There is no word in our language which has been so much misused and prostituted as the word . It has been preached by those who were ready to condone every cruelty if it served their purpose; it has been used as a disguise under which to force people...
[Memory]... is a system of near-infinite complexity, a system that seems designed for revision as much as for replication, and revision unquestionably occurs. Details from separate experiences weave together, so that the rememberer thinks of them as ...
She had probably referred to herself as Mrs. Scott Landon less than half a dozen times in all the years of her married life, and never once during the twenty-six months of her widowhood. It wasn't hard to understand why she had done so now. It was wh...
Master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and reread them…digest them. Let them go into your very self. Peruse a good book several times and make notes and analyses of it. A student will find tha...
Society conspires against her from early infancy. Her brain is steadily filled with plaster until it sets: ‘If you’re not married by the time you’re twenty-five, you’ll have good reason to be ashamed’; ‘if you laugh, you won’t look dign...
Starting isn’t like that. Starting something is not an event; it’s a series of events. You decide to walk to Cleveland. So you take a first step in the right direction. That’s starting. You spend the rest of the day walking toward Cleveland, on...
Noah's eyes held my face. I swallowed hard. The juxtaposition of him sitting in a room full of people while staring at no one but me was overwhelming. Something shifted inside of me at the intimacy of us, eyes locked amid the scraping of twenty graph...
When Muslim radicals and fundamentalists look at the West, they see only the openness that makes us, in their eyes, decadent and promiscuous. They see only the openness that has produced Britney Spears and Janet Jackson. They do not see, and do not w...
I was twenty-two, the same age she was when she'd been pregnant with me. She was going to leave my life at the same moment that I came into hers, I thought. For some reason that sentence came fully formed into my head just then, temporarily blotting ...
Kate stops grinding the knife and begins to pass it over the length of the stone. Turning her wrist, she pulls the blade, swiping one side after the other, honing it to a fine edge. She wipes it dry with an old cloth and picks up a long piece of dark...
Now I know why I had that dream last night. It was a premonition forewarning me of the death of my cooking career!" "I doubt that your cooking career is over. You may be working at Coney Island until you retire, but you'll still be a chef," smiled Co...
A man may be ‘dated’ in the sense that the forms, the set-up, the paraphernalia, whereby he expresses the matter of permanent interest, are those of a particular age. In that sense the greatest writers are often the most dated. No one is more unm...
5. If You Love, Love Openly Twenty monks and one nun, who was named Eshun, were practicing meditation with a certain Zen master. Eshun was very pretty even though her head was shaved and her dress plain. Several monks secretly fell in love with her. ...
I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from ...
A properly educated leader, especially when harassed and under pressure, will know from his study of history and the classics that circumstances very much like those he is encountering have occurred from time to time on this earth since the beginning...
Mrs. Fox: [Kristofferson has just departed after Ash's comment] You have got twenty-nine minutes to come up with a proper apology. Ash: [snaps, gestures wildly] Me? *Me* have an apology? He gets a bandit hat? He just got here, and he gets a bandit ha...
[Deleted scene; Harry finds Aunt Petunia standing alone in the empty living room] Petunia Dursley: I have lived in this house for twenty years, and now in a single night, I'm expected to leave. Harry Potter: They'll torture you. If they think for a m...
Hiccup: [to Valka, about the dragon sanctuary] This is where you've been for twenty years? [Valka nods] Hiccup: You-you've been rescuing them. [Valka nods again] Hiccup: Unbelievable. Valka: You're not upset? Hiccup: What? No! I... I don't know. I......
[first lines] Narrator: At exactly 3:45 on that Saturday afternoon in the last week of September, Marvin Unger was, perhaps, the only one among the hundred thousand people at the track who felt no thrill at the running of the fifth race. He was total...
Auda abu Tayi: I am Auda abu Tayi! Does Auda serve? Howeitat tribesmen: NO! Auda abu Tayi: Does Auda abu Tayi serve? Howeitat tribesmen: NO! Auda abu Tayi: [to Lawrence] I carry twenty-three great wounds, all got in battle. Seventy-five men have I ki...
Jim Kurring: Let me tell you something, this is not an easy job. I get a call on the radio, dispatch, it's bad news. And it stinks. But this is my job and I love it. Because I want to do well - in this life and in this world, I want to do well. And I...
