We were talking the other evening about the phrases one uses when trying to comfort someone who is in distress. I told him that in English we sometimes say, 'I've been there.' This was unclear to him at first-I've been where? But I explained that dee...
So I stood up and did a handstand on my Guru's roof, to celebrate the notion of liberation. I felt the dusty tiles under my hands. I felt my own strength and balance. I felt the easy night breeze on the palms of my bare feet. This kind of thing -- a ...
The novel was born with the Modern Era, which made man, to quote Heidegger, the "only real subject," the ground for everything. It is largely through the novel that man as an individual was established on the European scene. Away from the novel, in o...
The problem is that you are too much in love. You are here because your parents mentioned your name to someone who mentioned your parents' name to someone who mentioned your name to my superior who suggested that I might find a position for you. And ...
My darling, I'm waiting for you — how long is a day in the dark, or a week? The fire is gone now, and I'm horribly cold. I really ought to drag myself outside but then there would be the sun. . . I'm afraid I waste the light on the paintings and on...
Yes, you can see the bullet points here, here and here, sir; there are multiple back-slashes, of course. And that’s a forward slash. I would have to call this a frenzied attack. Did anyone hear the interrobang?” “Oh yes. Woman next door was tem...
No se me importa un pito que las mujeres tengan los senos como magnolias o como pasas de higo; un cutis de durazno o de papel de lija. Le doy una importancia igual a cero, al hecho de que amanezcan con un aliento afrodisíaco o con un aliento insecti...
The warm night claimed her. In a moment it was part of her. She walked on the grass, and her shoes were instantly soaked. She flung up her arms to the sky. Power ran to her fingertips. Excitement was communicated from the waiting trees, and the orcha...
A smaller rocket cut across the sky, trailing smoke. It exploded in a red heart. "Awwwww!" said the crowd. "Upside down," said Sean. The heart was, indeed, upside down. It grew and grew, upside down, until it's lights trailed and faded. A bigger rock...
Stubble or what?" Eyes still closed he chuckled. "I'm not shaving until our parents let us date again." He kissed my cheek. "What if it takes... a... while?" I asked struggling to talk. He'd made his way down to my neck. His tongue circled there slow...
This, since junior school, had been virtually my only experience of women—as fantasy figures. Reading about women in fantasy novels had set me an even more unrealistic point of view. The doesn't help, with its sexless visions of elf maidens who may...
But in the military you don't get trusted positions just because of your ability. You also have to attract the notice of superior officers. You have to be liked. You have to fit in with the system. You have to look like what the officers above you th...
Nero, you are an example to all the children on this shuttle. Because most of them are so foolish, they think it is better to keep their stupidest thoughts to themselves. You, however, understand the profound truth that you must reveal your stupidity...
Don't you recognize me, Mary? It's your good friend Allie the Outcast - although it looks like you're the one who's the out-cast now." Then Allie realized something with far too much glee. "Now that you're here - alive and all - there's something I'v...
No attempt should be made to "reconcile" Yahweh's hardening of Pharaoh's heart (plagues 6,8,9,10) with statements in the other plagues that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. The tension cannot be resolved in a facile manner by suggesting, for example, ...
The books are to remind us what asses and fool we are. They're Caeser's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, "Remember, Caeser, thou art mortal." Most of us can't rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of t...
The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen and the sun burnt Time, that meant that everything burnt! One of them had...
El amor consiste en una empatía ilimitada, surgida de lo que el corazón nos revela, que el otro es tan real como nosotros. Y por eso el amor, según lo entiendo, siempre es concreto. Intentar amar a toda la humanidad puede ser una empresa loable, p...
Meditation,” said his teacher, “hasn’t got a damn thing to do with anything, ‘cause all it has to do with is nothing. Nothingness. Okay? It doesn’t develop the mind, it dissolves the mind. Self-improvement? Forget it, baby. It erases the se...
I have a scar-a faint gouge in my knee from when I fell down on the sidewalk as a child. It's always seemed stupid to me that none of the pain I've experienced has left a visible mark; sometimes, without a way to prove it to myself. I began to doubt ...
Elgin himself looked ten years younger, now that he’d cast the die, but I thought exuberance had got the better of him when he strode into the saloon later, threw The Origin of Species on the table and announced: "It’s very original, no doubt, bu...