At Bramasole, the first secret spot that draws me outside is a stump and board bench on a high terrace overlooking the lake and valley. Before I sit down, I must bang the board against a tree to knock off all the ants. Then I'm happy. With a stunted ...
Okay, more disclosure. I'm not a fugitive at the moment, but I might become one. I don't know if I'm going back for a trial. I can't go to prison and leave the twins alone. We'll leave before it comes to that. I don't want to get you in trouble." Hil...
I think the highest forgiveness is to accept that creation is thoroughly tangled, with every possible quality given outlet for expression. People need to accept once and for all that there is only one life and each of us is free to shape it through t...
I don't know where to start," one [writing student] will wail. Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O' Connor said that anyone who has survived childho...
DEAR DIARY You are greater than the Bible And the Conference of the Birds And the Upanishads All put together You are more severe Than the Scriptures And Hammurabi’s Code More dangerous than Luther’s paper Nailed to th...
Men who read it [beauty pornography] don't do so because they want who look like that. The attraction of what they are holding is that it is a woman, but a two-dimensional woman-shaped blank. The appeal of the material is not the fantasy that the mod...
Let’s face it: suffering discredits goodness. I’m agnostic in practice though faith-based in theory. I used to pray but now know he’ll do what he darn well pleases when he darn well pleases. Will he listen? Maybe. We have a book that says so, b...
Do you go see her?" "No," I said, refusing to acknowledge that I'd just seen Lissa last night. "That's not my life anymore." "Right. Your life is all about dangerous vigilante missions." "You wouldn't understand anything that isn't drinking, smoking,...
When you chose to follow the way of purity, did you expect it to be easy? When you decided to wait for the best, did you think that waiting would be fun? Did you think that your faith would not be tested? When you decided to take the narrow path, did...
Agent Jones switched to the big screen and a grainy video of MoMo sitting at his enormous desk, a swivel-hipped Elvis clock ticking behind his bewigged head. 'Death to the capitalist pigs! Death to your cinnamon bun-smelling malls! Death to your powe...
Krebs, who knew some Russian and at one stage in his career had been embraced by Stalin, was "a smooth, surviving type." And so, with almost incredible effrontery, he tried to talk to Chuikov as an equal, opening the conversation with the general com...
He died at the wrong time, when there was much to be clarified and established. They hadn’t even started to be grown-ups together. There was this piece of heaven, this little girl he’d carried around the shop on his shoulders; and then one day sh...
In 1995, each cast at The Second City was made up of four men and two women. When it was suggested that they switch one of the companies to three men and three women, the producers and directors had the same panicked reaction. 'You can't do that. The...
Think Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast. You start with easy, because if that's all you get, that's not so bad. Then work on light. Make it efforthless, like you don't give a shit how high the hill is or how far you've got to go. When you've practiced th...
The tea-masters held that real appreciation of art is only possible to those who make of it a living influence. Thus they sought to regulate their daily life by the high standard of refinement which obtained in the tea-room. In all circumstances sere...
Besides this I place another equally obvious confirmation of my view that opera is based on the same principles as our Alexandrian culture. Opera is the birth of the theoretical man, the critical layman, not of the artist: one of the most surprising ...
It is one thing to read the Scriptures and affirm their truth. But until you are in the trenches of trial, until you are faced with life circumstances that test your faith, until you are pressed to the absolute limit of your physical and emotional ca...
The brief story of the supper at Emmaus carries within it a number of core principles of the Christian life as Luke understands it. First, the idea that one comes to know Christ through acts of generosity to other human beings. It is because of their...
[Pertaining to The Law of Free Will and Karma]: Disputing traditional cause and effect karmic doctrine, Kuan Yin maintains that it is the accumulated beliefs from parallel realities creating “made-up stories” about oneself and, thus, reality. Bec...
When a fixed code of laws, which must be observed to the letter, leaves no further care to the judge than to examine the acts of citizens and to decide whether or not they conform to the law as written; then the standard of the just or the unjust, wh...
These comments recall Turkle's distinction between two kinds of "transparency" in technological cultures. Modernist transparency is the notion that users can and should have access to the inner workings of a technology. It evokes the aesthetic of ear...
