Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience. 'I feel really guilty about getting drunk last night,' we say, when in actual fact we feel no guilt whatsoever or, at least, we could to feel no guilt. When peop...
When I love, I love hard. You’re stuck with me for good. In your news report, you didn’t say what happened at the end of the bumpy ride. You didn’t say what it takes to break the curse. But I know. True Love. the kind that doesn’t go away bec...
Because she hides. She doesn't realize it, I don't think, but she hides. Sometimes right in front of you. She can be sitting across from you at a table in a nice dining room somewhere and the expression on her face changes suddenly and she disappears...
The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one's religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one's religion can affec...
Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before. And although you are physically by yourself, the haunting Demon never leaves you, that Demon being t...
So it persists, for many of us, hunger channeled into some internal circuitry of longing, routed this way and that, emerging in a thousand different forms. The diet form, the romance form, the addiction form, the overriding hunger for this purchase o...
Outside, the sunlight had turned pale lemon, but the studio remained cool. The white walls and white-tiled splashback behind the sink were made more clinical by the metal tables which looked as if they’d originally been intended for use in an opera...
I fell, as they say. Into love. I practiced saying it, first to myself, in my head. I believed in it. I did. I thought love and I bought it completely. I was excited by my belief but was careful not to let this excitement influence or manipulate the ...
What is more, sir," his lordship went on, "I believe I have a good idea of what you mean by 'professionalism.' It appears to mean getting one's way by cheating and manipulating. It appears to mean serving the dictates of greed and advantage rather th...
Here are two facts that should not both be true: - There is sufficient food produced in the world every year to feed every human being on the planet. - Nearly 800 million people literally go hungry every day, with more than a third of the earth's pop...
The way ran zigzag through a forest of pine which the bitter wind, still that morning, had turned to ice; every bough was adorned with lines of stalactite which shivered and glittered in the morning sun; every needle had a brilliant, vitreous case an...
I have had my mother's wing of my genetic ancestry analyzed by the tracing service and there it all is: the arrow moving northward from the African savannah, skirting the Mediterranean by way of the Levant, and passing through Eastern and Central Eur...
Heads swivel. Whispers erupt. As Kalist returns to his desk, bone cane by his side, he indulges, briefly, in horse practice, neighing lightly as he scrolls through a few mental images of busty secretary, Geiger, and pretty blond, Brichacek, rolling a...
There is one thing I can say for sure about fear, and that is this: until you face it, it will always be out there standing in your way, preventing you from reaching your full potential. It is only when you build up the courage to face it, when you f...
Even when alternative views are clearly wrong, being exposed to them still expands our creative potential. In a way, the power of dissent is the power of surprise. After hearing someone shout out an errant answer, we work to understand it, which caus...
Think about it. People in the sixteenth century - not to mention in Jesus's time - didn't look like this: perfect skin, perfect hairdos, spotless clothes. These are people who went to the bathroom in the street, for God's sake. There's no way they lo...
No art takes places without inspiration. Every artist also needs effective knowledge of his or her tools (e.g., does a certain brush function well with a particular kind of paint?). What’s more, artists need effective techniques for using those too...
I believe we write our own stories. And each time we think we know the end - we don't. Perhaps luck exists somewhere between the world of planning, the world of chance, and in peace that comes from knowing that you just can't know it all. You know, l...
There is also a dimension of patience which links it to a special reverence for life. Patience is a willingness, in a sense, to watch the unfolding purposes of God with a sense of wonder and awe, rather than pacing up and down within the cell of our ...
If he pursues women infront of you, you are worth more than him. If you pursue a man, because of tactless spite, he is worth more than you. We're all entitled to live to the truths in our hearts, some won't understand it & that's ok, but it's never &...
I'd love to, she finally said,"on one condition." I steadied myself, hoping it wasn't something too awful. "Yes?" "You have to promise that you won't fall in love with me." I knew she was kidding me by the way she laughed, and I couldn't help but bre...
