The Actor, noticing a closed bookshop, dismounted from the horse which he tied to a street lamp. He woke up the bookseller and bought a Spanish grammar and dictionary. He set out again across town marveling at the way that the words of the foreign la...
It was always dear to me, this solitary hill, and this hedgerow here, that closes out my view, from so much of the ultimate horizon. But sitting here, and watching here, in thought, I create interminable spaces, greater than human silences, and deepe...
I cannot recall having believed, even as a child, that the purpose of reading fiction was to learn about the place commonly called the real world. I seem to have sensed from the first that to read fiction was to make available for myself a new kind o...
To trust in spite of the look of being forsaken; to keep crying out into the vast, whence comes no returning voice, and where seems no hearing; to see the machinery of the world pauselessly grinding on as if self-moved, caring for no life, nor shifti...
sebab mencintai tanah air, nak, adalah merasa jadi bagian dari sebuah negeri, merasa terpaut dengan sebuah komunitas, merasa bahwa diri, identitas, nasib, terajut rapat, dengan sesuatu yang disebut Indonesia, atau Jepang, atau Amerika. Mencintai sebu...
Could we see things always as we have sometimes seen them—and as one day we must always see them, only far better—should we ever know dullness? Greatly as we might enjoy all forms of art, much as we might learn through the eyes and thoughts of ot...
Before the nineteen-seventies, most Republicans in Washington accepted the institutions of the welfare state, and most Democrats agreed with the logic of the Cold War. Despite the passions over various issues, government functioned pretty well. Legis...
We are all connected -- I believed it then and believe it still now -- at least in an energetic sense. And who’s to say this energy is not real? We can’t see gravity, either, yet we don’t deny it. We can’t see magnetism, yet we don’t questi...
I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of...
And some day there will be nothing left of everything that has twisted my life and grieved it and filled me so often with such anguish. Some day, with the last exhaustion, peace will come and the motherly earth will gather me back home. It won't be t...
Last week my boss told me to rewrite a twenty-page proposal on engagement benchmarking. I turned it in and he wrote a note on the cover that just said, "No, no. Not this." I had no idea what he wanted, so I just put it off, and then when he came in t...
We all have to lead our own life, and we only have the one life, and the only people who can live life not according to their own desires are those who have no desires--which is the majority, actually. People can say what they like, they can speak of...
If a nuclear disaster occurred, and you had to live out those final painful days just stretched out somewhere thinking about your life--This is who I am. This is what I love. This is what I believe--who would you want hearing your whispers? Or perhap...
Doyle: "What is it now, then?" Cordelia: "Isn't java supposed to be a coffee?" Doyle: "Ready to abandon the the Web project?" Cordelia: "No way. We have a chance here to make contact with the millions of people out there who are glued to their comput...
Although secular fundamentalist “progressives” might believe in a future “golden age,” such an age does not exist. The future that they herald is merely one of gathering gloom and ever darkening clouds. This fate has ever been so for those wh...
You have terminated me,” one of them said in a strange, flat voice. “But I am one of many.” “Robots!” Iggy breathed, taking Total from Angel. “One of many, one of many, one of many,” the robot Eraser was saying. Now Nudge saw the red li...
A friend once told me that the real message Bram Stoker sought to convey in 'Dracula' is that a human being needs to live hundreds and hundreds of years to get all his reading done; that Count Dracula, basically nothing more than a misunderstood book...
He Is Not Dead I cannot say, and I will not say That he is dead. He is just away. With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand, He has wandered into an unknown land And left us dreaming how very fair It needs must be, since he lingers there. And you�...
I'm just being practial. I knew someday I might have to bare my throat to you. Pete and I discussed that very possibility. As for the danger and risk taking, that's what Pete pays me to do. And you and I both know he inteneds to get his money's worth...
You know what getting married is? It's agreeing to taking this person who right now is at the top of his form, full of hopes and ideas, feeling good, looking good, wildly interested in you because you're the same way, and sticking by him while he slo...
When your child is a little older, you can teach him about our tax system in a way that is easy to grasp. Offer him, say, $10 to mow the lawn. When he has mowed it and asks to be paid, withhold $5 and explain that this is income tax. Give $1 to his y...
