Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I don't know how to write a novel in the world of cellphones. I don't know how to write a novel in the world of Google, in which all factual information is available to all characters. So I have to stand on my head to contrive a plot in which the characters lose their cellphone and are separated from technology.
Your kids are launched. You love your work but you understand how to place it in the panorama of the rest of your life. There's this line in the book, and when I wrote it I thought yes, that's it - if you think of life as a job, maybe by the time you get to, say, in my case, 60, you've finally gotten good at it.
A friend and I flew south with our children. During the week we spent together I took off my shoes, let down my hair, took apart my psyche, cleaned the pieces, and put them together again in much improved condition. I feel like a car that's just had a tune-up. Only another woman could have acted as the mechanic.
The plane seems exultant now, even arrogant. We did it, we did it! We're up, above you. We were dependant on you just now, prisoners fawning on you for favors, for wind and light. But now, we are free. We are up! We are off! Like someone singing ecstatically, climbing, soaring- a sustained note of power and joy.
The Wayshower is a compelling, multi-layered and complex spiritual journey about a guilt-ridden man searching to understand his connection to his guru J-R. Followers of the real-life guru, John-Roger, as well as a segment of new-thought seekers, will resonate with the messages and life lessons shared throughout.
Some things come with their own punishments. Like bedrooms with built-in cupboards. They would all learn more about punishments soon. That they came in different sizes. That some were so big they were like cupboards with built-in bedrooms. You could spend your whole life in them, wandering through dark shelving.
I believe that patterns tend to repeat themselves and there are connections between the past and the present. There is the old proverb that reads, You cant know where youre going if you dont know where youve been. For me, history is like that. When you take history and combine it with myth, then you get mystery.
From a biological viewpoint, patriarchal religion denied women the natural rights of every other mammalian female: the right to choose her stud, to control the circumstances of her mating, to occupy and govern her own nest, or to refuse all males when preoccupied with the important business of raising her young.
Treating only terminal cancer patients, the Rand (anti-cancer) vaccine produced objective improvement in 35% of 600 patients while another 30% demonstrated subjective improvement. FDA stopped the vaccine's use in a federal court hearing where neither the cancer patients nor their doctors were allowed to testify.
The summer following the winter that my mother took off into something called Women's Land for what I could only guess would be all eternity, my father decided that there was no choice but for him to quit his despised job and take me and my brother to the beach for at least the entire summer and possibly longer.
In order to live as we were designed to live, we must be in pursuit not simply of manhood but of godly masculinity. That begins by being men who are rightly related to God, who understand what it means to fear him, and who respond to that fear by being alert, standing firm in the faith, and being men of courage.
Rather than exist each day in some dull, boring habitual manner, move into action on a big idea. Everyone is on the brink of possibility. Your responsibility is to discover what that possibility is for you. Ideas can turn you on, they can wind you up. The right idea can and will add a new dimension to your life.
Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning and purpose to our lives.
If you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No: When your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it.
She could ask for anything, she thought dizzily, anything--an end to pain or world hunger or disease, or for peace on earth. But then again, perhaps these things weren't in the power of angels to grant, or they would already have been granted. And perhaps people were supposed to find these things for themselves.
Are you implying that shreds of my reputation remain intact?" Will demanded with mock horror. "Clearly I have been doing something wrong. Or not something wrong, as the case may be." He banged on the side of the carriage. "Thomas! We must away at once to the nearest brothel. I seek scandal and low companionship.
James, you are all the family I have. I would die for you. You know that. I would die without you. If it were not for you, I would be dead a hundred times over these past five years. I owe you everything, and if you cannot believe I have empathy, perhaps you might at least believe I know honor--honor, and debt--
That was enterprising," Will sounded nearly impressed. Nate smiled. Tess shot him a furious look. "Don't look pleased with yourself. When Will says 'enterprising' he means 'morally deficient.'" "No, I mean enterprising," said Will. "When I mean morally deficient, I say, 'Now, that's something I would have done'.
the [coat] rack above his head like a javelin. On the other side of the door was Jace. He blinked. "Is that a coatrack?" Jordan slammed the coatrack down on the ground and sighed. "If you'd been a vampire, this would have been a lot more useful." "Yes," said Jace. "Or, you know, just someone with a lot of coats.
This thing you carry inside you, I don't know what it is. I don't know where you got it. But Harry, the past is the past. You are alive today. That is all that matters. You must remember, because it is who you are, but as it is who you are, you must never, ever regret. To regret your past is to regret your soul.
She gave me a pledge card, a card promising an annual gift of $5, $10, or $25 toward the support of the Unity mission. I filled it out under the hot light of the projector. The name and address spaces were much too short, unless you wrote a very fine hand or unless your name was Ed Poe and you lived at 1 Elm St.
If you want to live an authentic, meaningful life, you need to master the art of disappointing and upsetting others, hurting feelings, and living with the reality that some people just won't like you. It may not be easy, but it's essential if you want your life to reflect your deepest desires, values, and needs.
In some ways I feel sorry for racists and for religious fanatics, because they so much miss the point of being human, and deserve a sort of pity. But then I harden my heart, and decide to hate them all the more, because of the misery they inflict and because of the contemptible excuses they advance for doing so.
Most of all I grieve for my soul because even though I do, finally, believe there is a God, and that I have met him, I do not know if he has given me an immortal soul, but only one that was to last me as long as my body lasted. I do not know if when the last page of my book is closed, that will be the end of me.
If I had to make a choice between only writing about sports or only writing about music, I would probably write about music. I'm not sure why that is. There seems to be more to write about with music, just because it's more of a splintered thing. There's more subgenres. With sports, it's more objective in a way.
