Once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search for work in the cities, but the girls stay home, become leaders in the community, and pass on what they’ve learned. If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, i...
I'm not really silly enough to think that chocolate solves anything. But it calms me. It's a soothing assurance, that this hectic life I have worked myself into is also full of wonderful surprises and unexpected sweetness. It reminds me that a hefty ...
Religious teachings say that animals don't have souls, but I don't believe that. Our pets cherish our every move, and wait patiently for us to return home from a day's work. Our pets would give their lives for us in a heartbeat and not ask for anythi...
I’m convinced that her obsession with Jesus was far more romantic than spiritual. I think she was actually attracted to him. I sincerely thought that one day while out on a grocery run, she would find some skinny, bearded, out-of-work Foote guy on ...
Maybe I’ll never be able to figure out what I’m passionate about. But when I choose something, it has to be something that when I wake up it’s the first thing I think about, and it’s also the last thing I think about before I go to sleep. I r...
Christian writers, whether they like it or not, do not simply write for themselves; for good or ill, readers will see their work as reflecting Jesus Christ and his church. And if only for this reason - though there are other reasons - one must take g...
I'm speaking of the character of human beings, not what they believe in. I'm speaking of those who won't accept a useless life just because they were born to it. I mean those who would be something better. They work, they sacrifice, they do things......
But-when you really think about it-that emotional support only applies to the experience of living in public. We don't have ways to quantify ideas like "amazing" or "successful" or "lovable" without the feedback of an audience. Nobody sits by himself...
It can pay off, being a hack. Given the depraved state of American culture, a slick dude can make millions being a hack. But even if you succeed, you lose, because you've sold out your Muse, and your Muse is you, the best part of yourself, where your...
Almost everyone can remember losing his or her virginity, and most writers can remember the first book he/she put down thinking: I can do better than this. Hell, I am doing better than this! What could be more encouraging to the struggling writer tha...
We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get...
'A hundred and seventy two multiplied by thirteen,' Tyler gasped. 'Two thousand two hundred and thirty six.' 'You're not supposed to bloody tell me. I'm trying to distract myself.' He opened one eye and glared at Haris. 'How come you can still think ...
Why is it that the musical public is seemingly so reluctant to consider a musical composition as, possibly, a challenging experience? When I hear a new piece of music that I do not understand I am intrigued - I want to make contact with it again at t...
Do not mock my baby." He pulls away and strokes his palm over he seat. "She was my first love." "Well your current ... er ... girl, is getting jealous with all the attention you're paying your first love, and she has orifices you can stick things in ...
We're not gods, Julia. We're helpers. That's all. People have called us terrible things in the past. But that was only because they didn't understand us. That understanding is for the future, a time not long from now. You may live to see it. Then per...
Charles Lathrop Pack, president of the American Tree Association, told how Rogers gave him advice in handling an educational campaign in tree planting. 'Will Rogers told me,' said Pack, 'that I was on the wrong track in trying to educate people to th...
For that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range of men, yet one the poor brutes we dominate know only too well. I felt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow, and suddenly confronted by the work of a dozen busy navvies digging th...
I had a dream about you. You were saving your love for another man, so I gave you a bigger Ziploc bag to save it in, because if you’re going to make that relationship work, you’ve got to give more than what you gave to me. Later I regretted givin...
Until we embrace our mutual brokenness, our work with low-income people is likely to do more harm than good. I sometimes unintentionally reduce poor people to objects that I use to fulfill my own need to accomplish something. I am not okay, and you a...
Here's an example: someone says, "Master, please hand me the knife," and he hands them the knife, blade first. "Please give me the other end," he says. And the master replies, "What would you do with the other end?" This is answering an everyday matt...
There's a boy whose affection I am determined to hunt down and kill. It used to be material objects I felt I needed to be happy. It would make me feel stable if I had him. If I had someone like him, it would prove that I'm stable, and then I wouldn't...
