He’s got things to do, places to be, realities to believe in. He can feel the phone he’s been told to keep switched off in this communication-free zone vibrating in his pocket and he thanks God for its rebellion and, when the nurse pops out, he q...
We could endlessly reminisce, live in the past to an unhealthy degree, then politely kill each other some winter night before bedtime, stirring poison into our cups of whiskey-spiked chamomile tea, wearing party hats. Then, nervous about our double h...
What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporat...
To call the population of strangers in the midst of which we live "society" is such a usurpation that even the sociologists wonder if they should abandon a concept that was, for a century, their bread and butter. Now they prefer the metaphor of a to ...
... there is no quicker way of growing old than undue indulgence in regular habits. Indeed it seems probable that the reason why so many people die sooner than they should is because they have organised their lives in such a way that there is nothing...
You are so sweet. This is unbelievable. Some schmo talks to you every two weeks, buys you a meal, during which he talks about himself, dry-humps you, touches your hand once and you think he smells like roses. Maybe he is a white knight on a steed, wh...
The war for the Narmada valley is not just some exotic tribal war, or a remote rural war or even an exclusively Indian war. Its a war for the rivers and the mountains and the forests of the world. All sorts of warriors from all over the world, anyone...
Sometime during the night, my husband’s heart had stopped beating, and I was certain that mine would break in two. It had taken years of marriage and a bout with cancer, but we’d finally discovered the joy of a good relationship. David had loved ...
ceremony is essential to humans: It's a circle that we draw around important events to separate the momentous from the ordinary. And ritual is a sort of magical safety harness that guides us from one stage of our lives into the next, making sure we d...
Miro, I'm so sorry. I always felt such pity for you humans because you could only think of one thing at a time and your memories were so imperfect and . . . now I realize that just getting through the day without killing somebody can be an achievemen...
How vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the Theatre upon which all our mighty Designs, all our Navigations, and all our Wars are transacted, is when compared to them. A very fit consideration, and matter of Reflection, for tho...
...In Paris she found Magnus, who was living in a garret apartment and paiting, an occupation for which he had no aptitude whatsoever. He let her sleep on a mattress by the window, and in the night, when she woke up screaming for Will, he came and pu...
The Latin words , soil/earth, and , human being, have a common derivation, from which we also get our word 'humble.' This is the Genesis origin of who we are: dust - dust that the Lord God used to make us a human being. If we cultivate a lively sense...
One of the marks of our world is perhaps this reversal: we live according to a generalized image-repertoire. Consider the United Sates, where everything is transformed into images: only images exist and are produced and are consumes ... Such a revers...
The phone is about the same size as a cigarette pack. It's no surprise to me that the traditional cigarette lighter in many cars has turned into the space we use to recharge our phones. They are kin. The phone, like the cigarette, let's the texter/fo...
She [Catherine of Siena] found a place of refuge in a lonely wood, where some hermits lived. It is generally thought that this brotherhood was the community of hermits in Vallombrosa, founded by St. John Gualbert, the man who had spared the life of h...
Man no longer lives in the beginning--he has lost the beginning. Now he finds he is in the middle, knowing neither the end nor the beginning, and yet knowing that he is in the middle, coming from the beginning and going towards the end. He sees that ...
Most young people have rebellious, anti-authoritarian impulses. They don't like being told what, when, or how to do something. It's ironic, then, that many of these same people embrace a system in which there would be far more regulations, many more ...
We look for medicine to be an orderly field of knowledge and procedure. But it is not. It is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge, uncertain information, fallible individuals, and at the same time lives on the line. Th...
I’d do almost anything for you,” Simon said quietly. “I’d die for you. You know that. But would I kill someone else, someone innocent? What about a lot of innocent lives? What about the whole world? Is it really love to tell someone that if i...
(Raphael) "I know why you refuse me, Daylighter, and it is not out of some pretended sense of rejection. You are so involved with the Shadowhunters, you think you are one of them. We have seen you with them. Instead of spending your nights in the hun...
