...that left Francesca to slink into the chair opposite us. My feeling of superiority was short-lived, however, when she settled herself down and then crossed her legs. I didn't need a mirror to know my whole face had just turned red. With a hemline ...
...We always look for Christ amid magnificence. But ... Christ has a history of showing up amide the unlovely. Born in a dirty stall. Crowned with thorns. Died gasping on a shameful cross atop a jagged rise. We don't need to be beautiful for Christ t...
He was about to go home, about to return to the place where he had had a family. It was in Godric’s Hollow that, but for Voldemort, he would have grown up and spent every school holiday. He could have invited friends to his house. . . . He might ev...
The snag in this business of falling in love, aged relative, is that the parties of the first part so often get mixed up with the wrong parties of the second part, robbed of their cooler judgement by the party of the second part's glamour. Put it lik...
Through the miracle of science, or divine intervention, a brick could be made soft, like Jell-O, and a blanket could be made rigid, like the laws regarding the speed limit, as interpreted by the cop who pulled me over last night. Come on, Officer Dog...
A time of ongoing cultural revolution when the adversaries of Christianity have made plain their intent to use the state machinery to promote radical social ideologies hardly seems an opportune moment to discuss how the rights of property might be co...
I am sometimes asked, "How do you know there won't be a war tomorrow (or a genocide, or an act of terrorism) that will refute your whole thesis?" The question misses the point of this book. The point is not that we have entered an Age of Aquarius in ...
I pick up a copy of Newsweek on the plane and immediately notice how biased, slanted, and opinionated all the U.S. newsmagazine articles are. Not that the Euro and British press aren't biased as well--they certainly are--but living in the United Stat...
I've grown up with an ethic, call it a part, that insists I hide my pain at all costs. As I talk, I feel this pain leaking out—not just the core symptom of BPD, but all the years of being blamed or ignores for my condition, and all the years I've b...
Oh, Coral, Coral,” he murmured, his one almost reproachful, but still he did not make any attempt to cross the space between them. Unspoken words and unfulfilled gestures trembled in the air. In the flickering light of the fire, his bronze skin glo...
But Sir, he works with NT? Why would he tell us where to go? Aren’t we the competition?’ Satya asked. Nagesh shook his head gravely. ‘Actually the competition starts at the headquarters and is between the people who come on TV, and want to make...
I brought the newspaper close up to my eyes to get a better view of George Pollucci's face, spotlighted like a three-quarter moon against a vague background of brick and black sky. I felt he had something important to tell me, and that whatever it wa...
If, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probable, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where o...
In fiction, I exercise my nosiness. I am as curious as my cats, and indeed that has led to trouble often enough and used up several of my nine lives. I am an avid listener. I am fascinated by other people's lives, the choices they make and how that w...
Each one of us is hard at war - within. We must face this battlefield; withdraw, as the psychologist would say, our habitual projections of that strife from the world around us, and realize that we should be so busy killing the selfishness within tha...
These scientific studies countervail the influential claims of the Kants, Nietzsches, and Rands about the nature of human goodness. Compassion is not a blind emotions that catapults people pell-mell toward the next warm body that walks by. Instead, c...
We live in the Age of the Higher Brain, the cerebral cortex that has grown enormously over the last few millennia, overshadowing the ancient, instinctive lower brain. The cortex is often called the new brain, yet the old brain held sway in humans for...
I'm sure it is," she replied. Her expression turned fierce, making her look far different from the scattered teacher I knew. "But listen to me when I say this. You are exceptional, taleneted, and brilliant young woman. Do not ever let anyone make you...
Besides my professional goals, I have a couple of private ones, my man. One of those is to pet a kangaroo before I leave Australia. I understand there's lots of Eastern Grays around this area. What do you say? Are you in?' Bergman looked at him like ...
I couldn't believe his arrogance. I turned away hoping to ignore him enough so he'd just leave. "Just give me five minutes," came Flynn's muffled voice through the closed window. I ignored him. He'd caused me way too much trouble. "Mercy, just crack ...
That’s a Planeswalker demon.” Dante slumped into the seat behind her. “You aren’t crazy.” Meg slid him a bemused glance. “I thought we’d settled that a few weeks back.”“Nope,” he said,shaking his head. “I was still certain you w...