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...
I made up three lists: Candidate's Accomplishments (real and imaginary), Accusations Against Opponent (including rumours, allegations, innuendos, and lies), and Empty Promises (the more improbable, the better). Then it was merely a matter of taking v...
In your entire life, you can probably count your true friends on one hand. Maybe even on one finger. Those are the friends you need to cherish, and I wouldn't trade one of them for a hundred of the other kind. I'd rather be completely alone than with...
What is certain is that he [the baby] has too much attention from the one person who is entirely at his disposal. The intimacy between mother and child is not sustaining and healthy. The child learns to exploit his mother's accessibility, badgering h...
There seems to be something in our human nature that draws us away from a life-giving relationship with Jesus because it feels more comfortable to focus on what to do and not do. That tendency robs us of real joy and peace.
This is my first real memory of James. In every memory before that, he’s just a flash of color, a warm body with a blurred face, a comforting voice begging me not to die. When he planted himself between our father and me that day, an eight-year-old...
I am a member of a fragile species, still new to the earth, the youngest creatures of any scale, here only a few moments as evolutionary time is measured, a juvenile species, a child of a species. We are only tentatively set in place, error prone, at...
Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.
How we think about God matters. It affects the credibility of religion in general and of Christianity in particular. Our concept of God can make God seem real or unreal, just as it can also make God seem remote or near.
I don’t know," she said. "I’m not sure you would like me in real life. I’m a lot different there, you know. I don’t even look the same." " I don’t care if you look like a troll with warts," Sir Leo declared, taking her hand in his. "I love ...
The Lord commands us to do good unto all men without exception, though the majority are very undeserving when judged according to their own merits... [The Scripture] teaches us that we must not think of man's real value, but only of his creation in t...
But the real joy he feels doesn't come in the guise of Bruce the billionaire playboy. It comes as Batman - when he does what he was meant to do. When he follows his purpose.
Don’t stretch your neck to see who is not doing it; you can do it better! Don’t turn to watch whoever is watching you; everybody is busily watching over his own actions at hand! Go, make your own real; do at the right time. The right time is now;...
It's easy to smile just to make other people feel better. But when a person fakes happy, it has edges. Regular people may not see, but the people who count, they can see the edges and the lines where your smile ends and the real you, the sadness (me)...
It’s 3:33 am as I’m writing this down on loose sheets of printer paper. I’m in the back office sitting behind the manager’s desk, just enjoying the good life. In essence, this job enables me to be a real writer, because here I am writing, and...
After that [father's death] I never cried with any real conviction, nor expected much of anyone's God except indifference, nor loved deeply without fear that it would cost me dearly in pain. At the age of five I had become a skeptic and began to sens...
Just give me a bit, let me pretend you're still alive," Andrei said hoarsely. "Let me pretend that I don't have to give you up." "Andrei," Warm, calloused hands cupped Anrei's face. "Look at me. I'm real. I'm still with you. A part of me will always ...
It is not necessary to have an extravagant food budget in order to serve things with variety and tastefully cooked. It is not necessary to have expensive food on the plates before they can enter the dining room as things of beauty in colour and textu...
I don't have much time for stories," Vin said. "Seems that fewer and fewer people do, these days." A canopy kept off the ash, but he seemed unconcerned about the mists. "It makes me wonder what is so alluring about the real world that gives them all ...
The imagined memories had to have as much weight as the real, or we had to at least pretend they did to such a degree that they just very well might have. And so I never questioned Angela about that particular story, or about all the troubling things...
Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world...
