, it was millions of ordinary people who peacefully, more or less - certainly in the case of Tunisia...
I write so others might contemplate things that are out of the ordinary. I write to make people feel—to cause laughter and tears and anger at injustice. I write so the world will imagine and wonder at crazy, incredible truths. I write to have a tin...
Obama is not the messiah any longer. He is now your standard, ordinary, everyday politician who lies, who breaks promises, who's in it for himself, who can't do anything on his own. He's not qualified. All of this is becoming known, sadly, too late.
Novels by serious writers of genius often eventually become best-sellers, but most contemporary best-sellers are written by second-class writers whose psychological brew contains a touch of naïvety, a touch of sentimentality, the story-telling gift,...
There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is suffering, too much pain. Then suddenly, the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary peopl...
He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful graces of God.
Loss, once it’s become a certainty, is like a rock you hold in your hand. It has weight and dimension and texture. It’s solid and can be assessed and dealt with. You can use it to beat yourself or you can throw it away.
The idea of magic being something that is separate from everyday life – known to the magicians but not the ordinary people – still slows down our recognition that it is here, now, of the Earth and Universe, all around us, and perhaps most essenti...
Ishabal: "If you may correct your vision as you like, why do you wear spectacles?" Tris: "Because I like them. Because I have better things to do with my magic than fixing my vision when ordinary glass will do.
An ordinary life used to look something like this: born into a growing family, you help rear your siblings, have the first of your own half-dozen or even dozen children soon after you're grown, and die before your youngest has left home.
My mother is a big believer in being responsible for your own happiness. She always talked about finding joy in small moments and insisted that we stop and take in the beauty of an ordinary day. When I stop the car to make my kids really see a sunset...
