Dogs, lives are short, too short, but you know that going in. You know the pain is coming, you're going to lose a dog, and there's going to be great anguish, so you live fully in the moment with her, never fail to share her joy or delight in her inno...
The girl didn't notice that her boyfriend's head had transformed into a big microphone. So when she whispered her secrets into his ear, her words echoed trough the city. In her embarrassment, she ran out of the house to hide somewhere. And what she s...
A hobo walks by in a suit made of today's newspaper. A guy chases him, shouting. "Wait! I haven't read the business section yet!" Oh, the economic news. The most honest, trustworthy, freshest goods you can get—apart from ripe fish. With its gorgeou...
In every way that counted, I was dead. Inside somewhere maybe I was screaming and weeping and howling like an animal, but that was another person deep inside, another person who had no access to the lips and face and mouth and head, so on the surface...
Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, compo...
An admirable line of Pablo Neruda’s, “My creatures are born of a long denial,” seems to me the best definition of writing as a kind of exorcism, casting off invading creatures by projecting them into universal existence, keeping them on the oth...
But life is too short not to make a fool out of yourself from time to time. And sometimes you need to make an ass out of yourself, just to see what you are capable of doing next. Life isn’t just about pushing your limits and seeing what you’re ma...
He looked her over with blatant intent, his gaze containing an edge that had her swallowing hard before she could stop herself. "Do you know what I think?" he said at last. "I live to hear such things." He stepped forward, only a handful of steps, bu...
Bipedalism is a demanding and risky strategy. It means refashioning the pelvis into a full load-bearing instrument. To preserve the required strength, the birth canal in the female must be comparatively narrow. This has two very significant immediate...
Aku hanya mencemaskan kesehatan Anda. Anda tak berhak menilaiku berdasarkan tindakan yang kuperbuat jika itu semua kulakukan demi Anda. Anda tak tahu kan, berapa banyak peraturan tak tertulis di sini yang sudah aku langgar untuk melindungi Anda? Jadi...
He saw something more in those eyes. The emotion wasn't nakedly apparent, but Mr. Cawley was a professional at reading the subtleties of people. The elderly and wildly successful credit card magnate believed that certain human frailties could actuall...
The student body, too, felt more diverse. Rob spoke often of "real people" with his friends, by which he meant people who struggled, like they all did. On the Ivy League campus visits, any sense of daily or long-term struggle had seemed airbrushed. A...
I will teach my daughter to color outside the lines, to make mistakes, to take risks, and not be afraid to fail. I will teach her that even when the world tries to knock her down the best revenge is getting up and forging ahead. I will teach her to b...
He was known to hit low, drive upward from the hips, and flip other boys over his shoulder and onto their backs, knocking the wind out of them on the glass-littered asphalt, sometimes causing a fumble and always inciting cheers from onlookers up and ...
This was the scientific age, and people wanted to believe that their traditions were in line with the new era, but this was impossible if you thought that these myths should be understood literally. Hence the furor occasioned by , published by Charle...
The great masters of modern analysis are , , and , who were contemporaries. It is interesting to note the marked contrast in their styles. is perfect both in form and matter, he is careful to explain his procedure, and though his arguments are genera...
What branch do you want to go in?” “I don’ give a god-damn,” said Pilon jauntily. “I guess we need men like you in the infantry.” And Pilon was written so. He turned then to Big Joe, and the Portagee was getting sober. “Where do you wan...
As the wine went down in the bottles, patriotism arose in the three men. And when the wine was gone they went down the hill arm in arm for comradeship and safety, and they walked into Monterey. In front of an enlistment station they cheered loudly fo...
The exhausted earth groaned and quivered under the monotonous glare of the sun. Spirals of heat rose from the ground as if from molten lava. A panting lizard crawled painfully over the fevered rock in search of a shady crevice. Cattle and dogs cringe...
We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrif...
Perhaps the most irrational fashion act of all was the male habit for 150 years of wearing wigs. Samuel Pepys, as with so many things, was in the vanguard, noting with some apprehension the purchase of a wig in 1663 when wigs were not yet common. It ...
