Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or wrongly, that the doubtful honor of a brief transit through a sorry world hardly called for effusiveness, even when the path was suddenly irradiated at some half-way point by daybeams rich as...
That is what is marvelous about school, she realized: when you are in school, your talents are without number, and your promise is boundless. You ace a math test: you will one day work for NASA. The choir director asks you to sing a solo at the holid...
Because of this false idea, they devised an aesthetic belief in making the exterior of an object a reflection of the practical functions of the interior and of the constructive idea. Yet these analyses of utility and necessity that, according to thei...
The game jostled back and forth, and then came the final inning. Some player named Casey came to bat, like his teammates, looking like a rock. Lightning ripped through the air as rain came down in sheets. The scoreboard said the horses were beating t...
Does anyone ask a painter -- even the painter himself -- why he paints? Now me, I painted... used to... whatever I saw that was beautiful. It had to be beautiful to me, through and through, before I would paint it. And I used to be a pretty simple fe...
There were many deficits in our swamp education, but Grandpa Sawtooth, to his credit, taught us the names of whole townships that had been forgotten underwater. Black pioneers, Creek Indians, moonshiners, women, 'disappeared' boy soldiers who deserte...
She’s such a bitch,” Tina says, which I find a little contradictory, but overall quite true. “She’s got to be in charge of everything.” I sit next to her. “Well, I guess. But in business, that’s leadership.” Tina stares at me for a se...
The ultimate singularity is the Big Bang, which physicists believe was responsible for the birth of the universe. We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single point and for no discernible reason. Th...
The teaching of the sexual tantras all come down to one point. Although desire, of whatever shape or form, seeks completion, there is another kind of union than the one we imagine. In this union, achieved when the egocentric model of dualistic thinki...
To all those who still wish to talk about man, about his reign or his liberation, to all those who still ask themselves questions about what man is in his essence, to all those who wish to take him as their starting-point in their attempts to reach t...
This book says 'life isn't fair' and I'm telling you, one and all, you better believe it. I got a fat spoiled son�he's not gonna nab Miss Rheingold. And he's always gonna be fat, even if he gets skinny he'll still be fat and he'll still be spoiled ...
At one point in the story, following a brazen daytime bank robbery, Electro is shown escaping from the authorities by climbing up the side of a building, as easily as Spider-Man . . . we see one observer exclaim, "Look!! That strangely-garbed man is ...
Porn is now so deeply embedded in our culture that it has become synonymous with sex to such a point that to criticize porn is to get slapped with the label anti-sex. … But what if you are a feminist who is pro-sex in the real sense of the word, pr...
Inside me there was everything I had believed was outside. There was, in particular, the sun, light, and all colors. There were even the shapes of objects and the distance between objects. Everything was there and movement as well… Light is an elem...
It’s funny how one summer can change everything. It must be something about the heat and the smell of chlorine, fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle, asphalt sizzling after late-day thunderstorms, the steam rising while everything drips around it. Somet...
Everything about it was false. Right then, in that office, with the realization that no one knew the truth about my life, my thoughts about the world were shaken. Like driving along a bumpy road and losing control of the steering wheel, tossing you-j...
I was recalling that other world in which it had thrilled me, in a way, the surprise of thinking that I could be a person who would betray Daniel. Now I wondered if Daniel could surprise himself, could surprise me, by being such a person too. Would h...
He took the pen and book from her and faltered. “Just write anything – anything trivial that won't matter if it comes to pass.” “Erm...” God, he was useless at this. Elena's hair turned blue. “Hey!” “What?” “I don't want blue hair...
In truth, he had always considered the sight of men eating croissants slightly ridiculous, especially at the beginning, when for the first bite they had to maneuver the point of the crescent into their mouths. No matter what a person did, he ended up...
A man journeyed to a place Where the road caused him to ponder, Should he travel the wide, clear road? Or should he venture up the other? The wide road was more often traveled, It was level and easy and clear. The narrow one seemed barely a path, Wit...
When compared to the fact that he might very well be dead by this time tomorrow, whether he was courageous or not today was pointless, empty. When compared to the fact that he might be dead tomorrow, everything was pointless. It just didn't make any ...
