John had written that normal fantasy ("normal" in the T.S. Kuhn sense) was written for the moderately educated class from suffering ennui. It was for folks stuck doing dull, repetitive work, growing old while not getting laid half often or variously ...
And then, on September 11, the world fractured. It's beyond my skill as a writer to capture that day and the days that would follow--the planes, like specters, vanishing into steel and glass; the slow-motion cascade of the towers crumbling into thems...
Don’t be so hard on yourself, You’re doing the same thing, trying to reconcile all the moms that Mom ever was - The one you wanted, the one she was when you needed her and she was there, the one she was when she didn’t understand. Most of us do...
It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the W...
Traveling in a third-world country is the closest thing there is to being married and raising kids. You have glorious hikes and perfect days on the beach. You go on adventures you would never try, or enjoy, alone. But you also can't get away from eac...
In a world of seven billion people, where every inch of land has been mapped, much of it developed, and too much of it destroyed, the sea remains the final unseen, untouched, and undiscovered wilderness, the planet’s last great frontier. There are ...
Europe had fallen back into the barbarity of the first ages. People from this part of world, so enlightened today, lived a few centuries ago in a state worse than ignorance. Some sort of learned jargon much more despicable than ignorance had usurped ...
It makes sense. It's all there. Everything that's beautiful or wise or significant has been written down at some time or other. How can anybody have the gall or the self-satisfaction to ignore all that? Who would want to? You read to feel alive, to b...
I can’t walk away from someone I love without saying ‘I love you’ one last time. I’ve known how very much I’ve loved you for a long time. You think I’m a child and I know nothing about the world or about love. But I know about love. I kno...
Morals do exist outside of organized religion, and the ‘morality’ taught by many of these archaic systems is often outdated, sexist, racist, and teaches intolerance and inequality. When a parent forces a child into a religion, the parent is effec...
That is who I want you to remember, lad. The man so filled with Arman's love that he could forgive his son for taking his life and the life of his bride. is the man I knew. The king I served. Just you remember it.' 'But a man with many mistresses. A ...
I realised I never wanted to leave her side, and I never wanted her to have to struggle to be released from her sadness. I could never suggest she required release; for she did not require release. It was a true thing, this sadness of hers; a true th...
To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New Y...
It's only in the finer points that it gets complicated and contentious, the inability to realize that no matter what our religion or gender or race or geographic background, we all have about 98 percent in common with each other. Yes, the differences...
If you were an atheist, Birbal," the Emperor challenged his first minister, "what would you say to the true believers of all the great religions of the world?" Birbal was a devout Brahmin from Trivikrampur, but he answered unhesitatingly, "I would sa...
How much evil throughout history could have been avoided had people exercised their moral acuity with convictional courage and said to the powers that be, 'No, I will not. This is wrong, and I don't care if you fire me, shoot me, pass me over for pro...
The image titled “The Homeless, Psalm 85:10,” featured on the cover of ELEMENTAL, can evoke multiple levels of response. They may include the spiritual in the form of a studied meditation upon the multidimensional qualities of the painting itself...
... people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You...
In our post-everything culture, obey has become a four-letter word. Obeying is for wimps. Obeying is for people who didn’t do well enough on their SATs to write their own rules. Only the weak and the feeble and the young—-well, not even the young...
Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. It is really far more logical to start by saying ‘In the beginning God created heaven and eart...
For many reasons, Dear,” Delia said in a soothing voice. “We are tired of running , tired of traveling. It is time for us to be together in a world where your kind of evil does not exist." Lucan growled at her, but she continued, "And I could not...
