The best of the New Critics were masters of close readings. Cleanth Brooks, for example, in 1937 wrote a detailed commentary on The Waste Land which is still a model of critical helpfulness. The fact that certain basic insights in the past generation...
The language of Shakespeare is the first and lasting affirmation of the great changes that took place in the sixteenth century, leaving the Middle English of Chaucer far behind. In many ways, the language has changed less in the 400 years since Shake...
When you forget what you ultimately stand for, you rejoice in blinding ignorance. Missing the bigger picture for the near pleasure is what humans and all living beings stand for. I guess there is no alternate way either. Because it is after all a gam...
There are many ways to honor America. This book is mine. I have completed this journey of self-education in the belief that the most terrifying possibility since 9/11 has not been terrorism--as frightening as that is--but the prospect that Americans ...
Acting on our interests refines our understanding of what we are good at and what we value. The experiences we have along the way sometimes introduce us to new values that enhance and enlarge our vision. The lessons we learn through habits of action ...
Hands still in the air, Jordan reached back and gently caressed her cheek. Dying for this woman would be no hardship. He'd die a thousand times over if it would take away her pain. Since he had every intention of living a long and healthy life with E...
I have come to realize that truly rich people are rich not because they are frugal or they chose to be frugal, but because they are so grateful, contented and full of self-worth that they don't have to prove anything to anyone with material possessio...
Tell me I’m enough for you,” he demanded. “Can you be with me even though I’m so wrong?” She was satin and warmth. The way she squeezed, he was desperate to move, pound, inject her. She looked at him. “This is. You are. I can’t do this ...
If you didn't want to know things, you didn't have to know them. Things didn't become facts until someone actually spoke them. Until then, you could just go on acting just the way you had been acting and even if you suspected there was something that...
I want to spend the rest of my days with you by my side. I'm on this earth to breathe your air. There's no one else I want to surrender to, fight for, be with. No one has ever made me feel the way you do." He paused. "You scare the shit out of me at ...
Like attracts like. It'll surprise you as long as you live. Choose a love and work to make it true, and somehow something will happen, something you couldn't plan, will come along to move like to like, to set you loose, to set you on the way to your ...
Anyone who says, “Here’s my address, write me a poem,” deserves something in reply. So I’ll tell a secret instead: poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes, they are sleeping. They are the shadows drifting across our ceilings the moment before...
People change, you know. They grow, they shrink, they bald, they get zits, they wrinkle. But each person is attractive in their own way, and they’re attractive to someone else. No matter how much you change out here”—she motions to, well, all o...
There’s no way to really preserve a person when they’ve gone and that’s because whatever you write down it’s not the truth, it’s just a story. Stories are all we’re ever left with in our head or on paper: clever narratives put together fr...
o There’s no way to really preserve a person when they’ve gone and that’s because whatever you write down it’s not the truth, it’s just a story. Stories are all we’re ever left with in our head or on paper: clever narratives put together ...
The theology of the cross is not a cerebral thing; it profoundly affects our Christian experience and existence, making demands upon our whole lives and turning theology into something which controls not just our thoughts, but the very way in which w...
We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws...
You want me to lie for you?" Aidan asked, watching them. " in me, the way you did in my mama." Aidan wheezed and sputtered. What did she know 'bout him and Miz Garnett? "Please." She sounded like a young gal and a grown woman too. " in me." "That's t...
Never take both hands off the pump. As an entrepreneur, you need to be on constant lookout for opportunity, and that will involve risk. But you minimize those risks by keeping one hand on the pump that is producing for you.
The cold logic of mid-twentieth-century atheism has now given way to an era of renewed 'spirituality,' but it is an awakening more thrapeutic than pious, more attuned to self-expression than self-denial. It is now fashionable to talk about God, thoug...
Something about her in this moment strikes him as being familiar. The motion of her arm? The shape of her hand? The wrinkle of her upper lip? He does not know. Nor does he have any way to tell whether what he is sensing is a fragment of memory, a fra...
