What if you could just invent your family, your home, your life? You could. You could call Sunday Wednesday. Be awake and living at 3 a.m. Use T-shirts instead of sheets. Eat lettuce like an apple. Blow your nose on socks. Take four unrelated people ...
He held his hand out, palm up, watching her with soft, penetrating eyes, deep, dark eyes that called to her the longer she stared at them. “How ’bout you give me the benefit of the doubt every once in a while, hmm? I’d like a chance to prove I�...
Frequently, people confront us who seemed to be egging the world into calling them on their miserable actions so they can have the pleasure of angry vengeance or an excuse to attract attention. Our compassion cannot be giving them what they think the...
When people call for “deeds, not creeds,” asking, “What Would Jesus Do?” without much interest in the query, “What has Jesus done?” identifying themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” they are asking for the law without the gospe...
. . .and every native has a story of winter – stories that usually begin, You call this a storm? And grow in the telling like battle tales shared by graying war veterans. It’s a peculiar character flaw to those of us from cold climates that we fe...
This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice or even made to work backwards ... was it possibly the root of all evil? No: of course the love of money was called that. But money itself—perhaps one valued i...
We’re a nonviolent collective working to undermine the Trust and free the Badlands. Once the Trust is exposed as lying and corrupt, we believe Edenites will do the right thing. Open the borders. Save the Badlands.” Ling lowers her voice with deli...
That was my first instinct -- to protect him. It never occurred to me that there was a greater need to protect myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb...
P—Jamie!” I called. He waded back toward me. “I’m starting to think my name is Pajamie.” “Your name should be Pajerky. You said it wasn’t deep.” “Pajerky?” He gave me a skeptical look. “That’s Pathetic.” “We’ll see how s...
Silence is the door to Oran Mor. Close your eyes. Quieten your thoughts. And listen. Listen in particular to the sound of the waves. Let the Great Song sing in you. In an hour I will ring a bell. When you hear it, make a sound that resonates with the...
My side felt a lot better when Nora called me at noon the next day. "My nice policeman wants to see you," she said. "How do you feel?" "Terrible. I must've gone to bed sober." I pushed Asta out of the way and got up.
Hidden Highlands was maybe a little richer but not that different from many of the other small, wealthy and scared enclaves nestled in the hills and valleys around Los Angeles. Walls and gates, guardhouses and private security forces were the secret ...
I want to direct a movie called “Sleep” that’s sure to put everybody to the title. The whole movie will look like an extended blink. That way, if anybody asks if you’ve seen it, and you say No, you fell asleep halfway through, the other perso...
When I turn thirty, in thirty days or so, I might be feeling old, so I’ll probably call my grandma up, because as old as I’ll feel, she’ll be feeling older. Twelve years older.
I want to write a book called Kissing Kissinger. It won’t be about kissing, Kissinger, or even politics. It’ll be about radiator fluid, and all the health benefits you can enjoy from chugging it.
It's important to understand that if someone calls themselves a Christian, it does not automatically make everything they do an act of Christianity, even if they say it is.
Once I heard Dantly tell Welton that the Native Americans used to call that particular part of the morning “between the wolf and the dog” because the sky is so deep blue and spooky or whatever that you can’t tell what’s what. Is that a wolf o...
They called our arrangement a 'Death Pact' - but, really, that's not a phrase that tells you anything important. It's just the kind of phrase that sells newspapers. For us, it was never about death. It was about life. Knowing that there was a way out...
Then love knew it was called love. And when I lifted my eyes to your name, suddenly your heart showed me my way
To look back before 1800 is to enter another world, one where the number of institutions for the mad was a tiny fraction of today's and what we would now call mental disorders were often understood as religious ecstasies or diabolical possessions.
In a world where critical thinking skills are almost wholly absent, repetition effectively leapfrogs the cognitive portion of the brain. It helps something get processed as truth. We used to call it unsubstantiated buy-in. Belief without evidence. It...
