Say a king wishes to support a standing army of fifty thousand men. Under ancient or medieval conditions, feeding such a force was an enormous problem—unless they were on the march, one would need to employ almost as many men and animals just to ...
Getting a handle on why wolves do what they do has never been an easy proposition. Not only are there tremendous differences in both individual and pack personalities, but each displays a surprising range of behaviors depending on what's going on aro...
The purpose of college, to put this all another way, is to turn adolescents into adults. You needn't go to school for that, but if you're going to be there anyway, then that's the most important thing to get accomplished. That is the true education: ...
The woman laughed again. She was the loudest person in the cave. Eena wondered if perhaps she was talking to a female Ghengat. Curiosity got the best of her and she turned around to look, surprised to find neither a Ghengat nor a Harrowbethian woman,...
Pretty quickly, I stopped seeing the company as an engine of community. Instead, I saw it as a mythmaker offering only an illusion of belonging and meeting its customers' desire for connections in form, maybe, but surely not in substance. Once I came...
Ninety-six per cent of juvenile prostitutes are fugitives from abusive domestic situations; 66 per cent began working before they turned 16. (Prostitution is their only perceived means of survival.) Millions of children work as prostitutes around the...
Hello, ma’am. How are you today?” he asked one day with a grin on his face the size of Kansas. I turned around looked at him and asked him what will it be, sir? “For starters,” he replied, “how about your name and phone number?” Hmm, ...
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educat...
There are young men and women up and down the land who happily (or unhappily) tell anyone who will listen that they don’t have an academic turn of mind, or that they aren’t lucky enough to have been blessed with a good memory, and yet can recite ...
He took his hands off the oars and pulled in the mooring rope. If I make a couple of loops, he thought, I can strap the axe on to my back. He had a mental picture of what could happen to a man who plunged into the cauldron below a waterfall with a sh...
Oh, Lily," He says shaking his head. "I know about love. About wanting and dreaming and wishing with every part of your soul. I know enough to reconize the parts that are real and teh parts that are only in my fantasy." Ge turns his head slightly to ...
These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle, and at another as all that can be co...
I shall have to go. But-" and here Frodo looked hard at Sam- "if you really care about me, you will have to keep that DEAD secret. See? If you don't, if you even breathe a word of what you've heard here, then I hope Gandalf will turn you into a spott...
Go to Zillicks down the block. It has three booths at the back. Go in the middle one and wait. When you lamp me turning the pages of the directory outside, shove your money in the return-coin slot and walk out. Take it easy. Don't let the druggist se...
It takes will power and nerve to hold the stick that way, to keep his eyes open and watch the rocky face of the cliff, pine-bearded, rush up at them. O'Shaughnessy's mouth flattens, his face goes white. And then in that final fraction of a moment, he...
Vampires used to be the Dracula types, but in the last ten years most of them have become weak, brooding androgynes that only go after teenagers. A friend of mine took the opportunity to rid his whole city of them after the forth Mormon Vamps book hi...
I…God, I don’t even know where to start. I’m here. I’m here for you, okay? No matter what. You can scream and you can yell and be as mean and self-destructive as you want. Because I know you’re going to be here for me when it’s my turn to...
Development means a capacity for self-sustaining growth. It means that an economy must register advances which in turn will promote further progress. The loss of industry and skill in Africa was extremely small, if we measure it from the viewpoint of...
A while back, when Dick & Barry & I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you *are* like, Barry proposed the idea of a questionnaire for potential partners, a 2 or 3 page multiple-choice document that covered all the music/film/T...
What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person? People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers ...
What’s your rank of choice?” Juliet started, nearly spilling her cup of lemonade. “Pardon?” Drake gestured to all the other men in the room. “Every rank from a duke down to a second son who became a vicar is available for your choosing. Any...
