This last year... I learned something about family. Like it's not about blood alone. It's being connected... it's growing up together and loving each other. It's believing in the same God and knowing you'd do anything for the person across from you a...
The alternative is to locate large deposits of specifically what we need, and extract it in bulk from the earth.” “That’s mining,” said the Drip. “There is a twenty-third century legend that youth was conscripted to work in mines. Anyhow, a...
There was no more dangerous kind of madman than one who devoted a good brain and a courageous heart to unhealthy ambitions.
Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow- You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less ? tha...
Philosophers have often held dispute As to the seat of thought in man and brute For that the power of thought attends the latter My friend, thy beau, hath made a settled matter, And spite of dogmas current in all ages, One settled fact is better than...
Such an incredible, stupefying realization: I am not, indeed, the center of the universe. Not! Not! Not! And the overwhelming gratitude, the flooding relief that comes from finally being able to give myself the permission to lay down that excruciatin...
I can believe whatever I want to believe. Who's to prove me wrong this side of the big dirt nap? Doesn't matter, either, what anyone believes. Or whether anyone else believes what believe. The important thing is to believe. Really, truly . That's why...
In the 1991 movie City Slickers, Jack Palance gives Billy Crystal some profoundly simple advice. When Crystal asks him the secret of life, Palance holds up a forefinger, answers with a single word: "One." Choose one thing. Do it to the best of your a...
Novels are forged in passion, demand fidelity and commitment, often drive you to boredom or rage, sleep with you at night. They are the long haul. They are marriage. Stories, on the other hand, you can lose yourself in for a few weeks and then wrap u...
The process doesn’t end there. Stories are more than just images. As you continue in the tale, you get to know the characters, motivations and conflicts that make up the core of the story. This requires more parts of the brain. Some parts process e...
There’s often a reason why people and dogs bite. It’s about self-protection. If we respect what we may not know about the suffering of others and look at them compassionately, we open the door that can lead to understanding.
My dogs have been the reason I have woken up every single day with a smile on my face. I am among the ranks of millions of people who appreciate the souls of dogs and know they are a gift of pure love and an example of all that is good.
Yet a part of you still believes you can fight and survive no matter what your mind knows. It's not so strange. Where there's still life, there's still hope. What happens is up to God.
All I want to tell young people is that you're not going to be anything in life unless you learn to commit to a goal. You have to reach deep within yourself to see if you are willing to make the sacrifices.
Winter came and the city [Chicago] turned monochrome -- black trees against gray sky above white earth. Night now fell in midafternoon, especially when the snowstorms rolled in, boundless prairie storms that set the sky close to the ground, the city ...
Do Engineers have stories, Jack?" he asked. "What?" Jack said, without moving. "Stories. Myths. Things to keep the boredom out on a long shift." "I think they play cards, mostly," Jack answered. It was a lie, but he told it with surprising deftness; ...
I am but a stranger ... as we all are. Lonely inside our separate skins, we cannot know each others pain and must bear our own in solitude. For my part, I have found that walking soothes it; and that, given luck, sometimes we find one to walk besides...
About their wedding on a beach of Nantucket, after nearly 50 years together as a couple: "After years of being who we truly were only in the privacy of our homes or with a few friends, we were out in the world, under the sky, no longer pretending.”...
As an artist in the 1960s, Norman Sunshine was able to maintain a moderately out lifestyle. But when the first exhibition of his paintings in New York brought on a profile in The New York Times in 1968, he was photographed in the apartment that he ad...
As readers, we are seldom interested in the fine sentiments of a lesson learnt; we seldom care about the good manners of morals. Repentance puts an end to conversation; forgiveness becomes the stuff of moralistic tracts. Revenge - bloodthirsty, justi...
The moon, our own, earthly moon is bitterly lonely, because it is alone in the sky, always alone, and there is no one to turn to, no one to turn to it. All it can do is ache across the weightless airy ice, across thousands of versts, toward those who...
