We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than the one who believes. You can be almost as stupid as a cabbage, as long as you doubt. The fashion of the age has identified mental ...
Possibly, he was in a state of second growth and recovery, and was constantly assimilating nutriment for his spirit and intellect from sights, sounds, and events which passed as a perfect void to persons more practised with the world. As all is activ...
Since Mom wasn't exactly the most useful person in the world, one lesson I learned at an early age was how to get things done, and this was a source of both amazement and concern for Mom, who considered my behavior unladylike but also counted on me. ...
I knew that somewhere God was laughing. He had taken the other half of my heart, the one person who knew me better than I knew myself, and He had done what nothing else could do. By bringing us together, He had set into motion the one thing that coul...
Wanting to become a better person is just the beginning of your journey. You must become enlightened to feel the pain and suffering of others. When the pain of others become unbearable in your own soul it will cause a spiritual change within you. It ...
A brick could be used as a doorstop. But that’s obvious. What isn’t obvious is why somebody would want to stop a door, since doors represent openness. What is that person hiding behind that door that they want to stop people from opening it up? I...
it's through the simple things in life, through its games, when our minds mature the most and we grow knowledgeable. It's also when the cloth masks of our outer, false personalities are torn asunder, and we are able to see every last blemish of a man...
Putting the dream in motion involved significant personal downsizing, moving three times to trim housing expenses and continuing to freelance. I sold one piece to The New York Times Magazine, many more to The Courant, and another to The St. Petersbur...
I'd known since girlhood that I wanted to be a book editor. By high school, I'd pore over the acknowledgments section of novels I loved, daydreaming that someday a brilliant talent might see me as the person who 'made her book possible' or 'enhanced ...
Gamache nodded. It was what made his job so fascinating, and so difficult. How the same person could be both kind and cruel, compassionate and wretched. Unraveling a murder was more about getting to know the people than the evidence. People who were ...
He felt water run down his back from the damp brickwork he was sitting against, and as he worried distantly about corrosion he realised you can always fall a little further. A moment ago he thought he'd bottomed out, but now he was concerned about pe...
Of course, in Los Angeles, is based on driving, even the killings. In New York, most people don't have cars, so if you want to kill a person, you have to take the subway to their house. And sometimes on the way, the train is delayed and you get impat...
If you tell anyone what I just told you, I’ll call the Mob. I know some of them, you know.” “Bullshit.” I shrugged. “Believe what you want.” Finch eyed me suspiciously, and then smiled. “You are officially the coolest person I know.” ...
In the ordinary jumble of my literary drawer, I sometimes find texts I wrote ten, fifteen, or even more years ago. And many of them seem to me written by a stranger: I simply do not recognize myself in them. There was a person who wrote them, and it ...
As girls, we will do anything for the person whom we love. We will scale buildings in the rain or run through fire if it means saving our love’s life. There is absolutely nothing more life altering that the fire burning inside of our souls for the ...
It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent f...
If a blanket could be used to keep one person warm, then it stands to reason that all the blankets in the world are to blame for global warming, and I think our political leaders, with all their wisdom, should confiscate all blankets and burn them. T...
Each of us ought to be so happy that Jesus found us and saved us, that we are running to find the next person who needs to be introduced to Him. That's what church is, a community of rescued people celebrating grace, eager to spread the good news of ...
We will not read of that which hurts our pride or fears or 'feelings'. We forget, or gloss over, or excuse, an experience which injured the tentacles of our personality. We forget the pscyhiatrist's definition of a neurosis as 'refused pain'. In the ...
Pain is not the same as suffering. Left to itself, the body discharges pain spontaneously, letting go of it the moment that the underlying cause is healed. Suffering is pain that we hold on to. It comes from the mind’s mysterious instinct to believ...
In trying to make the slave experience intimate, I hoped the sense of things being both under control and out of control would be persuasive throughout; that the order and quietitude of every day life would be violently disrupted by the chaos of the ...
