Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately have. When th...
As I was fixing in the bathroom, I thought about how I used to tell my ex Anne that there was “no reality.” Light merely entered the eye and was translated into electrical signals which were translated into chemical signals translated into gestal...
There is a lovely feature of the American psyche which rejects the notion that there are victims. In America, attitude is a magical elixir that cures everything. People are supposed to believe that they create their realities, and are solely responsi...
Let me see,” Opal said. She quickly slurped up the rest of her lunch and then took the collar. She examined it very closely. Sure enough, she could see bits of evergreen fur pinched along the buckle strap. As she looked closer, she noticed somethin...
Good fences make good neighbors, and these were apparently good enough that they had not felt the need for razor wire at the top. I crested the fence, threw myself into the yard beyond, fell, rolled to my feet, and ran with the expectation of being g...
In spring, 1937, of course, families still rode the rails because of the Depression, which everyone said was already in the history books as the worst ever. The jobs still couldn’t be found, at least for most people. Everett itself—the smaller, p...
FRANCESCA You came in out of the night And there were flowers in your hands, Now you will come out of a confusion of people, Out of a turmoil of speech about you. I who have seen you amid the primal things Was angry when they spoke your name In ordin...
The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer ...
BRET She looked like a Parisian river.. JEMAINE What, dirty? BRET She looked like a chocolate eclair.. JEMAINE That's rare. BRET Her eyes were reflections of eyes.. JEMAINE Ohh, nice. BRET And the rainbows danced in her hair.. JEMAINE Oh yea. BRET Sh...
Christ knew that by bread alone you cannot reanimate man. If there were no spiritual life, no ideal of Beauty, man would pine away, die, go mad, kill himself or give himself to pagan fantasies. And as Christ, the ideal of Beauty in Himself and his Wo...
Kalganov ran back into the front hall, sat down in a corner, bent his head, covered his face with his hands, and began to cry. He sat like that and cried for a long time--cried as though he were still a little boy and not a man of twenty... 'What ...
Tal was looking at Hank when he said, "Just a moment. I want to hear it one more time." As they watched, Bernice found her way to Hank and Mary. She began to week openly, and spoke some quiet but impassioned words to them. Hank and Mary listened, as ...
Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don’t they look as if they were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of ...
The Islamic faith and ideology is at another pivotal moment in its history. Having survived for a thousand years or more after the Western Crusades it has been hauled back into the fire by some of its frustrated followers. Followers who have literall...
Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we wer...
Creatures, I give you yourselves," said the strong, happy voice of Aslan. "I give to you forever this land of Narnia. I give you the woods, the fruits, the rivers. I give you the stars and I give you myself. The Dumb Beasts whom I have not chosen are...
Appreciate What You Have" Just sitting, looking, thinking, Staring at the coffee which I was drinking, Oh, what a lucky person I must be, That God gave me sight to see. Then reading the news, I saw some more, That I still have hands to be able to dra...
I found that I could not contemplate an adult life in which books were not dominant. I wanted to live and work with them...I had to be able to take books from their places, run my finger over their backs, see how they opened, flick their corners stra...
The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. But here and there were warped boards and cracked ...
It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship!' Without the religion, without the archaic and flawed holy texts, there wouldn’t be anything for you to manufacture a 'relationship' with. Without the wars and forced conversions key to the religion’s...
My friends stood on the ground two feet below me, and miles away from understanding why I would want to sleep on a trailer platform... I couldn't possibly begin to explain what was only beginning to bud inside me: I wanted a home. I wanted to be at h...
