How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told abo...
Those were the people who made her something, and without them she was different. She'd held on to them and to that old self tenaciously, though. She clung to it, celebrated it, worshipped it even, instead of constructing a new grown-up life for hers...
What is it we call life anyway? The lights that flash within us from time to time. Those lit moments, these tiny dots, one by one, added on from one end to the other, intermingling with each other sometimes, one on top of the other, or slipped undern...
Although the terms teaching and learning are typically paired, those of us who teach know that students don't always learn. When I complained about this early in my teaching career, a colleagues chided me: "Saying 'I thaught the students something, t...
Part of the genius of (Nick) Sabin's system was that he understood that no matter the skill set, he was inheriting vulnerable kids from various backgrounds. For those times when they made poor decisions, as they invariably did, the safety net must be...
When I'm in turmoil, when I can't think, when I'm exhausted and afraid and feeling very, very alone, I go for walks. It's just one of those things I do. I walk and I walk and sooner or later something comes to me, something to make me feel less like ...
Obedience is the fruit and proof of love; and the words of the Master are suggestive, "If a man love Me he will keep My words" (John 14:23). One has forcibly remarked, "When people speak of 'essentials' and 'non-essentials' they generally mean by the...
It was one of those perfect New York October afternoons, when the explosion of oranges and yellows against the bright blue sky makes you feel like your life is passing through your fingers, that you've felt this autumn-feeling before and you'll proba...
You will find what you are looking for when you realize God has placed those longings in your heart as a divine desire; your hunger is a gift from God to draw you to Him. It's a holy want with a holy fulfillment. Everything you really need and want i...
...a fundamental rule of journalism, which is to tell a story and stick to it. The narratives of journalism (significantly called "stories"), like those of mythology and folklore, derive their power from their firm, undeviating sympathies and antipat...
It was not their irritating assumption of equality that annoyed Nicholai so much as their cultural confusions. The Americans seemed to confuse standard of living with quality of life, equal opportunity with institutionalized mediocrity, bravery with ...
This is what history is: all those centuries of bodies, moving over these canals, twisting and blooming into life in these houses, these streets; all that flesh hungering, coming together, separating, continuing, accumulating, relinquishing, aging an...
The only difference between life here and on the battlefield was there we believed that the outcome of the war would be different, and so fought to that end. Here we were reminded of our defeat, for although they died among comrades, death came quiet...
I trust you. Those are the last words my father said before he left. That means that every decision I make, I would have to question myself whether it was the right one. I can picture him, expectations in his eyes. Because of that, I can see the same...
Jimmi manages a laugh that makes my skin crawl. “Do you really think what you read in those books is true? Sure, some of it may be but have you ever actually paid attention to it? It's all false set upon us as truth. You can't coat something with l...
The brown book I carry says there is nothing stranger than to explore a city wholly different from all those one knows, since to do so is to explore a second and unsuspected self. I have found a thing stranger: to explore such a city only after one h...
Some false representations contravene the law; some do not. The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business, and, besides, could not be done. The line between honesty and dishonesty is a n...
If a princess in the days of enchantment had seen a four-footed creature from among those which live in herds come to her once and again with a human gaze which rested upon her with choice and beseeching, what would she think of in her journeying, wh...
I have a theory about marriage, Monsieur Boustouler. And it's that nearly always you will know within two weeks if it's going to work. It's astonishing how many people remain shackled for years, decades even, in a protracted and mutual state of self-...
I had always believed, and not only out of cynicism, that a man and a woman could tell in the first ten minutes whether they wanted to go to bed together; and that the time that passed after those first ten minutes represented a tax, which might be w...
Diversion is pernicious to depressives. Our lives are like waking dreams--correction, nightmares--where monsters chase us, never breaking off pursuit in order to rest or to eat or to look for easier prey. Diversion prevents us from confronting those ...
