We both know that I will not come. We both know that he won't be in Canada. There will be another earthquake, another flood, another war, another reason to not go where we think we are going. It is a strange life, this. Chasing human misery around th...
I ease into the idea of letting go of control and simply let life take the reins. And when I don't hold it so tightly, it doesn't thrash against me so wildly. It calms to a trot and allows me to take in the scenery, experience love, and learn what is...
Grub Street turns out good things almost as often as Parnassus. For if a writer is hard up enough, if he’s far down enough (down where I have been and am rising from, I am really saying), he can’t afford self-doubt and he can’t let other people...
There is yet another class that, having found that their own religion not only prevents free thinking but that some of its philosophies are also against some basic social, economic and scientific concepts of life as required by the progressive societ...
You seem to like helping, taking care of people," he said. "That is admirable." "You enjoy being nurtured?" "Well, that isn’t all you promise. When you touch me, I feel a fire at my center. You want me to grow and find my true story, my purpose. Yo...
You see Carter, people are two things: greedy and cruel. So we have a perfect set-up here. The greed part - a kid pays a buck for a chance to win a hundred. Plus fifty boxes of chocolates. The cruel part - watching two guys hitting each other, maybe ...
Ashlei was free to spout off how much she loved her savior because Jesus was not about to rear back and tell her He did not quite feel the same way, that He had died for the sins of the world just because it was fun and did not want things to be too ...
DPRK translates to Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—and if the words Democratic and Republic sound like a good thing, well, it’s oxymoronic because the Korea we’re talking about here is the communist one in the North, and when I said the...
Other priests, he knew, found an intense pleasure in the raw, salty dialect of peasant conversation. They picked up pearls of wisdom and experience over a farmhouse table or a cup of wine in a workingman's kitchen. They talked with equal familiarity ...
I think you’re my hero,' she said. Only half-kidding. He stared at her, the picture of incredulity. 'Most people,' he said, 'think I am a very bad man.' She studied his eyes to try to find out if that bothered him. He didn’t seem bothered by them...
[Joffe], during a visit to Russia, complained to his KGB handler about the awful coffee. The KGB dude replied that it was really the Kremlin's answer to America's neutron bomb -- both killed people but left the building intact. "I was then that I fir...
He has lived with fisherfolk, worked with his hands, swum in rivers and mended nets and learned to wash his own clothes at need. He can fish and cook and bind up a wound, he knows what it is like to be hungry, to be hunted, to be afraid. Tommen has b...
Life is just like the game of poker, you never know what cards you will get. Sitting against the people, you can either win with the king or live on a joker. Many times in life you are forced to play the blind bet, and achieve overwhelming success, w...
So you didn’t tell me it was a messed-up idea to keep this all a secret because. . .” Because experience is the only teacher,” Hey-Soos says. “Even if I could have told you, it would have been a lecture. Why do you think kids don’t listen t...
Have you noticed how difficult it is just to get along in the world? If you're no good at all in your job, people treat you badly and eventually you will be unemployed. And if you're a little better than competent, everyone expects miracles from you,...
I'm supposed to be a christian, but most days I don't feel like I can even presume to say that about myself any longer. I have a lot of mad left over. When I can't sleep, I think about the other people who didn't care how much pain and trouble they c...
...legitimacy is based on three things. First of all, the people who are asked to obey authority have to feel like they have a voice--that if they speak up, they will be heard. Second, the law has to be predictable. There has to be a reasonable expec...
It's like the old question, "Do you lock your house to keep people out, or to protect what's inside?" Should a person act modestly and dress modestly in order to prevent intrusion from the outside, undesirable things from happening, or to preserve an...
That's why I don't tell people about us. They wouldn't understand, and 1 don't feel the need to explain, simply because I know in my heart how real it was. When I think of you, I can't help smiling, knowing that you've completed me somehow. I love yo...
Once," Fran says, settling against the worktable, folding her arms, "I knew this kid who very bravely and bossily came out of the closet when she was only fourteen years old. She told me then that we can't choose who we love. We just love the people ...
Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self--to the mediating intellect--as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not ex...
