So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: o...
It is not by regretting what is irreparable that true work is to be done, but by making the best of what we are. It is not by complaining that we have not the right tools, but by using well the tools we have. What we are, and where we are is God's pr...
There were no milestones in the Copper Country. Often a traveler could only measure the progress of a journey by the time it took to get from each spoiled or broken thing to the next: a half-day’s walk from a dry well to the muzzle of a cannon poki...
Americans, though apparently impressed by ghastly sentimentality and outrageous hypocrisy, are by nature much more politically cynical than Canadians. In their longer history they have had much more to be cynical about. They demand a vulgar show, enj...
Cathy did not forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two other methods also––either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth...
Now I realized that life supplies us with everything we need for the journey. Everything I had acquired either actively or passively, everything I had learned either voluntarily or by osmosis, was coming back to me as the real riches of my life, even...
Getting out of a marriage is rough, though, and not just for the legal / financial complications or the massive lifestyle upheaval. (As my friend Deborah once advised me wisely: "Nobody ever died from splitting up furniture.") It's the emotional reco...
None of this excuses anyone from mastering the basic ideas and terminology of economics. The intelligent layman must expect also to encounter good economists who are difficult writers even though some of the best have been very good writers. He shoul...
The forest fleer has been expelled from society, the anarch has expelled society from himself. He is and remains his own master in all circumstances. When he decides to flee to the forest, his decision is less an issue of justice and conscience for h...
It's going to be like an...aura, I guess." He looked down at me and raised an eyebrow. "Explain?" "Like even though there are outside forces pushing through the walls, in here it's like a bubble of goodness. Like coming home." I could feel him smilin...
There are a hundred ways in which a boy can injure—if not indeed kill—himself. The more adventurous he is and the greater his initiative, the more ways he will find. If you protect him from each of the first hundred, he is sure to find the hundre...
As in a tree, there is more sap in an Arm of the tree, than in a little sprig; but the sprig hath the same sap for kind that the Arm of the tree hath, and it all comes from the same root. So though there be more venom in some gross, crying sins, than...
Young, animated, entirely off your guard, and thoughtless of consequences, Imagination took the reins; and Reason, slow-paced, though sure-footed, was unequal to the race of so eccentric and flighty a companion. How rapid was then my Evelina's progre...
You’d throw yourself in front of a bus for me.” She would and he knew it.He knew it and she knew that he felt that knowledge burrow deep and he liked it. Elle felt tears stinging the backs of her eyes, her body melted into his,her arms tightened ...
A saving, though an immethodical knowledge of Christ, will bring us to heaven, John 17: 2, but a regular and methodical, as well as a saving knowledge of him, will bring heaven into us, Col. 2: 2, 3.
Dragons are notable for their lust for gold, not a bad quality taken in moderation. Dragons are immune to fire, obviously. All dragons are terrifically vain, indeed as to who is more vain, a dragon or an elf, I would not want to be the one to decide....
Once more Jane sat staring at the telephone. This time she was filled with a confidence that was new to her. Stan Crandall. Stanley Crandall. He liked her! He had seen her once, and even though had been rumpled and grass-stained and having a terrible...
He's been out for a while," she said. "You ready to take a break?" Hopper could exist in this living form or be transformed into a small statue, which helped avoid uncomfortable questions when people came by. Only she could transform him though. "Yea...
It is poor solace to speak of the passing of time and grief," the master said. His quiet voice had gone somehow bleak, though Araene could not decide where in his unchanging tone the difference lay. "We do not wish our grief to fade, for it marks the...
The ultimate message of this book, though, is not that should strive for publication, but that you should become devoted to the craft of writing, for its own sake. Ask yourself what you would do if you knew you would never be published. Would you sti...
The great city seemed to weigh upon me, as though it were crushing me under its heap of brick and stone. Gray, drizzly skies, congested streets, the soot-belching boats and barges chugging up and down the Thames, the teeming mass of four millions has...
