Ideas come at any moment -- except when you demand them. Most ideas come while I'm physically active, at the gym, with friends, gardening, so I always carry pen and paper. My first draft is always written in longhand. But once the first dozen chapter...
We all of us complain of the shortness of time, saith Seneca, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives, says he, are spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to ...
I flopped on the overstuffed kitchen couch and watched him go. I wondered what would happen to all his films and photographs in the upstairs closet - the documentaries on homelessness and drug addiction, the funny short subjects, the half-finished ro...
My brother distrusts the essential truth of memories; I distrust the way we colour them in. We each have our own cheap-mail-order paintbox, and our favourite hues. Thus, I remembered Grandma a few pages ago as "petite and unopinionated". My brother, ...
Whatever you call me, my parents encouraged me to go to college and become a book lover, and to trust that I could do nearly anything if I could find the right book at the library. It was true; books had saved me in my home remodeling projects, but t...
The picture of Mother Teresa that I remember from my childhood is of a short, sari-wearing woman scurrying down a red gravel path between manicured lawns. She would have in tow one or two slower-footed, sari-clad young Indian nuns. We thought her a f...
We are the sum total of our experiences. Those experiences – be they positive or negative – make us the person we are, at any given point in our lives. And, like a flowing river, those same experiences, and those yet to come, continue to influenc...
Loneliness is a condition of energetic imbalance. As with all human conditions it is an illusion, albeit a very debilitating one if left unchecked. The key to overcoming any imbalance is to open your awareness to it, and then simply observe it. By ob...
He who travels much has this advantage over others – that the things he remembers soon become remote, so that in a short time they acquire the vague and poetical quality which is only given to other things by time. He who has not traveled at all ha...
Written over the gate here are the words 'Leave every hope behind, ye who enter.' Only think what a relief that is! For what is hope? A form of moral responsibility. Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by pr...
It is useless to say you have no time. There is plenty of time, if men will employ it. Time may be short, but time is always long enough for prayer. Daniel had the affairs of a kingdom on his hands, and yet he prayed three times a day. David was rule...
We may not know what lies ahead of us in the future years, nor even in the days or hours immediately beyond. But for a few yards, or possibly only a few feet, the track is clear, our duty is plain, our course is illumined. For that short distance, fo...
She doesnt want your dark embrace. She'll let you hold her for a short time but she won’t submit to that kind of weakness and she'll only let you get so close. In the past it was easier pushing you into the arms of another rather than face what was...
How many of us stop short of success on purpose? How many of us sabotage our own happiness because failure, while miserable, is a fear we're familiar with? Success, however, dreams come true, are a whole new kind of terrifying, an entire new species ...
When you've got a thing to say, Say it! Don't take half a day. When your tale's got little in it Crowd the whole thing in a minute! Life is short--a fleeting vapor-- Don't you fill the whole blamed paper With a tale which, at a pinch, Could be corner...
Nor do we merely feel these essences for one short hour no, even as these trees that whisper round a temple become soon dear as the temples self, so does the moon, the passion posey, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light unto o...
[last lines] Private Joker: [voice-over] My thoughts drift back to erect nipple wet dreams about Mary Jane Rottencrotch and the Great Homecoming Fuck Fantasy. I am so happy that I am alive, in one piece and short. I'm in a world of shit... yes. But I...
Colonel Smithers: [Referring to the gold bar on the dining room table] Mr. Bond can make whatever use of it he deems necessary... provided he returns it, of course. It's worth five thousand pounds. [Bond reaches for the bar, but M stops him short] M:...
[Willie goes to the front of the plane, and sees the cockpit is empty] Willie: Oh, no... oh, no... [Runs back and starts shaking Indy awake] Willie: Mister! Mister! Oh, Mister, wake up! Short Round: [waking up] You call him Dr. Jones, doll! Willie: O...
Rohit Patel: I want to get married, I want to have children, and... Kurzon bhai Patel: [concerned as he predicts his son being gay] Children? Is that possible? Rohit Patel: Of course it's possible! Why is it not possible? [short pause] Kurzon bhai Pa...
[first lines] Writer: So, you were raised in a zoo? Adult Pi Patel: Born and raised. In Pondicherry, in what was the French part of India. My father owned the zoo, and I was delivered on short notice by a herpetologist, who was there to check on the ...
