Long after the other voices had dropped away, Sam kept howling, very soft and slow. When he finally fell silent, the night felt dead. Sitting was intolerable. I stood up, paced, clenched and unclenched my hands into fists. Finally I took the guitar t...
What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. T...
Pretending is the grease of non-relationships. Pretending is how you and I get through the day without ever having to know each other. When I walk in the room, you say to me, 'How are you?' Well, you don't want to know. And, frankly, I don't want to ...
I procrastinate in spades. In my defence, I also try to have all other distractions solved before I can concentrate on writing. My small theory is that to write for three hours, you need to feel like you have three days. To write for three days, you ...
Chances are, when you were young, you were told, in effect, "Listen, kid, here is the news: life is not about you. Life is not about what you want. What you want is not important. Life is about doing what others expect of you." If you accepted this i...
Antisemitism is unique among religious hatreds. It is a racist conspiracy theory fashioned for the needs of messianic and brutal rulers, as dictators from the Tsars to the Islamists via the Nazis have shown. Many other alleged religious 'hatreds' are...
And as for Owen Warland, he looked placidly at what seemed the ruin of his life's labor, and which was yet no ruin. He had caught a far other butterfly than this. When the artist rose high enough to achieve the beautiful, the symbol by which he made ...
America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash--and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumbera...
What unified the Balochis in their quest to regain self-determination, which resulted in the ‘existing state’? On the one hand, authoritarianism, militarization, and conquest has robbed them of their history and put them into the do or die situat...
Men who pride themselves on being shrewd in discovering the weak points, the vanity, the dishonesty, immorality, intrigue, and pettiness of others think they understand character. They know only a part of character. They know only the depths to which...
You can have a pet zebra and put that zebra into a small cage every day and tell the zebra that you love it, but no matter how you and the zebra love each other, the fact remains, that the zebra should be let out of that cage and should belong to som...
If I am to be fallen into love, I will. And if as a result I will appear to be stupid, disillusioned, and of poor judgment, I will. And I would be damned if I cared what other people think. For I would rather be thought of as all of these things, tha...
Empathy is the ability to step outside of your own bubble and into the bubbles of other people. Empathy is the ability that allows us to be useful creatures on this planet; without empathy, we are a waste of oxygen in this world. Without empathy, we ...
One can’t be on the topmost rung of a ladder from before, it takes time to reach it, to climb it, one at a time. We struggle so that in this process of climbing we can learn, so that we can limit our impatience and grow stronger than we ever imagin...
The power of both myth and art is this magical ability to open doors, to make connections — not only between us and the natural world, but between us and the rest of humanity. Myths show us what we have in common with every other human being, no ma...
Green heard her voice, murmuring, and Adrian’s, murmuring back. Something inside of him made an actual glass-cracking noise—and before he could convince himself that that it was his imagination, Blissa and three of the other nymphs danced through...
Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere. While others who have something to say or who want to be effectual, like musicians or baseball players or politicians, ha...
I, personally, have resolved never to display weakness, to be always strong and firm and forthright, to show neither fear nor uncertainty-- no matter how fearful and uncertain I may be inside; I see no other way to survive this ordeal.
Logan ran a hand through his hair as he tried to calm his racing heart. He wanted her on the most basic level that a man could want a woman, but it was so much more than that. It wasn’t just about sex and the need to be inside her so badly it hurt�...
In the depression, was I ever suicidal; or in other words, did I ever think about taking my life? I’m not sure if I ever pondered this act but, honestly, I did not care whether I lived or died; for to me, death had already taken place—and it seem...
While we are living, our lives are like that of an open book, still being written. Eventually, our book closes for us, and to others, it will be as if we never existed at all. Those of us who write down our life story, will leave a little piece of us...
