[A]ll who are smitten with the love of books think cheaply of the world and wealth; as Jerome says to Vigilantius: The same man cannot love both gold and books... The hideousness of vice is greatly reprobated in books, so that he who loves to commune...
I've written about 2,000 short stories; I've only published 300 and I feel I'm still learning. Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventu...
He was still a kid inside. His body had grown, stretched, towered, tanned its skin, hardened its muscle, darkened its tawny shock of long hair, tightened its lines around jaw and eyes, thickened fingers and knuckles, but the brain didn't feel as if i...
God bless the lawn mower, he thought. Who was the fool who made January first New Year’s Day? No, they should set a man to watch the grasses across a million Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa lawns, and on that morning when it was long enough for cutting, i...
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to...
I can’t be responsible for losing you, the way I almost lost you tonight." The sense of vertigo is so bad now that Ryan seems fuzzy, as if I’m seeing him through a veil of light. ‘You’re already responsible,’ Ryan implores. ‘I’m a marke...
Have you ever thought, thought your heart would break? Wished you could cut open your chest tear it out to stop the pain? Why don´t you riot like everyone else. I don't care, life's too long. You can have any man you want. I want him...except him. A...
I left Hairball to his manic mantric singing. I walked toward the house and stopped to rub some white pine needles on my fingers. The evergreen smelled fresh and alive. The needles were long and soft to the touch. I looked back at Hairball. The moon ...
Serving my country was a life-changing experience for me. It was during those years that I realized the importance of commitment, dedication, honor, and discipline. I have never laughed so much; nor have I ever prayed so much. I made life-long friend...
As a reader you recognise that feeling when you're lost in a book? You know the one - when whatever's going on around you seems less real than what you're reading and all you want to do is keep going deeper into the story whether it's about being hal...
Child, child, love while you can The voice and the eyes and the soul of a man; Never fear though it break your heart- Out of the wound new joy will start; Only love proudly and gladly and well, Though love be heaven or love be hell. Child, child, lov...
Merrill Krause - You mentioned God's will for me. How will I know what that is, Father? Bogart Krause - I've always believed it to start with prayer. The Good Book says that if a man wants wisdom, he just has to ask. I would imagine it works the same...
And finally the glass that contains and spills this stuff continually while the drinker hunches before it, while the bartender gathers up empties, gives back the drinker's own face. Who knows what it looks like; who cares whether or not it was young ...
Einer der Altmeister des englischen Romans, William Makepeace Thackeray, nannte das Wort Finis am Ende eines Erzählwerkes einmal ein "trübsinniges Wort". Das mag zutreffen, wenn man lediglich meint, von einer liebgewordenen, vertrauten Umgebung Abs...
I have indeed lived and worked to my taste either in art or science. What more could a man desire? Knowledge has always been my goal. There is much that I shall leave behind undone…but something at least I was privileged to leave for the world to u...
Two or three million years ago, the Earth was a ball of fire, revolving arround it's own axis. It took millions of years to cool under the constant downpour of rain. The Process was slow, imperceptible, but the gradual change - transition - came to p...
If I imagine my soul, as I do when I pray, it's shaped like Stapafel. No change of place or religion can alter that. I lived beneath Stapafel from the hour I was born until I was sixteen. I've never seen it since, but that doesn't matter. My soul is ...
Violence never really deals with the basic evil of the situation. Violence may murder the murderer, but it doesn’t murder murder. Violence may murder the liar, but it doesn’t murder lie; it doesn’t establish truth. Violence may even murder the ...
Invest in your knowledge and future! Especially if you got kids, you don't want them going through life struggling trying to find jobs to survive and dealing with managers that don't know how to act because of their position, you don't want them to g...
I love our summer game and its letters as much as the next man, and surely no less than my colleagues. I do not, however, repose much faith in its fiction. The short stories are fair to middling, and Conan Doyle, Wodehouse and Ian Peebles have contri...
Wir alle, ob schuldig oder nicht, ob alt oder jung, müssen die Vergangenheit annehmen. Wir alle sind von ihren Folgen betroffen und für sie in Haftung genommen. [...] Es geht nicht darum, Vergangenheit zu bewältigen. Das kann man gar nicht. Sie l�...