The fact is that very few of us know what words mean; fewer still take the trouble to enquire. We calmly, we carelessly assume that our minds are identical with that of the writer, at least on that point; and then we wonder that there should be misun...
Well,’said Ernest, ‘by some strange coincidence I know this story.’ Boddichek was not good at irony. ‘I knew that there was that possibility,’ he said, ‘but we have a great new way to treat it, and I thought you might want to reread it be...
People with family histories of alcoholism tend to have lower levels of endorphins- the endogenous morphine that is responsible for many of our pleasure responses- than do people genetically disinclined to alcoholism. Alcohol will slightly raise the ...
When we lost something precious, and we'd looked and looked and still couldn't find it, then we didn't have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we grow up, and we were free to travel around the ...
And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four h...
The gravel road widened into a large turnaround where three similar looking and designed brothels sat waiting for customers. They were called Sheila's Front Porch, Tawny's High Five Ranch and Miss Delilah's House of Holies. "Nice," Rachel said as we ...
If Laura was so prolific with poems, and in truth she was, then what was the problem with Megan’s request? Couldn’t Laura, with a little doing, keep stringing together line after line of words and construct, in time, a novel? It seemed logical, b...
One guy yelled at me, 'You stupid bitch, how do you live like that with nothing in your brain?' Well, that did it. I wasn't going to put up with that. Ok, I'm not so smart. I'm working class. But it's the working class that keeps the world running, a...
I wonder where we are going," I said. "Wherever the way is going," Exi replied calmly. "But where do you suppose the way is going?" "Wherever we go." "That doesn't really make sense, does it?" "Oh, yes. Quite good sense." "Why?" "Do you know any meth...
I faced people from all walks of business who fully disregarded design (though they were completely influenced by it). I also met fine artists who drowned in their own work and the dense creative universe in their minds. Then I met designers. And ins...
I had done something wrong. I shouldn't have shown him. But he had known, hadn't he? What had I done? I retreated quickly down the aisle, pushing my way through the double doors into the porch, where I swiped one of my eyes dry. For a long moment I s...
Anyone I love takes away part of my freedom, but in that case it is I who wished it; and there is so much pleasure in loving that one gladly sacrifices something for its sake. Any one who loves me takes away all my freedom. Anyone who admires me (as ...
I don't know if anyone's ever told you this", he begins. He doesn't blush, and his eyes don't dart away. Instead I find myself staring into a pair of oceans - one perfect, the other blemished by that tiny ripple. "You're very attractive." I've been c...
When we are rich and famous and powerful, we do not want to die. On the other hand, if we are miserable and suffering, we want to die and leave it all. But can joy or misery last forever? There is a saying, "All celebrations must end sometime." Any w...
Georgie, I've got it," she said. "I've guessed what it means." Now though Georgie was devoted to his Lucia, he was just as devoted to inductive reasoning, and Daisy Quantock was, with the exception of himself, far the most powerful logician in the pl...
Ami leaned into his side and inhaled the fresh scent of man. “Uh, no. Sometimes my biological clock threatens to explode like a ticking bomb, that’s all. Rachel is so lucky. Nat is a doll. Doug adores them. Don’t mind me, I’m just wishing my ...
It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them - and then they leap. I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnosti...
Jesus told you all that I hid the spiritual wisdom from the mind and thus it could only be accessed from the heart. And yet men become “learned” in the Bible and study and pull it apart and attempt to put it back together again. Just like the old...
The Lady Amalthea beckoned, and the cat wriggled all over, like a dog, but he would not come near... She was offering her open palm to the crook-eared cat, but he stayed where he was, shivering with the desire to go to her"...[later, Molly asked the ...
You see," said Colon, "thieves are here. I mean, it's . They're a certain amount of thieving. Not that they do much these days, mind you. If you pay them a little premium every year they give you a card and leave you alone. Saves time and effort all ...
You both passed out,” Percy said. “I don’t know why, but Ella told me not to worry about it. She said you were…sharing?” “Sharing,” Ella agreed. She crouched in the stern, preening her wing feathers with her teeth, which didn’t look l...
