With a sigh, he grabbed hold of his chair and lifted himself out of it, then wrote on the blackboard: How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering? - A.Y. 'I'm going to leave that up for the rest of the semester,' he said. 'Because everybo...
In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against...
He came to put a harlot above a Pharisee, a penitent robber above a High Priest, and a prodigal son above his exemplary brother. To all the phonies and fakers who would say that they could not join the Church because His Church was not holy enough, H...
Everyone thinks that it was the big strong caveman who got the girl, and for the most part, that may have been true, but physical strength doesn't explain how our species created civilization. I think there was always some scrawny dreamer sitting at ...
When I was a schoolboy in England, the old bound volumes of Kipling in the library had gilt swastikas embossed on their covers. The symbol's 'hooks' were left-handed, as opposed to the right-handed ones of the Nazi , but for a boy growing up after 19...
So I’m reading some poem by Louise . . . something, I forget her last name, but it’s about Hades and the underworld, and I don’t even notice that Paige has come up to my table until she says, ‘Doesn’t everyone want love?’ And I’m thinki...
Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spi...
Some communities don't permit open, honest inquiry about the things that matter most. Lots of people have voiced a concern, expressed a doubt, or raised a question, only to be told by their family, church, friends, or tribe: "We don't discuss those t...
There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction, and, despite John Ray's assertion, Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exi...
Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. No, no, I was neither. Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a...
It is almost as if we are all playing a big game of hide-and-go-seek. We all hide expecting to be found, but no one has been labelled the seeker. We stand behind the wall, at first excited, then worried, then bored, then anxious, then angry. We hide ...
If you’d rather skip lunch, that’s fine with me. I’ve got some things to take care of anyway before I can leave the store to Robin for the weekend.” “I don’t want to skip lunch,” he bit out. “I’m starving.” Her temper got the bett...
For shit’s sake, it wasn’t like there was a twelve-step for being the Scribe Virgin’s kid: Hi, I’m Vishous. I’m her son and I’ve been her son for three hundred years. HI, VISHOUS. She’s done a head job on me again, and I’m trying not ...
You've always been there for me. Always. Even when I…" V "Even when you what?" B "You know." V "What?" B "Fuck. Even when I was in love with you. Or some shit." V Butch clasped his hands to his chest. "Was? Was? I can't believe you've lost interest...
A woman has her Juno, just as a man has his Genius; they are names for the sacred power, the divine spark we each of us have in us. My Juno can't "get into" me, it is already my deepest self. The poet was speaking of Juno as if it were a person, a wo...
Some of these guys will go on walking long after the laws of biochemistry and handicapping have gone by the boards. There was a guy last year that crawled for two miles at four miles an hour after both of his feet cramped up at the same time, you rem...
Arminius, appealing to Lactantius, held that: 'To recommend faith to others, we must make it the subject of persuasion, and not of compulsion'. He insisted that the true religion from Christ does not deteriorate into dissention. In the exercise of Ch...
Who're them?" says he to the curate. "Them are the fallen angels," says the curate. They had a human form, no wings. God took the wings off of 'em after Lucifer rebelled - that way they couldn't go back, d'you see. They had no wings. But there was so...
Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or wrongly, that the doubtful honor of a brief transit through a sorry world hardly called for effusiveness, even when the path was suddenly irradiated at some half-way point by daybeams rich as...
It has always been a mystery to me how Adam, Eve, and the serpent were taught the same language. Where did they get it? We know now, that it requires a great number of years to form a language; that it is of exceedingly slow growth. We also know that...
Is it true that man was once perfectly pure and innocent, and that he became degenerate by disobedience? No. The real truth is, and the history of man shows, that he has advanced. Events, like the pendulum of a clock have swung forward and backward, ...
