Shoving aside fear and self-doubt, I met his eyes, aiming for absolute confidence in both my stance and my voice. “My father taught me to disarm my opponent at all costs—regardless of his choice of weapon,” I said, glancing pointedly at his gro...
My aunt must have been perfectly well aware that she would not see Swann again, that she would never leave her own house any more, but this ultimate seclusion seemed to be accepted by her with all the more readiness for the very reason which, to our ...
Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of t...
...I blink back the threat of tears, swiped at my nose and narrowed my eyes. "Listen to me, you two bags of monkey shit, "I yelled. "I am not in a good mood. My car keeps stalling. The day before yesterday I threw up on Joe Morelli. I was called a fa...
Saints and bodhisattvas may achieve what Christians call mystical union or Buddhists call satori--a perpetual awareness of the force at the heart of the heart of things. For these enlightened few, the world is always lit. For the rest of us, such cla...
Millions call themselves by His name, it is true, and pay some token homage to Him, but a simple test will show how little He is really honored among them. Let the average man be put to the proof on the question of who or what is ABOVE, and his true ...
It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affe...
Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of i...
My fingers", said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fa...
It is not for nothing that you are named Ransom,” said the Voice... The whole distinction between things accidental and things designed, like the distinction between fact and myth, was purely terrestrial. The pattern is so large that within the lit...
Weird? Absurd? That’s how it seemed to me. I had these forces, these compunctions, these alternative personalities inside me, driving me. It was like being a jack-in-the-box and I was unsure which personality was going to jump out next: Billy, who ...
Music burst through him, perfect notes he hear rarely. Fire and ice, wind and calm, sky and earth, water and rock all fused together. Joley seemed as wild and turbulent s the sea, yet beneath her fiery passion, at the very core of her, she was as for...
And dieting, I discovered, was another form of disordered eating, just as anorexia and bulimia similarly disrupt the natural order of eating. "Ordered" eating is the practice of eating when you are hungry and ceasing to eat when your brain sends the ...
Lions should be strong but sweet beasts in a Disney cartoon. But they aren't, so when they act like lions you're angry at them for not being the fantasy animals you imagined. Russian bears don't put on top hats and ride unicycles. Or sleep in bed nex...
If parents start to fear that monsters may have been let loose in their children's bedrooms, it may be because their children are the monsters. Consider what kind of world they are growing up in. It can all end tomorrow. Material progress no longer s...
It is this nothingness (in solitude) that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am wo...
We see, surrounding the narrow raft illuminated by the flickering light of human comradeship, the dark ocean on whose rolling waves we toss for a brief hour; all the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces is concentrated on the individual soul, w...
After you are here, I will try not to become one of those parents who brag incessantly about their children, who force them to recite the alphabet backward or sing the Lord's Prayer in German to horrified dinner guests. One of those parents who tell ...
Humans are capable of so much more. Power mongers like you have stripped away what is most valuable to us, the importance of our heritage and family values. We have been robbed of this, blinded by your authority, while you encourage us to burry ourse...
The society has instilled in us the importance of coupling and downplayed on singlehood as a form of disease. Business institutions rake money for family needs and wants especially on birthing and its sustainable needs demanding stable finances. But ...
What I have a problem with is not so much religion or god, but faith. When you say you believe something in your heart and therefore you can act on it, you have completely justified the 9/11 bombers. You have justified Charlie Manson. If it's true fo...
