Bet you ten bucks we make it." What are the odds? she thought, and realized with sudden, blinding clarity that she wouldn't take the other side of that bet, that only a loser would bet against them. This is really it, she thought, amazed. This is rea...
Maybe, life is a kind of waking dream. Maybe, it's a double-dream with a false awakening. Maybe, the dream only becomes lucid and truly luminous given the fuller perspective of life after one's own wake. Maybe, the pictures never stop. Doesn't the ex...
The best way a writer can find to keep himself going is to live off his (or her) spouse. The trouble is that, psychologically at least, it’s hard. Our culture teaches none of its false lessons more carefully than that one should never be dependent....
I gave my heart to a man who loved me, who wanted to be with me. Who ultimately was afraid of all I offered. I didn’t understand why he sabotaged our future at the time – cheating on me, again, as we were making final plans to move in together. B...
When you’re alive, you don’t dwell on how you’re going to spend your time once you’re dead. You just figure you’re gone, and the rest will pretty much take care of itself. Or you think you’re not really going to die. You’re going to be ...
We made a pact the day you left for Novo—I know you don’t remember that, but I do—and I’m holding fast to our promise. To never give up hope. And I have hope, because I know that deep-down, hidden within the innermost fragments of your heart ...
There is darkness inside all of us, though mine is more dangerous than most. Still, we all have it—that part of our soul that is irreparably damaged by the very trials and tribulations of life. We are what we are because of it, or perhaps in spite ...
He [Ted Williams] was only a 23-year-old kid when he batted .406 in 1941, but then the season ended and our country came under attack at Pearl Harbor—and by 1943 he was a Marine fighter pilot serving overseas who cheated death on several documented...
Cultural wisdom says 'Don't quit your day job.' Yet I think these desires represent our psyche's stretch toward wholeness. And to be whole, as many religious tranditions teach, is to make manifest a unique face of God in the world. We don't want to b...
He's reading a book called Great Warlocks of the 18th Century, and to get this ball rolling before Dean Devlin shows up and rains on our private parade, I snort and ask, "Good book?" I forget I'm pretending to be sitting behind my two-thousand-ninety...
Memory is the grid of meaning we impose on the random and bewildering flux of the world. Memory is the line we pay out behind us as we travel through time--it is the clue, like Ariadne's, which means we do not lose our way. Memory is the lasso with w...
So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. they err who would assert that invariable this is owing to the i...
And now, I, Moroni would speaksomewhatconcerning these things; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye seenot, for ye recieve no witness until after the trial of your faith....
Besides, what's in a name? Actually, a lot. Whether taken from a parent or grandparent, some saint, or even the late great Elvis, your name insists another person's dream of what you should have been. The portrait of some ancestral ideal lingers thro...
My brothers’ faces haunt me. I hear their children, my nieces and nephews, asking me why I came home without their daddies. I think of their wives, imagine their questions. Our parents, forever seeing the faces of their lost sons when they look at ...
What if, instead of being afraid of even talking about death, we saw our lives in some ways as preparation for it. What if we were taught to ponder it and reflect on it and talk about it and enter it and rehearse it and try it on?What if, rather than...
Well then, take this thought with you for the dark hours to come: It is a ludicrous fiction that love conquers all, but it can, in fact, conquer quite a lot. I am Iason of the Blood, Knight of Arthur, King of the Britons, reborn into dark service in ...
What are you thinking?” he asked in a disarmingly gentle tone. “That the city looks different depending on whom I’m seeing it with.” He nodded easily, as if this same thought had occurred to him. “I notice different things,” I continued. ...
This work is not easy, and it never goes smoothly. Because we are hopelessly committed to both individual and group effectiveness, groups committed to public or civic value are rarely permanent. Instead, groups need to acquire a culture that rewards ...
That’s our cue,” Dr. Chadwick noted, managing to approximate a cheerful smile, addressing the room at large. “Everyone please stand behind the yellow line until the doors open. No food, drink, flash photography, or video cameras are permitted. ...
If we spend our days trying to avoid the landmines of stepping out of God's will, then will be afraid to take any risks for his kingdom. But when you know there is a net of grace, when you know that God will catch you and set you back on his path whe...
