The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud --- the obstacles of life and its suffering. ... The mud speaks of the common ground...
I have now been an officer in this Church for a very long time. I am an old man who cannot deny the calendar. I have lived long enough and served in enough different capacities to have removed from my mind, if such were necessary, any doubt of the di...
An artist has an obligation to tell the truth. My novels are epic fantasy, but they are inspired by and grounded in history. Rape and sexual violence have been a part of every war ever fought, from the ancient Sumerians to our present day. To omit th...
All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on thei...
We had a dream that we would always be best friends. When we were born, for some it was the end. Now it seems there may not be tomorrow. But despite the horror and the sorrow, I love our world. I want us all to live. Now Rosa, you've asked me to forg...
Man is a glorious and unique species of animal. The species originated by evolution.... Future evolution could raise man to superb heights as yet hardly glimpsed, but it will not automatically do so. As far as can now be foreseen, evolutionary degene...
The only thing worth writing about is people. People. Human beings. Men and women whose individuality must be created, line by line, insight by insight. If you do not do it, the story is a failure. [...] There is no nobler chore in the universe than ...
The social prestige of wine at table and at the club must be destroyed through lofty example and polite ridicule; forces which are not always available, and for whose successful operation much time will be required. But the outstanding fact remains, ...
No matter what choice you make, it doesn't define you. Not forever. People can make bad choices and change their minds and hearts and do good things later; just as people can make good choices and then turn around and walk a bad path. No choice we ma...
Life is an endless attempt to word the unwordable, to make what cannot be touched walk on the ground, to embody what can never be fit inside a single lifetime. We see reflections of ourselves in sunrises, hear our perfection in thunderstorms and babi...
There are many people, particularly in sports, who think that success and excellence are the same thing. They are not the same thing. Excellence is something that is lasting and dependable and largely within a person's control. In contrast, success i...
Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, and their resp...
That's all Jesus Christ offers us, is the truth. When we truly wake up from the lie of modern society, we find ourselves on a spiritual battleground. In foxholes with other believers, attempting to bring people to the truth.. people who don't want th...
I believe we inherit a great river of knowledge, a flow of patterns coming from many sources. The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary past we call genetics. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago we call culture. The...
Reading is a dialog with oneself; it is self-reflection, which cultivates profound humanity. Reading is therefore essential to our development. It expands and enriches the personality like a seed that germinates after a long time and sends forth many...
Much of the oxygen we breathe comes from plants that died long ago. We can give thanks to these ancestors of our present-pay foliage, but we can't give back to them. We can, however, give forward. When we are unable to return the favor, we can pay it...
The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, yet its inhabitants are strikingly unhappy. Accordingly, we present to the rest of mankind, on a planet rife with suffering and tragedy, the spectacle of a clown civilization. Su...
[about to have sex in a car behind his restaurant] Nicky Santoro: I fly stuff in fresh every day. I get bread from back home, I get fish from California, and you can always tell a great kitchen like ours 'cause of the milk-fed veal. That's the secret...
Ellen: What are you looking at? Clark: Oh, the silent majesty of a winter's morn... the clean, cool chill of the holiday air... an asshole in his bathrobe, emptying a chemical toilet into my sewer... [Eddie, in the driveway, is draining the RV's toil...
Reverend Clement Hedges: This was no man. Does a man have teeth the size of axe blades? Or ears like terrible tombstones? By tampering with nature, forcing vegetables to swell far beyond their natural size, we have brought a terrible judgement upon o...
Sheldon: You handled yourself real well, Sonny. A lot of men would've choked, and we might have had a death or a multiple death on our hands. But you handled it. I respect that. Now don't you try to take Sal. We'll handle him. Just sit tight and you ...
