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...
The idea of fairyland fascinates me because it's one of those things, like mermaids and dragons, that doesn't really exist, but everyone knows about it anyway. Fairyland lies only in the eye of the beholder who is usually a fabricator of fantasy. So ...
I am asking myself what is fear not what I am afraid of. I lead a certain kind of life; I think in a certain pattern; I have certain beliefs and dogmas and I don't want those patterns of existence to be disturbed because I have my roots in them. I do...
Firen didn’t waste any time setting up the meeting with Egnatious. The following day she was in such a rush to tell me about it that she burst into my room without knocking and found Andrew and me in an intimate and compromising position reminiscen...
The thing, whatever it was - and no one was ever sure afterwards whether it was a dream or a fit or what - happened at that peculiar hour before dawn when human vitality is at its lowest ebb. The Blue Hour they sometimes call it, l'heure bleue - the ...
The car drives through, stops while the man closes and fastens the prickly gate behind it. The bell shuts off; the stillness is deafening by contrast. The car goes on until the outline of a house suddenly uptilts the searching headlight-beams, log-bu...
I keep thinking it's going to come back when I least expect it. When I'm at my happiest. So I'm always afraid to be happy." Zane looks out at the horizon. "You know, there are so many things that can go wrong in this world, you could spend your whole...
Now this is a most satisfactory and important thing to think about, for brutality will not,—cannot,—accomplish what a kindly disposition will; and, if folks could only know how quickly a “balky” child will, through loving and cuddling, grow i...
Oh, how an animal that is hurt looks up at you, John! An animal’s actions can inform you if it is in pain. It don’t hop and jump around as usual. No. You find a sad, crouching, cringing, small bunch of fur or hair, whining, and plainly asking you...
Come here, let me share a bit of wisdom with you. Have you given much thought to our mortal condition? Probably not. Why would you? Well, listen. There's no one alive who can say if he will be tomorrow. Our fate moves invisibly! A mystery. No one can...
Right there in that room, listening to the tape Laura gave me, I decided that I wanted something more than what I’d allowed myself to become. Listening to the voices and piano notes fade in and out, I decided that I wanted to be happy. If I had to ...
Neoteny is more than retaining a youthful appearance, although that is often part of it. Neoteny is the retention of all those wonderful qualities that we associate with youth: curiosity, playfulness, eagerness, fearlessness, warmth, energy. Unlike t...
Why do you need that thing?" September asked. "None of the airports back home have them." "They do. You just can't see them right," Betsy Basilstalk said with a grin. "All customs agents have them, otherwise, why would people agree to stand in line a...
There is no excuse for anyone to misunderstand God's Word if he will, like a child, accept the Bible for what it says, and be honest enough to consecrate himself to obey it. He must accept the Bible as God's Word. He must believe that God could not b...
For I am—or I was—one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and th...
Then to give the kids a historical perspective, Chacko told them about the earth woman. He made them imagine that the earth - 4600 million years old - was a 46 year old woman- as old as Aleyamma teaacher, who gave them Malayalam lessons. It had taken...
A silent Library is a Library. A Library without patrons on whom to pile books and tales and knowing and magazines full of up-to-the-minute politickal fashions and atlases and plays in pentameter! A Library should be full of exclamations! Shouts of d...
I wish to Heaven I was married," she said resentfully as she attacked the yams with loathing. "I'm tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I want to do. I'm tired of acting like I don't eat more than a bird, and walking when I...
In the course of this story, and very soon now, it will be necessary to make some disclosures about Mr. Krupper of a nature too coarse to be dealt with very directly in a work of such brevity. The grossly naturalistic details of a life, contained in ...
The mysterious manner in which this growing sense of unity commingles with a sense of utter goodness is worth noting. It arises by no effort of mine; rather does it come to me out of I know not where. Harmony appears gradually and flows through my wh...
God wants man to be His creature. Furthermore, He wants him to be His PARTNER. There is a causa Dei in the world. God wants light, not darkness. He wants cosmos, not chaos. He wants peace, not disorder. He wants man to administer and to receive justi...
