Many readers simply can't stomach fantasy. They immediately picture elves with broadswords or mighty-thewed barbarians with battle axes, seeking the bejeweled Coronet of Obeisance ... (But) the best fantasies pull aside the velvet curtain of mere app...
Few female characters get to be “the Chosen One” in science fiction and fantasy. Leia is as much the child of Darth Vader as Luke is, but only Luke gets to use the force, be recruited by his dad and ultimately save the day. We don’t get impossi...
Life is indeed a gamble, the ultimate game of chance, based purely upon having the ability to make the right choices at the right time. You never win or lose in life if you realise it is all just for the experience. Learn to create your own destiny, ...
We as human beings appear to be in the most adverse stages in our evolution. How can the Mother Earth survive when the souls of Her sons are tainted with avarice, and the very minds which shape Her fate are dominated by ego? Minds that are prone to p...
Clarence Darrow, one of history's greatest lawyers, once noted "There is no such thing as justice, in or out of court." Perhaps because justice is a flawed concept that ultimately comes down to the decision of twelve people. People with their own exp...
I would be quite content to go to their children's bar mitzvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to 'respect' their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclusively in Arabic, to an illiterate merchant, or to interest myself in Wicca and ...
Just resolve to shine, constantly and steadily, like a warm lamp in the corner, and people will want to move towards you in order to feel happy, and to read things more clearly. You will be bright and constant in a world of dark and flux, and this wi...
There are those individuals who die for a cause, and we say they have made the ultimate sacrifice. We call them martyrs, and we never doubt their sincerity. Yet many others search their entire lives for something—or someone—worth dying for and t...
When a young pianist hits a wrong note, we don’t say he is not worthy to keep practicing. We don’t expect him to be flawless. We just expect him to keep trying. Perfection may be his ultimate goal, but for now we can be content with progress in t...
Loneliness is a condition of energetic imbalance. As with all human conditions it is an illusion, albeit a very debilitating one if left unchecked. The key to overcoming any imbalance is to open your awareness to it, and then simply observe it. By ob...
Though beauty is autonomous, there seem to be occasions when human presence can become congruent with her will. In creative work no amount of force or mechanical management can guarantee beauty. Suddenly, without expecting it, beauty is there. Yet ul...
We'd like to think that it is not our fault that great men and women died fighting for the security of our nation and safety of our communities. But we know this not to be true. They commited their lives for us in instances where either we were too a...
We'd like to think that it is not our fault great men and women died fighting for the security of our nation and safety of our communities. But we know this not to be true. They commited their lives for us in instances where either we were too afraid...
I once heard this saying that God keeps breaking your heart until it opens. And ain't that the truth. Think about it. Every struggle, every challenge, every adversity brings you closer to your heart, to your true self, to who you really are. Sometime...
Reading with an eye towards metaphor allows us to become the person we’re reading about, while reading about them. That’s why there is symbols in books and why your English teacher deserves your attention. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the a...
Bruno Bettelheim: The question of whether Zelig was a psychotic or merely neurotic was a question that was endlessly discussed among his doctors. Now I myself felt his feelings were really not all that different from the normal, what one would call t...
Remember, science fiction's always been the kind of first level alert to think about things to come. It's easier for an audience to take warnings from sci-fi without feeling that we're preaching to them. Every science fiction movie I have ever seen, ...
I think that the thematic, formal history of the literary form ultimately harkens back to a different political system. That is to say, a feudal order: the aristocratic dispensation of leisure time, the refinements of the self. With the shift from fe...
G.K. Chesterton once wrote that the trouble with people who do not believe in God is not that they then believe in nothing. It is that they will believe in anything. And the biggest anything around for people to believe in, in our day, is the State. ...
One of the purest souls ever to live on this fallen planet was Nicholas Herman, known as Brother Lawrence. He wrote very little, but what he wrote has seemed to several generations of Christians to be so rare and so beautiful as to deserve a place ne...
Insularity is the foundation of ethnocentrism and intolerance; when you only know of those like yourself, it is easy to imagine that you are alone in the world or alone in being good and right in the world. Exposure to diversity, on the contrary, is ...
