Today we live in a society that seems to be less and less concerned with reality. We drink instant coffee and reconstituted orange juice. We buy our vegetables on cardboard trays covered with plastic. But perhaps the most dehumanizing thing of all is...
But I think parents aren't teachers anymore. Parents -- or a whole lot of us, at least -- lead by mouth instead of by example. It seems to me that if a child's hero is their mother or father -- or even better, both of them in tandem -- then the rough...
There is some kiss we want with our whole lives, the touch of spirit on the body. Seawater begs the pearl to break its shell. and the lily, how passionately it needs some wild darling! At night, I open the window and ask the moon to come and press it...
I like to imagine, as a thought experiment, the day, perhaps not too far off, when a Republican president nominates a Supreme Court Justice married to someone of the same sex, maybe even with the sanction of 'orthodox' theology - with that gay Suprem...
I had never seen the view at this time before, at the very pinnacle of night when sunset was far behind us and dawn had not yet risen rosy-fingered from the horizon. The night was ashen, tones of granite and iron and heather in the ripples of the wav...
I likened her to the slender PSYCHÉ and judged that the perfection of her face ennobled everything unclean around her: The dusty hems of her bunched-up skirt, the worn straps of her nightshirt; the blackened soles of her bare feet [...] All this and...
Having shot down a number, some of which were anly wounded, the whole flock swept repeatedly around their prostrate companions, and again settled on a low tree, within twenty yards of the spot where I stood. At each successive discharge, though showe...
The extracellular genesis of cells in animals seemed to me, ever since the publication of the cell theory [of Schwann], just as unlikely as the spontaneous generation of organisms. These doubts produced my observations on the multiplication of blood ...
The Romans always wanted bread and circuses-food and entertainement! As we destroy their city, I will offer them both. Behold, a sample!" Someething dropped from the ceiling and landed at Percy's feet: a loaf of sandwich bread in a white plastic wrap...
I know this issue is very controversial. But unless and until it can be proven that an unborn child is not a human being, can we justify assuming without proof that it isn’t? No one has yet offered such proof; indeed, all the evidence is to the con...
On every job you do, you've got to raise your game. My ambition is to just get better and better every job you do - you should never stop trying to get better. You have to teach yourself new things - I don't think you necessarily learn them from othe...
I have known friendship love, parental love, romantic love, family love and unrequited love in my life time, but the only love that made a difference was self love. You don't need confirmation from the world or another person that you matter. You sim...
I find beauty in sadness, and peace... and a mystery waiting to be solved.. the more you unfold the mystery, the more you are mesmerized by the layers of mystery lying underneath.. and solitude becomes the perfect company for sadness.. but again, the...
What if you wake up one fine morning only to realize that the life you have been living since the last few days was nothing but a dream of yours? Would you go back to sleep then? I wake up each morning only to realize you're not by my side. And if th...
As a woman, I know you're young but you gotta hear it now,the most valuable part about you is your brain. Get an education,don't let anybody tell you that your body or the size that you wear or any of that bullshit matters because it doesn't. Your br...
My father never wanted me to be a writer. He didn't - he came to terms with it maybe two years before he died. He wanted me to be a weather girl because when I was growing up, there were very few Latinas on television, and in the early '70s when you ...
When we use these words and we talk about plants having a strategy to do this or wanting this or desiring this, we’re being metaphorical obviously. I mean, plants do not have consciousness. But, this is a fault of our own vocabulary. We don’t hav...
Our two peoples are sworn enemies,” he whispered. “You would not do it.” “Call me your enemy no more,” Jan bade him, drawing nearer. “I grow weary of our being enemies. The scars your talons left upon my back this autumn past are old scar...
I have had occasion to meet with, in convents for instance, literally saintly examples of practical charity, they have generally had the brisk, decided, undisturbed and slightly brutal air of a busy surgeon, the face in which one can discern no commi...
I admit at the beginning that 'popular religion,' 'demotic religion,' the pieties of the common folk, tends to sink to the lowest common denominator, be it in syncretizing saints with old, half-forgotten pagan godlings, or in preferring the nasal whi...
My husband recently made me try on a bikini. A bikini is not so much a garment as a cloth-based reminder that your parts have been migrating all these years. My waist, I realized that day in the dressing room, has completely disappeared beneath my ri...