Oral tradition is practised in most African cultures: ideals, family histories and legacies are handed down from one generation to the other physically or verbally. However, this system is flawed in the sense that a lot of African innovation, experie...
Haji Ali taught me to...slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects.
If we think of the novel and the epic...The difference lies in the fact that the important thing about the epic is a hero--a man who is a pattern for all men. While, as Mencken pointed out, the essence of most novels lies in the breaking down of a ma...
He read it over twenty times and though the darkness that sang on held steady about him, the unhurried words fell bright through his mind, going down golden through deep water, and when one passed another came, ceaselessly, shining.
You know what pulp is, Mr. Tallis? It's the flesh of a luscious fruit, mashed down into an incredible, half liquid richness. so saturated with flavor that it fills your whole body, not just your mouth.
[Telzey] took out a pocket edition law library and sat down at the table. She clicked on the library's viewscreen, tapped the clearing and index buttons. Behind the screen, one of the multiple rows of pinhead tapes shifted slightly as the index was f...
And so, as the mob backs away to give them space... as the riot police holster their weapons, standing down, and as Risa takes the podium, calming the crowd with a voice as soothing as a sonata, Connor Lassiter holds his family like he'll never let t...
I don't need you by my side. But I want you there. Very much want you there. That, I think, says more. Means more." He took the hand she held out to him. "We'll go down. James should be here soon
Basically, Sherri's idea had to do with bringing Fat's mind down from the cosmic and the abstract to the particular. She had hatched out the practical notion that nothing is more real than a large World War Two Soviet tank.
If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.
Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone.
Sometimes she wore Levi's with white-suede fringe sewn down the legs and a feathered Indian headdress, sometimes old fifties' taffeta dresses covered with poetry written in glitter, or dresses made of kids' sheets printed with pink piglets or Disney ...
CUSTOMER (to their friend): God, the Famous Five titles realy were crap, weren’t they? Five Go Camping. Five Go Off in a Caravan.... If it was Five Go Down To a Crack House it might be a bit more exciting.
It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.
I have no memory of climbing the stairs up to the roof. I don't even know how to get where I am, which is a problem since I'm going to have to get down, ideally in a way that doesn't involve dying.
With the eeriness of the pounding I couldn’t help but think about my nonphysical traits ones known only by me. Much to my relief they rarely appeared. When they did the instability of their power and my helplessness to control them frightened me do...
Once you cry it out, it’s supposed to vanish…right? It’s not true. It’s just…a little less. It was the first chink in my brickwall. The wall was still there. And it was still made of bricks,but one, maybe two, had been torn down
Hey, Captain Neckbeard! Less talky-talky, more worky-worky!” Wednesday shouted rudely down at the man who had been changing the tire. She wasn’t planning on taking shit from a tow truck driving hick today or any other day.
Bluebell had been saying that he knew the men hated us for raiding their crops and gardens, and Toadflax answered, 'That wasn't why they destroyed the warren. It was just because we were in their way. They killed us to suit themselves.
They would think she was savoring the taste (blueberries, cinnamon, cream-excellent), but she was actually savoring the whole morning, trying to catch it, pin it down, keep it safe before all those precious moments became yet another memory.
But you need to make sure that the last thing you remember about today isn't that you fell down, it's that you got back up again. That's what we do when bad things happen to us.