I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free - The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks for nothing. ~ Tulips (1961)
Then a person has only one tale?” No, some have two or three separate ones or more,” Fleet said. “Some people have many tales. Sometimes they are linked into one big tale, sometimes they are utterly distinct. Most people do not have one at all.
He swallowed. “Have you no modesty?” Never in his life had he encountered a female so quick to be naked. Of course, he’d never in his life encountered a female who should so utterly be naked at any chance.
Thousands of miles from Georgia, beginning that night in England, my dad became a foreign-language speaker to me – and I was utterly charmed by it. I found the foreigner in myself.
To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. In Benjamin’s terms, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable...
Drudgery is one of the finest touchstones of character there is. Drudgery is work that is very far removed from anything to do with the ideal - the utterly mean grubby things; and when we come in contact with them we know instantly whether or not we ...
I confess myself utterly at a loss in suggesting particular reforms in our ways of teaching. No discretion that can be lodged with a school-committee, with the overseers or visitors of an academy, of a college, can at all avail to reach these difficu...
Guernsey itself was overcrowded, but its cliffs were utterly empty. I spent a wonderful year with a friend, climbing them. It was sheer magic: you went from this pretty, busy village of an island to the sea cliffs and heard nothing but the gulls and ...
During our travels, the Indians entertained me well; and their affection for me was so great, that they utterly refused to leave me there with the others, although the Governor offered them one hundred pounds sterling for me, on purpose to give me a ...
Socialism has no moral justification whatsoever; poor people are not morally superior to rich people, nor are they owed anything by rich people simply because of their lack of success. Charity is not a socialist concept - it is a religious one, an ac...
I'm a Taurus, which sounds like the name of a pickup truck. I'd prefer to be born under the sign of the rock wallaby. If you're going to interpret your life pursuant to an utterly irrational dogma, why can't it have a cute mascot? Rock wallabies real...
First, come to the point where you realize you are alone, completely and utterly alone in the vastness of the universe and all of time. Then realize you are not alone. Look back on your life and see the people who stood by you. There were some. Reali...
I ruthlessly expend my time and my energies seeking many random things, none of which will bless me in the way that I suppose they will, for despite my frequently stubborn resistance to the thought, the single and sole blessing that I can be utterly ...
We can breathe in the sweet scent of a tepid summer’s meadow after the kiss of a warm rain, and in the very same moment we can stand utterly breathless underneath the expanse of untold galaxies that breech the very edges of the universe itself. Suc...
The largest issue with search is that we learned about it when the web was young, when the universe was 'complete' - the entire web was searchable! Now our digital lives are utterly fractured - in apps, in walled gardens like Facebook, across clunky ...
When you are brought up as a frozen child, you go on freezing. It wasn't until I had my four sons, who have brought me immense joy, that I began to thaw. That I realised how utterly extraordinary my childhood was.
I stopped at a red light, feeling foolish as always for stopping at an intersection at an hour when the streets are deserted, just because a colored lightbulb told me to. Society has got me so fucking trained. I rubbed my eyes and groaned and felt ut...
Many fantasy novels - 'Lord of the Rings', for instance, or 'Lavondyss' by Robert Holdstock - are beautifully written. Geoff Ryman's 'The Child Garden' is exquisite and utterly beguiling. Mervyn Peake's 'Gormenghast' trilogy is an astonishing piece o...
A novel is utterly your own creation, a very private process. I think of a novel as a noun and a screenplay as a verb. In a novel, very little needs to happen; you can explore a person's memories and thoughts and fantasies. In a screenplay, it's all ...
I was on a very bumpy plane ride, an overnight flight. I was so miserable, and I pulled out 'David Copperfield,' and I forgot how scared and tired I was, and I thought, 'This is what reading should be.' I'm utterly transported out of my current situa...
The thing about startups is you can make it, and if it's wrong you can remake it, and you can build a team that you want to have, a product that you want to have. You're utterly focused on your users or your customers and their needs, and trying to f...