During the war one accepted indifferent after-dinner coffee as a necessity, but when, after the war, one sought to find the coffee remembered of days gone by, one found disappointment. I was looking for the rich after-dinner coffee that literally curdled cream if anyone was foolish enough to spoil it with cream.
Civil rights leaders, including my husband and Albert Turner, have fought long and hard to achieve free and unfettered access to the ballot box. Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge.
FACT: The Priory of Sion - a European secret society founded in 1099 - is a real organization. In 1975 Paris's Bibliothque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo da Vinci.
If you directly try to write about an idea, it will never be what you imagined. But if you're imagining through the building of sentences, through the characters, and paying attention to avoid ease and comfort yet still thinking about making the sentences work, you will get a shot at some real interesting stuff.
Cognitive skills such as big-picture thinking and long-term vision were particularly important. But when I calculated the ratio of technical skills, IQ, and emotional intelligence as ingredients of excellent performance, emotional intelligence proved to be twice as important as the others for jobs at all levels.
With a novel, you have to have a story. It's much more important to have it matter to the reader what happens to people, and it has to make sense and end in a way that is satisfying. So I spend a lot more time thinking about that. Then the writing itself usually is easier for me, because I know where it's going.
Men who have lived significant lives are men who never waited: not for money, security, ease, or women. Feel what you want to give most as a gift, to your woman and to the world, and do what you can to give it today. Every moment waited is a moment wasted, and each wasted moment degrades your clarity of purpose.
I'd like to emphasize that when a reader finishes a great novel, he will immediately begin looking for another. If someone loves your book, it increases the chance that he or she will look at mine. So there is no competition between writers. Another writer's success helps build a larger readership for all of us.
Believers often forget that most atheists used to be religious, that many non-believers used to think they had a personal relationship with their God and they used to 'feel' the power of prayer. They've since learned that it was all a farce, that their feelings were internal emotions and not some external force.
We still dislike hypocrites. It's a very American characteristic. We still like people who have ideas and who are willing to stand up for what they believe in. We're very forgiving of failures and very willing to give people a second and third chance if they mean to do better and are sorry for what they've done.
Chocolate is an extraordinary source of key stress-fighting minerals including: magnesium, iron, chromium, vanadium, copper, zinc, manganese, and phosphorus. These minerals favorably influence a woman's hormone system, which explains why chocolate has always been considered important for a woman's monthly cycle.
Karma is experience, and experience creates memory, and memory creates imagination and desire, and desire creates karma again. If I buy a cup of coffee, that's karma. I now have that memory that might give me the potential desire for having cappuccino, and I walk into Starbucks, and there's karma all over again.
We need to go back to our relationship with nature and understand that those trees are our lungs. The earth is recycling as our body. The rivers are our circulation. This air is our breath. And the star stuff, the carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen that comes from distant galaxies is actually the molecules of your body.
Aye, well, he'll be wed a long time," he said callously. "Do him no harm to keep his breeches on for one night. And they do say that abstinence makes the heart grow firmer, no?" "Absence," I said, dodging the spoon for a moment. "AND fonder. If anything's growing firmer from abstinence, it wouldn't be his heart.
Swimming is probably the ultimate of burnout sports. It's ironic because millions of people who swim as their regular exercise love the meditation aspect of it; you don't wind up with any orthopedic injuries. But when you swim at a world class level for hours and hours - the loneness of the long distance runner.
There are cultures in which it is believed that a name contains all a persons mystical power. That a name should be known only to God and to the person who holds it and to very few privileged others. To pronounce such a name either ones own or someone else's is to invite jeopardy. This it seemed was such a name.
Death is the great wrecking ball that destroys everything. Everything that we have done, everything that we are doing now, and all our plans for the future are completely and irrevocably destroyed when we die. Only teenagers live in that state of temporary insanity when they believe themselves immune from death.
When you fly across the country in an airplane the country seems vast; but it isn't vast. It's all connected by roads one can ride a bike down. If you watch the news and there's a tragedy at a house in Kansas, that guy's driveway connects with yours, and you'd be surprised by how few roads it takes to get there.
Be the buffalo. Wilma Mankiller, the first female principal chief of the Cherokee nation, once told me how the cow runs away from the storm while the buffalo charges directly toward it—and gets through it quicker. Whenever I'm confronted with a tough challenge, I do not prolong the torment. I become the buffalo.
As you begin to live in the present moment, you will experience a subtle but profound change. Worrying about the future will cease. A deep peace will enfold you, a peace that says, 'all is well. There is nothing to fear. Everything is unfolding according to plan, and you are being guided each step along the way.
In the face of death, especially violent death, things don't make sense anymore. So death is the dissolution of either physical form or psychological form. And when a form dissolves, always something shines through that had been obscured by the form. This is the formless One Life, the formless One Consciousness.
Food cannot take care of spiritual, psychological and emotional problems, but the feeling of being loved and cared for, the actual comfort of the beauty and flavour of food, the increase of blood sugar and physical well-being, help one to go on during the next hours better equipped to meet the problems (p. 124).
I've learned that courage and compassion are two sides of the same coin, and that every warrior, every humanitarian, every citizen is built to live with both. In fact, to win a war, to create peace, to save a life, or just to live a good life requires of us - of every one of us - that we be both good and strong.
As a Nobel Prize winner I cannot but regret that the award was never given to Mark Twain, nor to Henry James, speaking only of my own countrymen. Greater writers than these also did not receive the prize. I would have been happy - happier - today if the prize had been given to that beautiful writer Isak Dinesen.
There is a spiritual realm that encompasses all beings. Make friends with the angels, who will always be with you, although invisible. Make good use of their assistance while following your dreams and in all your creative pursuits through life. Your success and prosperity will come much easier and a lot quicker.