For you cannot live in New York City very long and not be conscious of the niceties of being rich—the city is, after all, an ecstatic exercise in merchandising—and one evening of his visit to Venezuela Sutherland sat straight up when he read a li...
She’d wanted Randall Parks from the moment her hormones kicked in. Her best friend, her guardian when things got rough, her knight in somewhat-rusted and dinged up armor—he wore many hats in her life and none more important than that of best frie...
And if I am further pressed to declare straightforwardly whether I mean to disparage these authorities [who criticize Ibsen], I reply, pointedly, that I do. I affirm that such criticisms are written by men who know as much of political life as I know...
It can be coins or sports or politics or horses or music or faith... the saddest people I've ever met in life are the ones who don't care deeply about anything at all. Passion and satisfaction go hand in hand, and without them, any happiness is only ...
He has made me wary of chronological snobbery. That is, he showed me that newness is no virtue and oldness is no vice. Truth and beauty and goodness are not determined by when they exist. Nothing is inferior for being old, and nothing is valuable for...
The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What ca...
A disruption of the circadian cycle—the metabolic and glandular rhythms that are central to our workaday life—seems to be involved in many, if not most, cases of depression; this is why brutal insomnia so often occurs and is most likely why each ...
But it must be said that maturity is not merely something you do with your mind. No, maturity is about how you live your life. It is possible to be theologically astute in yet very immature. It is possible be biblically literate and in need of signif...
I had no illusions that now, in some final and dramatic flash of revelation, we would understand one another. We were done. It was a fact of my life--intractable and sad--that our relationship had been a failure. Still, with her prognosis came one la...
But hey, what's life without a little adversity?" That had to have been the fakest attempt at optimism since my fourth grade teacher tried reasoning that we were better off without the dead kids in our class because it'd mean more turns on the playgr...
But I don't think any parent can expect to escape this life without disappointing his child at some point. And the same could be said the other way around. We all of us fall short now and again, and disappoint someone dear to us, or ourselves. Thankf...
War does that, nothing for it. Reality lays siege. Your framed portrait of life is smashed, and a new one thrust upon you. It's ugly, and you don't even want to look at it let alone hang it on the wall, but you have no choice, once you know. Once you...
You can’t atone for taking one life by saving another. What good does that do the dead?” “The dead,” she said. “And we have plenty of dead between us, but the way we act, you’d think they were corpses hanging on to our ankles, rather than...
Life is so much better when your passion and calling line up. You understand the gift of your spiritual inheritance, assume responsibility for right and just choices, and you pour your signature presence into serving others.
Your iPod is whispering in your ear. It was keeping you company, but now it's like a good friend turned bad [...] It is turning your life into a dark, looping rock opera.
Sandy laughed, and I realized that I liked her, in spite of everything. Yes, she was beautiful. Yes, Sonterra obviously thought she was hot. But that didn't mean she and I were automatic enemies, duty-bound to compete. That was not my typical approac...
Salute to the Thief. Junaid of Baghdad was passing the scene of a public hanging, where a thief was on the scaffold. Junaid bowed towards the criminal. Someone asked him: 'What did you do that?' Junaid said: 'I was bowing before his single-mindedness...
But what he didn't understand was that this dreamland was preferable,walking through this life half-sleeping,everything at arm's length or farther away. I understood those mermaids.I didn't care if they sang to me.All I wanted was to block out all th...
In hindsight, the grand hero ideal she always thought he encompassed chipped away and all that remained was a cheap imitation. He embodied everything she’d hidden from in her adolescence. Boyfriends, relationships, and sex all led to disaster. Bein...
Life isn’t like the movies. People don’t change overnight. people don’t go from arrogant and self-righteous to ashamed and remorseful. They don’t suddenly give in when they’ve spent years taking out. No doesn’t magically become a Yes.
My voice of reason is always Lola. "You're a jackass." "You only say that when I'm being your voice of reason." "Out of my head, witch. And don't piss me off, I tell her. "I'll buy you underwear one size too small for Christmas and make you hate life...
