Nature offers us a thousand simple pleasers- Plays of light and color, fragrance in the air, the sun's warmth on skin and muscle, the audible rhythm of life's stir and push- for the price of merely paying attention. What joy! But how unwilling or una...
Madoka: I'm always... making somebody else fight for me. I can't do anything... Does that make me a coward? Kyōko: Why do you gotta be a magical girl? Madoka: "Why"...? Kyōko: ...This work isn't about playing around. When the job's about putting yo...
I erupt from the dark, crushing tunnel into a flash of light and noise. A new kind of air surrounds me, dry and cold, as they wipe the last smears of home off my skin. I feel a sharp pain as they snip something, and suddenly I am less. I am no one bu...
We'd never seen anything as green as these rice paddies. It was not just the paddies themselves: the surrounding vegetation - foliage so dense the trees lost track of whose leaves were whose - was a rainbow coalition of one colour: green. There was a...
The world is a perfect design. If we can see it. If we can see ourselves and our surroundings. A vast sky held up by pillars. A carpet of earth that gives us all the food and fruit and nourishment we need to live. Animals of every species. Some that ...
The Death Eaters were waiting for us,” Harry told her. “We were surrounded the moment we took off — they knew it was tonight — I don’t know what happened to anyone else, four of them chased us, it was all we could do to get away, and then V...
I am told by people all the time that they simply do not have time to read and listen to all the material they have purchased or subscribed to. But time is democratic and just. Everyone has the same amount. When I choose to read with my mid morning c...
Marlin: [Surrounded by jellyfish] This is bad, Dory. Very bad. Dory: [Bouncing on top of a jellyfish] Hey, watch this. Boing! Boing!... Marlin: Dory! Dory: You can't catch me! Marlin: Dory, don't bounce on the tops! They will... not sting you. The to...
[eyeing the "KEEP OUT" signs surrounding Shrek's home] Donkey: I guess you don't, uh... entertain much. Shrek: I like my privacy. Donkey: Y'know, I do too. That's another thing we have in common. I hate it when you've got someone in your face, you tr...
Mary: [Mary is looking at the stars outside the Axiom while other passengers pass idly by] Oh! So many stars! Ah. [she sees WALL-E and EVE flying around outside] Mary: Oh! Hey! That's what's-his-name! [backs up, bumps into John] John: Hey! What the-?...
When I arrived at the house in the suburbs that night I seriously contemplated suicide for the first time in my life. But as I thought about it, the idea became exceedingly tiresome, and I finally decided it would be a ludicrous business. I had an in...
When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I don't enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery. Surrounded by de...
Living organisms were not independently created, but have descended and diversified over time from common ancestors. And thus, no other biological theory so elegantly explains this. Evolutionary theory has withstood the test of time—by way of vicar...
The Indians around here tell a cautionary fable about a great saint who was always surrounded in his Ashram by loyal devotees. For hours a day, the saint and his followers would meditate on God. The only problem was that the saint had a young cat, an...
Many different kinds of sprouts lay torn. Green, purple and orange leaves lay scattered across the dark soil, and the thorn fence surrounding the bed had a fist-sized hole in it. Teacher eased himself into a squat, poked at the inside of the hole. Wh...
I hated being around people, couldn’t pay attention to what anyone was saying, couldn’t talk to clients, couldn’t tag my pieces, couldn’t ride the subway, human activity seemed pointless, incomprehensible, some blackly swarming ant hill in th...
Young people," McDonald said contemptuously. "You always think there's something to find out." "Yes, sir," Andrews said. "Well, there's nothing," McDonald said. "You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier l...
Get married, my friend, you don't know what it means to live alone, at my age. Nowadays feeling alone fills me with appalling anguish; being alone at home, by the fire, in the evening. It seems to me then that I'm alone on the earth, dreadfully alone...
Gillette--The best a man can get." I stared at the screen. What happened to me? I was meant to be one of those guys, vigorous and athletic and successful and, most of all, American. I was going to walk on the moon, be a movie star or a rock got or a ...
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...
Son: Father, you are my father. You sired me. I have sired no one because I left the primordial. I left you, I studied, I suffered, and my visions were pure. Before me, my father, new horizons were opened. Father: Yes, I am your father. I sired you a...
