It appeared to the Elders that the people here would believe anything about themselves, no matter how preposterous, as long as it was flattering. To make sure of this, they performed an experiment. They put the idea into Earthlings' heads that the wh...
Nevertheless, a distinction must be made between skepticism as a philosophical thesis and skepticism as an attitude in life. As a philosophical thesis, it is a contradictory one, since it affirms the impossibility of knowing truth, although this affi...
Joshua?" I called out, a slight hitch in my voice. "Yeah?" "What do I look like to you?" He tilted his head to the side, frowning. "What do I look like to you?" I repeated urgently, afraid that if I didn't talk fast enough, I would have time to reali...
There has been among us, particularly in America, an adolescent competitiveness—a feeling that life is a race in which the victory of one must mean the defeat of the other. No one can measure how much personal unhappiness and inner cowardice have c...
You know what I was thinking about on my way home? How different my life would be if you’d made that gash a little deeper. Or how different yours would be if I’d vaulted myself off a roof nine years ago. Do you ever think about things like that? ...
To see something marvellous with your own eyes - that’s wonderful enough. But when two of you see it, two of you together, holding hands, holding each other close, knowing that you’ll both have that memory for the rest of your lives, but that eac...
Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hi...
I was living my own future and my brother's lost one as well. I represented him here just as he represented me there, in some unguessable other place. His move from life to death might resemble my stepping into the kitchen - into its soft nowhere qua...
I had a dream about you. It was just you and me at the table, and there were two pieces of apple pie available. You thought it worked out perfectly, but I thought it was a problem, because with two of us there, and two pieces of pie, I wondered if th...
If all were perfect, what should we have to suffer from others for God's sake? But God has so ordained, that we may learn to bear with one another's burdens, for there is no man without fault, no man without burden, no man sufficient to himself nor w...
I never asked my mother where babies came from but I remember clearly the day she volunteered the information....my mother called me to set the table for dinner. She sat me down in the kitchen, and under the classic caveat of 'loving each other very,...
Man is a fantastic animal; he was born of fantasy, he is the son of "the mad woman of the house." And universal history is the gigantic and thousand-year effort to go on putting order into that huge, disorderly, anti-animal fantasy. What we call reas...
For the first time after so many years I come back to cry aloud in the desert. Because this is the mission of the intellectual who is truly a prophet—to cry in the desert. The greatest of the prophets, Isaiah, made it notable, of course, when he sp...
Within the universe of the extraordinary, those qualities we designate to human concepts of gender are often shared, exchanged, or even completely obliterated. Because of this mixture of traits, these twins called Genius and Madness often appear to b...
If you are reading this Libellus, you are a Dreamer, whether you have recognized this or not. Being a Dreamer carries responsibility, one most people are not willing to accept. Responsibility implies that one cannot blame another person for their act...
Like all the other arrivals to the tournament, Hank had erected a banner in front. It was a long, tapering pennant with a blue and red circular design in the center and the words GO CUBS! on both sides. Interesting," said Hugo. "What does it mean?" I...
The phrase 'Love one another' is so wise. By loving one another, we invest in each other and in ourselves. Perhaps someday, when we need someone to care for us, it may not come from the person we expect, but from the person we least expect. It may be...
Simon laughed heartily. “I’m afraid the rest of us have to find talents to get our women into bed. Of course once they’re there, I have other talents that keep them right where they are.” “Handcuffs hardly count,” Christian said offhanded...
I love the laughter of this night. Our footsteps run, and I don't want them to end. I want to run and laugh and feel like this forever. I want to avoid any awkward moment when the realness of reality sticks its fork into our flesh, leaving us standin...
If there is anything worse than evil, it is nothingness. At least evil has a form, and a voice, and a purpose, however depraved. Perhaps some good can even come out of evil: a terrible deed of violence against someone weaker may lead others to act in...
People aren't just ants rushing around over a crust of bread. Every life, no matter how isolated, touches hundreds of others. It's up to us to decide if those micro connections are positive or negative. But whichever we decide, it does impact the one...
