What a laugh, though. To think that one human being could ever really know another. You could get used to each other, get so habituated that you could speak their words right along with them, but you never know why other people said what they said or...
The purpose of the bayonet training, Sergeant Gerheim explains, is to awaken our killer instincts. The killer instinct will make us fearless and aggressive, like animals. If the meek ever inherit the earth the strong will take it away from them. The ...
Mom actually said that?" Cassie's face shown with happiness. "She always hated my math!" "Nah," Martin said. "She was just being that way for you. She thought it was what you needed to hear. If parents told us what they really think about stuff, we c...
There isn’t any particular relationship between the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middl...
When his parents announced the newest rules to Jamal, he defiantly announced back to them that, as a matter of principle, he would not be "manipulated or forced into complying with a Fascist parenting style.
Why should you think that I should woo in scorn? Scorn and derision never come in tears: Look, when I vow, I weep; and vows so born, In their nativity all truth appears. How can these things in me seem scorn to you, Bearing the badge of faith, to pro...
I see a creative process as a necessarily thievish undertaking. Dig beneath a beautiful piece of writing, Monsieur Boustouler, and you will find all manner of dishonor. Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling...
war. Or, rather, wars. Not one, not two, but many wars, both big and small, just and unjust, wars with shifting casts of supposed heroes and villains, each new hero making one increasingly nostalgic for the old villain. The names changed, as did the ...
Maybe it’s not about having a beautiful day, but about finding beautiful moments. Maybe a whole day is just too much to ask. I could choose to believe that in every day, in all things, no matter how dark and ugly, there are shards of beauty if I lo...
I don't see how it's doing society any good to have it's members walking around with vague memories of algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams, and clear memories of hating them.
While we can certainly be mistaken at times about what is real, there is indeed a reality to know. Mistakes actually prove the point. We would not know there were such things as hallucinations or illusions if we did not have reality with which to com...
Simon, you gave me no water to wash my feet, but this woman as washed them with her tears. You gave me no kiss, but she has not ceased to kiss my feet. Do no reproach her Simon for you did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed me for my b...
There are certain people who will always seek to criticize. This has nothing to do with you. It must be hard to be inside their head, you know? I mean if they find so much fault in everyone around them... then one can only imagine the faults they mus...
We don't recognize those times in our existence, when fate rolls around to sever relationships, to remove an object of such immense magnitude from our lives. No, on a whim it robs us of our last goodbyes and forces us to try and recall the most irrel...
Maturity is a needed component of faithful, loving relationships. And if not directed into the healthy channel of permitted adult behaviour, romantic and sexual jealousies can literally tear families and communities apart. A permanent solution like m...
You're welcome in my house when this is over. We'll open a cask of Master al'Vere's best brandy. We'll remember those who fell, and we'll tell our children how we stood when the clouds turned black and the world started to die. We'll tell them we sto...
Love, marriage, divorce, infidelity... life was the same here as anywhere else, wasn't? She realized now wrong she'd been; the pali wasn't a headstone and Kalaupapa wasn't a grave. It was a community like any other, bound by ties deeper than most, an...
Now that he was teaching Quentin could see why the faculty didn't bother trying to improve the climate. It kept people amazingly focused. … You could actually watch as the determination to seize the moment and live life to the fullest ebbed right o...
Why do you want a new truth when you do not practice what you already know? Far better to read a few books and make them your own than to read many books quickly and superficially.
Strange, is it not, how even those of us who scoff at divine intervention will fall to our knees and clasp our hands the moment we realize our futures are defined by uncertainty and hazard. A thoughtful man would never leave his knees. A wise man wou...
[Charles] Nodier’s later view was that fantasy reconciles men to their fate. Fantasy and the taste for chimeras, he wrote, are symptoms of a time of political decay and transition, when the unpleasant realities of political life are too hard to bea...