Life is similar to a bus ride. The journey begins when we board the bus. We meet people along our way of which some are strangers, some friends and some strangers yet to be friends. There are stops at intervals and people board in. At times some of t...
I was at ease in everything, to be sure, but at the same time satisfied with nothing. Each joy made me desire another. I went from festivity to festivity. On occasion I danced for nights on end, ever madder about people and life. At times, late on th...
Hunter was bipolar, for crying out loud. He had checked into the nut house on more than one occasion and, honestly, I was already starting to feel the anxiety of living together. I would need to get my martial arts skills up to par to deal with this ...
What does it take to break a person? Torturers and interrogators would be able to provide statistics. This many nights without sleep, this many needles, this much water, this voltage of current on this many occasions. But there is considerable variat...
Shaun: Mum, look, what would you say if I told you that over the years Philip's been quite unkind to me? Barbara: Well you weren't always the easiest person to live with. Shaun: Mum, he chased me around the garden with a bit of wood! Barbara: Well yo...
... We are Nephilim; we fight our own battles." "That's not precisely true, is it?" said a velvety voice. It was Magnus Bane, wearing a long and glittering coat, multiple hoops in his ears, and a roguish expression. Clary had no idea where he'd come ...
Speaking about time’s relentless passage, Powell’s narrator compares certain stages of experience to the game of Russian Billiards as once he used to play it with a long vanished girlfriend. A game in which, he says, “...at the termination of a...
I opened the window to let some fresh air into the room and was surprised to see that the rain was not just falling, but that it formed an actual wall of water, as if the whole sky were falling. While I was staring at the strange phenomenon, the form...
My companions for the afternoon were affable, welcoming middle-aged men in their late thirties and early forties who simply had no conception of the import of the afternoon for the rest of us. To them it was an afternoon out, a fun thing to do on a S...
The differences were plain enough, and yet I saw that they were as nothing compared with what we had in common. As I lay in bed at night, the sky outside my window reflecting the city's dim glow, I thought about Abuelita’s fierce loyalty to blood. ...
In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against...
It has been observed in all ages that the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness; and that those whom the splendour of their rank, or the extent of their capacity, have placed upon the summits of...
I find no peace, and all my war is done, I fear and hope; I burn and freeze like ice; I fly above the wind yet can I not arise; And naught I have and all the world I seize on. That looseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison, And holdeth me not, yet can...
Keep in mind too, our failures serve to teach us, and usually teach us more than our successes do. What we may perceive as a failure is also an opportunity for someone else to rise to the occasion and perform a mitzvah, or mitzvot. Do not begrudge so...
But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the pe...
The times might be unpleasant, repulsive. The ghastly chaos, the abhorrent uncivility might be intolerable, might force us into argument or leave us panic-stricken. On such occasions people build within themselves a conviction, that the world outside...
In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a ...
In the end it comes down to two rival versions of the English middle afternoon. Post-Barrett, Pink Floyd kept on in a middle-afternoonish vein, but they fell in love with the idea of portentous storm clouds in the offing somewhere over Grantchester.....
[first lines] Bert: All right, ladies an' gents! Comical poem! Suitable for the occasion, extemporized and thought up before your very eyes! All right, 'ere we go! [sings] Bert: Room 'ere for everyone. Gather around. [speaks] Bert: The constable - re...
The city is sore with movement, but still it oscillates. Busy people churn through grey-toned streets, their briefcases held close, rustling against trouser legs. The collective machine is tired, but each worker drives on. Gleaming taxis mirror stile...
When one ponders on the tremendous journey of evolution over the past three billion years or so, the prodigious wealth of structures it has engendered, and the extraordinarily effective teleonomic performances of living beings from bacteria to man, o...