Getting a handle on why wolves do what they do has never been an easy proposition. Not only are there tremendous differences in both individual and pack personalities, but each displays a surprising range of behaviors depending on what's going on aro...
She can’t explain or quite understand what it is that is special about dancing with Harry. When he opens his arms to her, he is so sure, the way he holds her, not too hard, not too soft. Like coming home. Where she belongs. The way he moves her. Th...
Doctors tend to enter the arenas of their profession's practice with a brisk good cheer that they have to then stop and try to mute a bit when the arena they're entering is a hospital's fifth floor, a psych ward, where brisk good cheer would amount t...
The Happiest Man in The World The French interpreter for the 14th Dalai Lama, former academic and dedicated meditator Matthieu Ricard, came into the spotlight in the field of neural science after being named “the happiest man in the world”. Natur...
It's one of the great temptations, you see--wanting to prove the strength of your own faith by making others believe what you believe. It shows you're right. But it doesn't prove anything of the sort. All it proves is that you're condescending and ar...
We all have an unscientific weakness for being always in the right, and this weakness seems to be particularly common among professional and amateur politicians. But the only way to apply something like scientific method in politics is to proceed on ...
Although the terminology implies scientific endorsement, false memory syndrome is not currently an accepted diagnostic label by the APA and is not included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; American Psychiatric As...
[Colin confronts Billy on the rooftop] Billy Costigan: FREEZE! [points gun at Colin] Colin Sullivan: Hey! Hey! Hey! Billy Costigan: Put your fucking hands up! Colin Sullivan: Put the fucking gun down! Put the gun... put the gun down, alright? I came ...
Style and voice are different. Style is standard conventions of writing. Voice is the distinct way an individual puts words together. All good writers have a near-uniform understanding of style but a voice all their own.
That which struck the present writer most forcibly on his first perusal of the 'Origin of Species' was the conviction that Teleology, as commonly understood, had received its deathblow at Mr. 's hands. For the teleological argument runs thus: an orga...
How does it happen that a writer who's not even very good - and I can say that, I've read four or five of his books - gets to be in charge of the world's destiny? Or of the entire universe's?" If he's not very good, why didn't you stop at one?" Mrs. ...
I have never seen a food writer mention this, but all shrimp imported into the United States must first be washed in chlorine bleach to kill bugs. What this does for the taste, I do not know, but I think we should be told.
A writer should be a recluse. Why share words with a few friends in the moment when they can be written down in solitude and shared with everybody at any time?
I used to be a bumper sticker kind of writer. Now I’m more developed, and my writing often takes up whole bumpers.
Shakespeare was not a genius. He was, without the distant shadow of doubt, the most wonderful writer who ever breathed. But not a genius. No angels handed him his lines, no fairies proofread for him. Instead, he learnt techniques, he learnt tricks, a...
Muses are fickle, and many a writer, peering into the voice, has escaped paralysis by ascribing the creative responsibility to a talisman: a lucky charm, a brand of paper, but most often a writing instrument. Am I writing well? Thank my pen. Am I wri...
So I picked the book up and did my usual 123 test. I don't bother reading the blurb on the back, or the first page - the writer's obviously going to be trying their hardest there, aren't they? It's how they're getting on by page 123 that's the real t...
Anyway, my writer gang: they kind of did their comedy apprenticeship with me and, during that period, when they were young and impressionable, I think I infected them with my pun virus. They grew to enjoy puns, think puns, just as much as me. The pro...
The serious writer was aware of a paradox at the heart of his art: his inner world, the place of the strongest stories, was infinite, but it was also embedded in – if this was possible! – an even more infinite universe of all things to write abou...
The one plentiful herds of magazine writers would continue to be culled - by the Internet, by the recession, by the American public, who would rather watch TV or play video games or electronically inform friends that, like, 'rain sucks!' But there's ...
When I got up this morning the sea was full of sun pennies - and now it all seems to be covered in lemon scrim. Writers ought to live far inland or next to the city dump, if they are ever to get any work one. Or perhaps they need to be stronger-minde...
