In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognise such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious momen...
The society has instilled in us the importance of coupling and downplayed on singlehood as a form of disease. Business institutions rake money for family needs and wants especially on birthing and its sustainable needs demanding stable finances. But ...
There are those wonderful moments of clarity in life when one is reminded how irreparably flawed we humans are. Once, when I was nineteen, on the subway in Boston I lost my balance slightly and bumped into an elderly woman. I quickly apologized and s...
I try to stay fit and eat healthily, but I am not anxious to starve myself and become unnaturally thin. I don’t find that look attractive on women and I don’t want to become part of that trend. It’s unhealthy and it puts too much pressure on wo...
Been eating candies, have you?" "You sent those?" She kept her mouth closed as much as possible. "Of course." He picked up the brown bad of candy on the table. "What's your..." He trailed off as he weighed the bad in his hands. "Didn't I give you thr...
All the greatest blessings are a source of anxiety, and at no time should fortune be less trusted than when it is best; to maintain prosperity there is need of other prosperity, and in behalf of the prayers that have turned out well we must make stil...
The revolutionary woman knows the world she seeks to overthrow is precisely one in which love between equal human beings is well nigh impossible. We are still part of the ironical working-out of this, our own cruel contradiction. One of the most comp...
Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a gen...
This obsession is a curious thing. Sometimes wonder about the merits of devoting so much of myself to a singular climbing objective. Much of the time it beats me down, leaves me hanging my head in despair. But then there are the moments that bring me...
It will all become clear to you when you grow up,’ he said, 'It’s an amusing idea, of course, a nice play on words. A female wizard! You might as well invent a male witch!’ 'Warlocks,’ said Esk. 'Pardon me?’ 'My granny says men can’t be w...
I have this theory, that this will be the only city that future archaeologists find, Las Vegas. The dry climate will preserve it all and teams of scientists in the year 5000 will carefully sweep and scrape away the sand to find pyramids and castles a...
All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, o...
Nowadays I’m really cranky about comics. Because most of them are just really, really poorly written soft-core. And I miss good old storytelling. And you know what else I miss? Super powers. Why is it now that everybody’s like “I can reverse th...
Whenever the sadness got too much, I would hire a rickshaw and go to the Upper Bazaar. Those little rickshaw trips to the market and back, shopping for lipsticks and imitation Gucci bags and wind-chimes and what not, are some of my happiest memories ...
Pity the nation whose people are sheep, and whose shepherds mislead them. Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced, and whose bigots haunt the airwaves. Pity the nation that raises not its voice, except to praise conquerors a...
If you can sustain your interest in what you’re doing, you’re an extremely fortunate person. What you see very frequently in people’s professional lives, and perhaps in their emotional life as well, is that they lose interest in the third act. ...
Growing up is a process that never ends. It isn't a point you attain so you can say, Hooray, I'm grown up. Some people never grow up. And nobody ever finishes growing. Or shouldn't. If you stop you might as well quit. What I have to tell you is that ...
When I heard of the shady tactics of the Moonies, my initial indignation was modified by empathy. I remembered only too well all the innocuous-sounding "fronts" operated by Evangelicals in order to witness to sinners, e.g., coffee houses, concerts, p...
If T. S. Eliot had stayed in St Louis, he would never have held that April was the cruelest month. Well, unless he was a Browns fan. At this moment, in the ragged middle of February, it begins: beneath the snow, roots quicken. In the Deep South, alre...
Princess, you have decided to follow the hard path. I cannot promise you the life a royal princess deserves,' he began slowly. 'I am a wandered myself, stuck in an eternal search. I am a vagabond who doesn't know where I am going. My past beckons my ...
Peace is the number one beautiful ornament you can wear, I really believe that. They say you should always wear a smile, but I don't believe that you should "always" wear a smile, seriously, you're going to look stupid! But peace, you should always c...