Age has no reality except in the physical world. The essence of a human being is resistant to the passage of time. Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom. Think of l...
These paintings say Mexico is an ancient thing that will still go on forever telling its own story in slabs of color leaves and fruits and proud naked Indians in a history without shame. Their great city of Tenochtitlan is still here beneath our shoe...
She tried to think of the right thing to say - something that would make him leave her alone. If she said she could defend herself he'd want her to prove it. But if she said she couldn't defend herself, then he'd take her out there to learn. This is ...
Stop a minute, Ambrose!" interrupted Master Nathaniel. "I've got a sudden silly whim that we should take an oath I must have read when I was a youngster in some old book... the words have suddenly come back to me. They go like this: (and then we say ...
She knew there were words so terrible you heard them with your whole body. Guilty. And there were voices to say them. She knew there were people you might almost trust who would hear them, too, and be amazed, and still not really hear them because th...
Mámá was fond of saying that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels—an aphorism I was pretty sure she'd cribbed from the thinspiration sites she subscribed to online—but I believed that anyone who said such things had never tasted chili-cheese ...
Most things that are true are simple. To lose weight, eat less than you burn. To reduce stress, find a job you love. To resolve conflict, be patient and peaceful. These are very, very simple in that they are complete concepts that take no more than a...
Once our family was very small and we used to say, ‘’our planet has enough resources to feed all of us’’ but today, we are not that family and it is a burden on our planet to feed us. We have to reconsider our views and confess ‘’our plan...
See, the thing about that word, Sharkey, the F-word, is that sometimes I make that word do too much work. I mean, I say that word as if it clearly articulates what I’m really feeling. And it doesn’t. It’s a shortcut.
When I go to the bathrooms, I cannot take off my pants as before; because there is a light continuously blinking like a camera, everyone says it is just an environmental friendly lighting. Well, I cannot really trust it and I am not taking the risk o...
One of my roommates, Rafael, he's an expert on monsters. Not that he talks about them. I can just tell. People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word.
I have heard it said that a happy childhood is a curse, because what follows can never measure up. All I can say is, those people must want too much; they can't accept that life is a series of struggles and that happiness can be found in overcoming t...
It was one of those situations I often find myself in while traveling. Something's said by a stranger I've been randomly thrown into contact with, and I want to say, "Listen. I'm with you on most of this, but before we continue, I need to know who yo...
If some one loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars. He can say to himself: "Somewhere, my flower is there..." But if the sheep eats th...
The angel has confided in me that he is going to ask the Lord if he can become Spider-Man. [...] The children need heroes, he says. I think he just wants to swing from buildings in tight red jammies.
These are Plenimaran marines, and there's not much most of them aren't capable of, if you take my meaning." "I don't think I do," said Alec, puzzled by Seregil's tone. "Then try this. They have a saying among them: 'When whores are few, a boy will do...
By the way, I never realized that to be nonbelieving, to be an atheist, was a thing to be proud of. It went without saying as it were. ...Our creed is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (and similar people), consider our ethics much inferio...
No shame in saying that I felt a loneliness drifting through me. Funny how it was, everyone perched in their own little world with the deep need to talk, each person with their own tale, beginning in some strange middle point, then trying so hard to ...
I don't balance you like you need." "What the hell does that mean?" he exclaimed. My heart ached for him, and I was so sorry for what I'd done...but this was the truth of it all. "The fact that you have to ask says it all. When you find that person.....
If you could decide on characters' destinies it would be like going to the desk of a travel agent who says: "So where do you want to find the whale, in Samoa or in the Aleutian Islands? And when? And do you want to be the one who kills it or let Quee...
I want to write. I've already told my mother: That's what I want to do-write. No answer the first time. Then she asks, Write what? I say, Books, novels. [...] She's against it, it's not worthy, it's not real work, it's nonsense. Later she said, A chi...