It's weird how I am constantly surprised by the passage of time when it's literally the most predictable thing in the Universe.
I've been a huge cricket fan since my teens, and I often used to go down to St. Helen's in Swansea in the summer. To me, it was like a 'rites of passage' experience to have the freedom of St. Helen's cricket ground.
In my memoir, I admit that I've been as fearful of success as of failure. In fact, when 'Passages' was published, I so dreaded bad reviews that I ran away to Italy with a girlfriend and our children to hide out.
Working with the dying is like being a midwife for this great rite of passage of death. Just as a midwife helps a being take their first breath, you help a being take their last breath.
I really want Americans, and all of us, to be less afraid of death, and know that it's a passage, but that - don't go to the funeral before the day of the funeral.
Once when I went over my work with my Washington University professor, the late great Stanley Elkin, he pointed to a passage of mine and said: 'Stop vamping.' It has remained a caution.
I'm reticent to say much more, but we would like to begin in the coming year. We'd like to shoot through the seasons because of the passage of time. This project is the great love of my life.
Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good humor, to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements.
The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia.
Many of the Iroquois and Huron houses were of similar construction, the partitions being at the sides only, leaving a wide passage down the middle of the house.
One of my favorite passages in 'Leaves of Grass,' that breathless, exuberant poem so rich and full of innocence and joy and generosity and compassion, is 'Mannahatta.'
Fertile soil, level plains, easy passage across the mountains, coal, iron, and other metals imbedded in the rocks, and a stimulating climate, all shower their blessings upon man.
We're building on an international network with many others for the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. There are so many things we can do to carry forward policies.
Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever.
Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.
Annie: The first passage will allow the demon to manifest itself in the flesh. Ash: Why the hell would we want to do that?
Professor Raymond Knowby: Recite the passages... dispel the evil... save my soul... and your own minds!
I never thought of becoming a director. When I was twelve, the passage from silent film to the talkies had an impact on me - I still watch silent films.
In that light, philosophy is not so much--or not simply--'the love of wisdom,' but instead marks the passage from wonder as a noun to wonder as a verb. Philosophy is the love of wisdom to the extent that it remains an incitement to it.
A good writer reveals beauty in the mundane and truth in tragedy. Words are a tool; a currency of the mind, and the best writers weave passages into our hearts that our bones remember.
For the speedy reader paragraphs become a country the eye flies over looking for landmarks, reference points, airports, restrooms, passages of sex.
