Because, my dear Eric, I have tasted the secret knowledge. I know how much to say and when to pull back. I know what to see and not see. And now that I have become whole again, I can never go back. All these things he has given me. Better than my sup...
Mr. Lecky could see well enough to eat. He brought his chair over and sat down gratefully while he consumed, but with appetite now, the ham and biscuits which he had disdained in the morning. Even the fact that he was using to cut his ham the knife w...
CHORUS: You that live in my ancestral Thebes, behold this Oedipus,- him who knew the famous riddles and was a man most masterful; not a citizen who did not look with envy on his lot- see him now and see the breakers of misfortune swallow him! Look up...
I am Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper and an oyster-wife. I cannot read, and therefore wish all books were burnt; I am lean with seeing others eat - O that there would come a famine through all the world, that all might die, and I live alone; then...
Will we ever see his like again? It is doubtful. But at least for a brief moment in time we were lucky to have him as one of our own: an English lionheart who was the terror of the continent, who earned the love and respect of everyone who had the pr...
Sometimes I think this planet is under a spell," Elias said. "We are asleep or in a trance, and something causes us to see what it wants us to see and remember and think what it wants us to remember and think. Which means we're whatever it wants us t...
although we very clearly see the sun, we ought not therefore to determine that it is only of the size which our sense of sight presents; and we may very distinctly imagine the head of a lion joined to the body of a goat, without being therefore shut ...
Sometimes what you love to do could even make many people to hate you. You may go through non-formal torments, character assassinations, verbal assaults and societal rejections, but if you are convinced about your love for what you are doing, you wil...
It was not till I experimented with seeds plucked straight from a growing plant that I had my first success...the first thrill of creation...the first taste of blood. This, surely, must be akin to the pride of paternity...indeed, many soured bachelor...
You don’t write a book when God called you to publish a library! You don’t plant a tree when God send you to cultivate a forest! You don’t evangelize to a crowd when God called you for a multitude! No matter the circumstances, find yourself doi...
The boys on the front had magazines with pinups, and they talked about how one day they would score women like that, but they’re kids. They don’t know what love is. Here they learn what hate is, and I am so sad that they might never know love bec...
After I lie there for a while, I realize that Dad isn't every going to do anything but be there to drive us home from the airport. And cook. And if I want something bigger to change, it's up to me. I'm scared shitless, yes. I'm doubtful, yes. But I'm...
It's going to be like an...aura, I guess." He looked down at me and raised an eyebrow. "Explain?" "Like even though there are outside forces pushing through the walls, in here it's like a bubble of goodness. Like coming home." I could feel him smilin...
What struck me whenever I visited a farm was how much more sophisticated was the life the animals were capable of living than was assumed by those exploiting them. The more we are willing to see about their lives, the more we see. Humans seem to take...
Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out? Our own place is small perhaps, but when your old man is eaten up by his own shadow, you realize maybe that in every house, something so savage and sad and brilli...
We are -and maybe this is no conventional arrangement, but it is still "It isn't," he said. "It is. What is a husband, but the man who offers you support when all the world turns you away?" Was that what he was to her? He couldn't look at her now, or...
I loved your eyes first,” I told him , repeating his words from a few weeks ago back to him, because it was true, and because we were two halves of a whole—we had been all along, and he’d been so clever to know it right away. I used to think it...
Jacob wrote that the true poet ‘is like a man who is happy anywhere, in endless measure, if he is allowed to look at leaves and grass, to see the sun rise and set. The false poet travels abroad in strange countries and hopes to be uplifted by the m...
The novels we read allow us to encounter possible persons, versions of ourselves hat we would never see, never permit ourselves to see, never permit ourselves to become, in places we can never go and might not care to, while assuring that we get to r...
I and the girl in the picture have ceased to be the same person. I am her outcome, the result of the life she once lived headlong; whereas she, if she can be said to exist at all, is composed only of what I remember. I have the better view - I can se...
The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long...