When you have warfare, things happen; people suffer; the noncombatants suffer as well as the combatants. And so it happens in civil war.
When war comes, two things happen - profits go way, way up and all perishables go way, way down. There becomes a market for them.
A fool admires himself most when he has done foolish things.
The path of duty lies in what is nearby, but men look for it in things far off.
Whoever tastes from the head of a poppy will not expect any thing from love.
People who do not break things first will never learn to create anything.
Three things that can't be taught: generosity, poetry and a singing voice.
Three things drive a man outdoors; smoke, a leaking roof and a scolding wife.
There’s such a thing as being irritatingly ethical,” said Eldric. “That’s you, right now.” That’s a pleasant change. Witches are rarely accused of being irritatingly ethical. “I’ve swigged.” I handed the bottle to Eldric. “Or is i...
A feeling of pleasure or solace can be so hard to find when you are in the depths of your grief. Sometimes it's the little things that help get you through the day. You may think your comforts sound ridiculous to others, but there is nothing ridiculo...
When things are good, it is because we remember a time when they were not. When there was pain. But now the pain is gone, so things are ‘good’. When we hurt, it is because we recall a time when we did not. When there was no pain. But now we suffe...
We are but phantoms, and the phantoms of phantoms, desires like cloud-shadows and wills of straw that eddy in the wind; the days pass, use and wont carry us through as a train carries the shadow of its lights - so be it! But one thing is real and cer...
The connoisseur's hushed, museum-trained gaze is not well-designed for these purposes. That gaze values subtlety, complexity, ambiguity, and irony. Its most characteristic grace note is self-congratulation at being the kind of person who likes this r...
And not just the right thing; it’s profoundly the right thing to do, because the one argument for accessibility that doesn’t get made nearly often enough is how extraordinarily better it makes some people’s lives. How many opportunities do we h...
Literature keeps presenting the most vicious things to us an entertainment, but what it appeals to is not any pleasure of these things, but the exhilaration of standing apart from them and being able to see them for what they are because they aren't ...
How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?" (Plato) The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, i...
When my parents were liberated, four years before I was born, they found that the ordinary world outside the camp had been eradicated. There was no more simple meal, no thing was less than extraordinary: a fork, a mattress, a clean shirt, a book. Not...
But the funny thing is, love makes you want more of it. It makes you strive for it even when there’s nothing left to begin with, when you’re long gone. It makes you stand up and pull yourself together; understand all of those little things about ...
To my mind's eye, my buried memories of Brandham Hall are like effects of chiaroscuro, patches of light and dark: it is only with effort that I see them in terms of colour. There are things I know, though I don't know how I know them, and things that...
But those two circles, above all the point at which they touched, are the very thing I am mourning for, homesick for, famished for. You tell me 'she goes on.' But my heart and body are crying out, come back, come back. Be a circle, touching my circle...
If I were a magician who could make things possible, then pictures could talk while we painted them. If I were a magaician who could make things possible, then houses could keep their promises. And they would have to promise not to lose their roofs o...
