Phoebe asked me, "Tell me, what do you think of the afterlife?" I was a bit nonplussed. I had no idea what she thought, but I knew that the question must be of greater interest to someone of her age than to me. But our conversation had been completel...
I was terrified of death by the time I was three or four, actively if not lucidly. I had frequent nightmares about snakes and scary neighbors. By the age of four or five, I was terrified by my thoughts. By the time I was five, the migraines began. I ...
This is a wonderful day,” Anthony was muttering to himself. “A wonderful day.” He looked up sharply at Gareth. “You don’t have sisters, do you?” “None,” Gareth confirmed. “I am in possession of four,” Anthony said, tossing back at...
Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets--as vast a...
Men speak of God’s love for man… but if providence does not come in this hour, where is He then? My conclusion is simple. The Semitic texts from Bronze Age Palestine of which Christianity is comprised still fit uncomfortably well with contemporar...
Do you ever wear leather?" the guy asks. "What?" "Leather. Do you like leather?" "It doesn't exactly wipe me out." "I like to see boys in leather." I look at him cool. "Okay," I say, "what is it you want and how much are you willing to pay for it?" "...
My youth was the most stubborn, peremptory part of myself. In my most relaxed moments, it governed my being. It pricked up its ears at the banter of eighteen-year-olds on the street. It frankly examined their bodies. It did not know its place: that m...
It was becoming more and more evident that Salem was a town that celebrated individuality, a real live-and-let-live kind of place. Melody felt a gut punch of regret. Her old nose would have fit in here. "Look!" She pointed at the multicolored car whi...
Anyone seeking to draw closer to God needs to curb the horizontal and ascend to God vertically,’ he said. ‘And this means giving oneself fully to God – with all one’s heart, body, mind and soul. There mustn’t be any dark corners.’ Skimmin...
Dave watched him standing up at the bar, chatting with one of the old dockworkers as he waited for his drinks, Dave thinking the guys in here knew what it was to be men. Men without doubts, men who never questioned the rightness of their own actions,...
I'm really not quite as frippery a fellow as you seem to think! I own that in my grasstime I committed a great many follies and extravagances, but, believe me, I've long since out-grown them! I don't think they were any worse than what nine out of te...
{Calpurnia)"My mother…she’s desperate for a daughter she can dress like a porcelain doll. Sadly, I shall never be such a child. How I long for my sister to come out and distract the countess from my person." He joined her on the bench, asking, "H...
Sophia was asked to speak to the students of a local medical school. “Sophia, what do we need to be better doctors?” the students asked. “Doctors,” Sophia said, “need strong stomachs and strong powers of observation.” Then she opened a ca...
How fathomless the mystery of the Unseen is! We cannot plumb its depths with our feeble senses - with eyes which cannot see the infinitely small or the infinitely great, nor anything too close or too distant, such as the beings who live on a star or ...
But even now, especially now, it seems to me that women have a strength about them that men never had. And I wonder how did men always get portrayed in the movies and such as the strong ones? How did it come to be that women are made to look like the...
Delirium: You use that word so much. Responsibilities. Do you ever think about what that means? I mean, what does it mean to you? In your head? Dream: Well, I use it to refer that area of existence over which I exert a certain amount of control or in...
Freedom isn't an illusion; it's perfectly real in the context of sequential consciousness. Within the context of simultaneous consciousness, freedom is not meaningful, but neither is coercion; it's simply a different context, no more or less valid th...
When someone dies they can be any age you remember can't they ' she asked. As I tried to think of a reply she continued 'You probably think about the grown-up Tess because you were still close to her. But when I woke up I thought of her when she was ...
TESLA’S CAT [Nikola Tesla’s favorite childhood companion] was the family’s black cat, Macak. Macak followed young Nikola everywhere, and they spent many happy hours rolling on the grass. It was Macak the cat who introduced Tesla to electricity ...
Among them was a middle-aged man supported by two broken sticks. His legs were bent permanently beneath him by accident or disease, and it took him five minutes to cross the room, collect his ballot and shuffle into the booth in front of me. It was p...
Karma has been a pop culture term for ages. But really, what the heck is it? Karma is not an inviolate engine of cosmic punishment. Rather, it is a neutral sequence of acts, results, and consequences. Receiving misfortune does not necessarily indicat...
