Maintaining connections with family and community across class boundaries demands more than just summary recall of where one’s roots are, where one comes from. It requires knowing, naming, and being ever-mindful of those aspects of one’s past tha...
A Prayer for Daily Insight Open my eyes, God. Help me to perceive what I have ignored, to uncover what I have forgotten, to find what I have been searching for. Remind me that I don't have to journey far to discover something new, for miracles surrou...
Grandpa always used to make me ride in the bed of his pickup truck, so he could keep up his conversations with the 100-pound sack of manure he kept buckled up in the passenger seat. Grandpa said all they ever talked about was grass, but I know Grandp...
I looked at Thalia. "You're afraid of heights." Now that we were safely down the mountain, her eyes had their usual angry look. "Don't be stupid." That explains why you freaked out on Apollo's bus. Why you didn't want to talk about it." She took a de...
...intelligence nowadays is all about application: it is the ability 'to take in a complex system and learn its rules on the fly'. For young people, this ability is second nature. Any fool knows that, if you need a new and unfamiliar VCR programmed i...
Why would you tell us the truth? If Christina really wasn’t here, you’d tell us she was, to stall us from finding her. If James taught us one thing, it’s how to detect a lie. You just want us to leave so you can get her to talk. By the way, goo...
Is it that they think it a duty to be continually talking,' pursued she: 'and so never pause to think, but fill up with aimless trifles and vain repetitions when subjects of real interest fail to present themselves? - or do they really take a pleasur...
When I was a junior, my school introduced badminton, which was clearly a P.E. department ploy to get me away from the wrestling room, and it worked, since the first time I played badminton was like the first time I tasted sushi or heard the Beatles o...
What do you mean, is that it? I just saved his career and the CIA from ruin and he calls me a perfidious ass." "What's perfidious mean?" Ace asked from the driver's seat. "You deceived him and stole his girlfriend out from under his nose," Julia said...
This is torture, torture, torture. Why is this so hard?? I survived whole days not talking to you before. What happened??? I'm not as nice in the world today. I am scowly. I am trying to be good and not fussy, but frankly, this is less fun. And I am ...
Ryan couldn't believe his eyes. Gran wearing leather chaps in a Harley shop, talking about her ass. It was a living nightmare. "What am I doing here?" he asked Gran. Before he could read her the riot act on safety, Liz stepped in front of him. Her pi...
Under the attempt to perform the impossible there sets in a general disintegration. When legislation fails, those who look upon it as a sovereign remedy simply cry out for more legislation. A sound and wise statesmanship which recognizes and attempts...
If we talk about the living oracles and want to pay respect to them, how shall we do this? Shall we do it by never reading their words-by paying not attention to that which they say? That is a very poor way of doing. We ought to listen to their words...
Now that lilacs are in bloom She has a bowl of lilacs in her room And twists one in her fingers while she talks. "Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know What life is, you who hold it in your hands"; (slowly twisting the lilac stalks) "You le...
There are portions of the sovereign people who spend most of their spare time and spare money on motoring and comparing motor cars, on bridge-whist and post-mortems, on moving pictures and potboilers, talking always to the same people with minute var...
Around eighth grade Margot started getting really sensitive about her weight, even though she wasn’t remotely fat—just a little round-faced. So Margot did what any normal fourteen-year-old girl would do. She started puking on purpose, every day a...
There is something stunningly narrow about how the Anthropic Principle is phrased. Yes, only certain laws and constants of nature are consistent with our kind of life. But essentially the same laws and constants are required to make a rock. So why no...
And she says she wants to expose me to all these great things. And to tell you the truth, I don't really want to be exposed to all these great things if it means that I'll have to hear Mary Elizabeth talk about all the great things she exposed me to ...
Perhaps talk of counters turned the boy’s thoughts to his father’s glove shop. His father would have accounted for all his transactions using the tokens. They were hard and round and very thin, made of copper or brass. There were counters for one...
He understands the texture and meaning of the visible universe, and 'sees into the life of things,' not by the help of mechanical instruments, but of the improved exercise of his faculties, and an intimate sympathy with Nature. The meanest thing is n...
The critics greeted this book with a churlish and horrified outcry. Certain virtuous people, in newspapers no less virtuous, made a grimace of disgust as they picked it up with the tongs to throw it into the fire. Even the minor literary reviews, the...
