Yes, this is what I thought adulthood would be, a kind of long indian summer, a state of tranquility, of calm incuriousness, with nothing left of the barely bearable raw immediacy of childhood, all the things solved that had puzzled me when I was sma...
When a poet settled down to write a poem, could he foresee the lines he would write? Did his head constantly spin with riddles and rhymes and was his only job to put them down? What if he couldn’t get them to make sense, and no one, not even the pe...
I'm telling you, you really should stick to mating within your species, whatever that is.' 'I would,' I said, 'but unfortunately, there are no gorgeous, all-powerful, all-knowing gods around here. I'd even settle for a demigod. It's a step down, I kn...
It's not a loup cage, you know,' I told her. 'It's a holding cell. Or safe room. or secure room. I don't think Jim ever settled on a term he could live with.' 'Aha. It's a loup cage.' Andrea cleared her throat. 'I touched it with my finger and it hur...
He seemed to hasten the retreat of departing light by his very presence; the setting sun dipped sharply, as though fleeing before our nigger; a black mist emanated from him; a subtle and dismal influence; a something cold and gloomy that floated out ...
[...] as Kurt Vonnegut pointed out [...] the literary novel has become extraordinarily privatistic of late. It's as if the big issues (Does God exist? from whence springs decency? what sort of species is Homo Sapiens?) were either settled or not wort...
Dream young. Don't settle for old - for to be old is to be superstitious and without curiosity and always questioning your faith. And be ferocious in your dreaming - run like a sun's explosion, and skip across bluing waves, and dance upon tips of swa...
Winter has arrived in North London. Snow has settled. The white snow looks beautiful and covers everything my eyes can see, yet beneath the incomprehensible beauty, the snow freezes greenery which struggles to breathe. Green leaves freeze from existe...
Looking at the elementary schoolers in their colorful T-shirts from various day camps, Percy felt a twinge of sadness. He should be at Camp Half-Blood right now, settling into his cabin for the summer, teaching sword-fighting lessons in the arena, pl...
The rockets set the bony meadows afire, turned rock to lava, turned wood to charcoal, transmuted water to steam, made sand and silica into green glass which lay like shattered mirrors reflecting the invasion, all about. The rockets came like drums, b...
It's so weird how life is so full of moving around--people coming and going, people passing by each other all day long. You never know which person's going to steal your heart. You never know which is going to settle your soul. All you can do is look...
So many people are so terrified to be alone that they settle for a loveless relationship or stay trapped in a miserable one for months and even years on end. But as it turns out, alone means unique, unequaled, and unexcelled. Or in other words: Unpar...
Ew. Can you not talk about my dad ogling people? Scarlett Johansson may be gorgeous, but still.” “It’ll be a challenge, but I think I can refrain from licking the screen,” Brendan deadpanned, placing the wine bottle on the coffee table next t...
I stare at the pile of discarded remnants and think of my mother. Did she touch that pillar there? Does her scent still linger in a fragment of glass or a splinter of wood? A terrible emptiness settles into my chest. No matter how much I go about liv...
Isn't it sad that you can tell people that the ozone layer is being depleted, the forests are being cut down, the deserts are advancing steadily, that the greenhouse effect will raise the sea level 200 feet, that overpopulation is choking us, that po...
In fact, it comes to this: nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one’s thoughts be diverted by anyt...
Springtime in Massachusetts is depressing for those who embrace a progressive view of history and experience. It does not gradually develop as spring is supposed to. Instead, the crocuses bloom and the grass grows, but the foliage is independent from...
Claim whatever you want. Say you only want a happy family or a successful career or a big house. I say: no, that's not what you want. You'll settle for those things, but you really want a monkey that does your evil bidding. Pullman is a genius just f...
Do you want to be with Dave for the rest of your life?” Then he rips off a piece of paper and picks up the smallest charcoal stick from my set. He writes something. He passes it over to me. It says: Time will tell. “And while you’re waiting,”...
She pressed his amulet to her lips, then let it fall on its chain to rest between their two bodies. “We could leave here,” she said to him. “We could run away together.” He frowned at the stars, the bubble of peacefulness that had settled aro...
All love may begin by being passionate, especially for younger people. But in the process of living together, they have to learn and practice love, so that selfishness--the tendency to possess--will diminsh, and the elemetns of understanding and grat...
