Love is a devoted madness while marriage is a responsibility. But then it is possible to be devotedly mad and responsible at the same time, yes it is. And so this is how we should begin to see marriage: as it is, for what it is! Marriage needs to cea...
Carine McCandless: With almost a year having passed since Chris' disappearance my parents' anger had turned to desperation. Their guilt was giving way to pain. And pain seemed to bring them closer. Even their faces had changed. She convinces herself ...
Mr. Fox: They say all foxes are slightly allergic to linoleum, but it's cool to the paw - try it. They say my tail needs to be dry cleaned twice a month, but now it's fully detachable - see? They say our tree may never grow back, but one day, somethi...
Rooster Cogburn: If he is not in a shallow grave somewhere between here and Fort Smith he is gone. Long gone! Thanks to Mr. LaBeouf, we have missed our shot. He barked and the birds have flown. Gone. Gone. Gone! Lucky Ned and his cohort gone. Your fi...
Of course one’s sense of identification with the nation is inflected by all kinds of particulars, including one’s class, race, gender, and sexual identification. … But [regarding] national character …, aside from references to a national aest...
Wrong Question: How to love? Right Question: Why am I afraid to love? Wrong Question: Why do you love me? Right Question: Do I love myself as much as you do? Wrong Question: Why does love hurt? Right Question: Why do I live in fantasies and expect so...
The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and d...
Sah ein Knab' ein Röslein stehn, Röslein auf der Heiden, war so jung und morgenschön, lief er schnell, es nah zu sehn, sah's mit vielen Freuden. Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot, Röslein auf der Heiden. Knabe sprach: „Ich breche dich, Röslein ...
But why would they do that? What is to be asked? He was a man who sees things -- very ordinary things. A hat left on the floor of a café in Kingstown, a proverb overheard, an old fisherman mending a net: these, for him, were a kind of incitement. Th...
Ginny Cupper took me in her car out to the spread fields of Indiana. Parking near the edge of woods and walking out into the sunny rows of corn, waving seeds to a yellow horizon. She wore a white blouse and a gray patch of sweat under her arms and th...
Thanks to this availability of suitable wild mammals and plants, early peoples of the Fertile Crescent could quickly assemble a potent and balanced biological package for intensive food production. That package comprised three cereals, as the main ca...
Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if only we can be still and hold fast to God’s Word. Death is not bitter, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift o...
Strong passions are the precious raw material of sanctity. Individuals that have carried their sinning to extremes should not despair or say, “I am too great a sinner to change,” or “God would not want me.” God will take anyone who is willing...
For a moment I am jealous: He has grown up here, fearless, happy. Perhaps he will never even know about the world on the other side of the fence, the real world. For him there will be no such thing. But there will also be no medicine for him when he ...
We are staring at each other, forgetting about the harsh reality and I can feel my heart reacting. He touches my cheek and the familiar electric current runs through me. His hands are warm, caressing my pale skin. His deep-blue eyes are filled with s...
I lay down in the mother ash dirt among the crocuses and told her it was okay. That I'd surrendered. That since she died, everything had changed. Things she couldn't have imagined and wouldn't have guessed. My words came out low and steadfast. I was ...
I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was...
Winter Liar" by Liam Doyle the Incubus What come once here will never come again, no matter monument nor memory; all sunwarmed green succumbs to winter's wind. And you, my love, were also my best friend, and had your life to live. The tragedy was not...
Deny a man pleasure, the possession of woman’s body and he will show you his true colors. He will dismiss his frustration onto her, forcibly abuse her, offend her all at the cost of his desires, the fulfillment of his this basic appetite. And if yo...
{ } I realised as if for the first time, the menace of these queer shaven men in lace and petticoats who had been intoning, responding, and going through ritual gestures at me. I realised something dreadful about them. They were thrusting an incredib...
[Jürgen Habermas' obituary to friend and philosopher, Richard Rorty] One small autobiographical piece by Rorty bears the title 'Wild Orchids and Trotsky.' In it, Rorty describes how as a youth he ambled around the blooming hillside in north-west New...
