When you are the only laowai in a village of 10,000 Chinese martial artists and you've sat through several dozen films where a white man shouts, "You Chinese dog," before getting his ass kicked, it starts to irritate you. We all need role models.
Evolution Idea Perspective Word Breaks into our code Per-mutating atoms Of our evolutionary Self-s Our sensory navigating device Accepts or rejects the impulse Creating realities of our choice A natural drift takes us from an amoeba to a human A very...
Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppos...
If humanity were capable of being satisfied, then they'll still be living in trees and eating bugs out of one another's fur. Anna had walked on a moon of Jupiter. She'd look up through a dome-covered sky at the great red spot, close enough to see the...
I will eternally give thanks for those women who essentially said, ‘Yes, I see you. And I love you. I see your pain. You have every right to be right where you are, right now. And you will come through this. You will.
You can see it as you walk through the street: people who have never recovered. You can see it on their face, in their posturing. It needn’t be that way. We really are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers … we really are obliged to put out our ...
Do you still think Mianaai controls the Radchaai through brainwashing or threats of execution? Those are there, they exist, yes, but most Radchaai, like people most places I have been, do what they’re supposed to because they believe it’s the rig...
But that was last year,” I protested as we walked through school on Tuesday, three days before Halloween. “I’m serious, you know how people are. They forget about things.” “Oh, really?” Roux said, then turned and smiled at a brunette pass...
Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be ret...
The genius of a composer is found in the notes of his music; but analyzing the notes will not reveal his genius. The poet's greatness is contained in his words; yet the study of his words will not disclose his inspiration. God reveals himself in crea...
Good Christian liturgy is friendship in action, love taking thought, the covenant relationship between God and his people not simply discovered and celebrated like the sudden meeting of friends, exciting and worthwhile though that is, but thought thr...
We need to theorize the meaning of beauty in our lives so that we can educate for critical consciousness, talking through the issues: how we acquire and spend money, how we feel about beauty, what the place of beauty is in our lives when we lack mate...
The work of the art student is no light matter. Few have the courage and stamina to see it through. You have to make up your mind to be alone in many ways. We like sympathy and we like to be in company. It is easier than going it alone. But alone one...
We’d been walking in endless rectangles and now we were near the candy store again. The lights were out, the security gate down. We leaned up against the wall of a bank and I could feel the cool stone on my back, the billions of dollars thrumming t...
The complex human eye harvests light. It perceives seven to ten million colors through a synaptic flash: one-tenth of a second from retina to brain. Homo sapiens gangs up to 70 percent of its sense receptors solely for vision, to anticipate danger an...
His love for his children bore down on his heart with the weight of three heavy stones. There were all his unnamed fears for them, and hopes for them. There was all he was powerless to change, including who they were--one too mild, one too easily tem...
The things that knock you down in life are tests, forcing you to make a choice between giving in and remaining on the ground or wiping the dirt off and standing up even taller than you did before you were knocked down. I’m choosing to stand up tall...
It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know...
He says, 'I don't know if I can face this. You know. The party and the ceremony, and then the hour after that, and the hour after that.' 'You don't have to go to the party. You don't have to go to the ceremony. You don't have to do anything at all.' ...
Even the most blatant assholes seemed to function in a state of grace when confronted with the brutal loss of a loved one. They moved through the world differently than other people. When they looked at you, you had the feeling that they were really ...
You know, in human society, it's considered impolite to molest a sleeping person. In fact, it's seen as pretty creepy." His gaze shot to her face and found her regarding him through dark eyes heavy with sleep but lit with amusement rather than indign...
