To be poor and be without trees, is to be the most starved human being in the world. To be poor and have trees, is to be completely rich in ways that money can never buy.
As far as cosmetics are used for adornment in a conscious and creative way, they are not emblems of inauthenticity: it is when they are presented as the real thing, covering unsightly blemishes, disguising a repulsive thing so that it is acceptable t...
Driving a hot car is a lot like sex to me, or a lot like I keep thinking sex should be: A total body experience, overwhelming, to all the senses, taking you places you've never been, packing a punch that leaves you breathless and touches your soul. T...
Cassandra wondered at the mind's cruel ability to toss up flecks of the past. Why, as she neared her life's end, her grandmother's head should ring with the voices of people long since gone. Was it always this way? Did those with passage booked on de...
When we really understand it, we will always find grace offensive. And that's exactly the way it should be. If we start to feel comfortable with grace, then we've lost what it really means.
But in so many ways I'm still that kid, not sure exactly how to be emotionally intimate with a girl without feeling weak, not sure my work is good enough, not sure if the people who are clapping would really like me if they got to know me (page 2)
Demons would often try to make me feel some negative emotion, like hatred or contempt. Because the only way I could become vulnerable to them, is if I indulged in some negative emotion, in their presence. In the realm of hatred and anger, and other n...
Beauty is often spoken of as though it only stirs lust or admiration, but the most beautiful people are so in a way that makes them look like destiny or fate or meaning, the heroes of a remarkable story. Desire for them is in part a desire for a nobl...
I suspect you're thinking of Pascal,' Finkler said, finally.'Only he said the opposite. He said you might as well wager on God because that way, even if He doesn't exist, you've nothing to lose. Whereas if you wager against God and He does exist...' ...
She had all day every day to figure out some decent and satisfying way to live, and yet all she ever seemed to get for all her choices and all her freedom was more miserable. The autobiographer is almost forced to the conclusion that she pitied herse...
In French culture, the best way of buying time or getting off the hook entirely in a thorny personal situation is to claim that it’s complicated. The French did not invent love, but they did invent romance, so they’ve had more time than any other...
I rode all day. I cried all night. The moon didn’t glow. The sun didn’t rise. A comet blazed Between my eyes. West and South, Wind and rain. Every way is Just the same. Pray give me a box To hide inside. Pray give me a spade To dig my own grave.
In this country, you look at a person, and you know them. It is the inside-out way the people of this country wear their soul. In their eyes you can find civilisations of honesty or sweeping fields of lies. It's taken some getting used to but now Asa...
Many of the best fantastic stories begin in a leisurely way, set in commonplace surroundings, with exact, meticulous descriptions of an ordinary background, much as in a 'realistic' tale. Then a gradual - or it may be sometimes a shockingly abrupt - ...
Everything 'happens'. People can 'do' nothing. From the time we are born to the time we die things happen, happen, happen, and we think we are doing. This is our normal state in life, and even the smallest possibility to do something comes only t...
Even putting aside the culturally indoctrinated terror that someone in America will assume that two men engage in sodomy behind barely closed doors, there simply isn't an elegant way of asking someone of your gender to hang out for the first time.
You can’t hold it in forever,” Colton said, apropos of nothing. “Yes, I can.” I had to. “You’ll go crazy. It’ll come out, one way or another.” “Better crazy than broken.” I wasn't sure where that came from, hadn't thought it or me...
The USPS is the only place in the world where you will find a black guy, a white guy, and a hispanic guy playing Filipino poker! And we love it that way!
In conclusion,' he said, 'one may safely say that is would be no sin if statesmen learned enough of history to realize that no system which implies control of society by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse.
When gangs took over the [abandoned public land in Philadelphia] and the neighborhood took a turn for the worse, horses became a way of saving lives. By getting boys interested in raising a horse rather than killing another human being, these cowboys...
I do know the sorrow of being ordinary, and that much of our life is spent doing the crazy mental arithmetic of how, at any given moment, we might improve, or at least disguise or present our defects and screw-ups in either more charming or more inti...
