Believe me, there’s nothing more brittle than human beauty. Encounter it. Savour it, by all means. Then watch how it turns to dust.
Because laughs never die away entirely, said Jamie. At least, if you believe in Marconi.
Be very careful of anything that looks too good to be true. Because if it looks too good to be true, that’s probably because that’s exactly what it is!
Be gentle...Many of the people who will come to see you are injured in spirit. They need to talk about things that have hurt them, or about things that they have done. Do not sit in judgement on them,...
Auden returns to one of his most important themes—that of repairing the tragic division in our lives, of making us whole again: While, as they lie in the grass of our neglect, So many long-forgotten o...
As she spoke, Isabel found herself thinking of the power of words. A single word, a phrase, a sentence or two could have such extraordinary power; could end a world, break a heart or, as in this case,...
As a general rule, making other people happy is one of the few things we can do with utter certainty that what we’re doing is the right thing.
Anthropology, she thought, like charity, surely begins at home.
Anna asked, Does that matter? What counts is the result, not the route by which one reaches the result. It’s often all a matter of luck. Ulf pondered this. The role of luck in human affairs had always...
And would you like to do that, Bertie? asked the psychotherapist. Bertie nodded. Dr. St. Clair scribbled a note on his pad. Fantasies of escape, he wrote. But why Iceland? 50. A Fiscally Responsible B...
And where does religion come into it? Are Protestant countries inherently less corrupt? No, she said. I don’t think it’s that simple. The issue, I suppose, is whether a culture stresses telling the tr...
And then there is the poet Kenneth Koch, who while travelling in Kenya came to a railroad crossing at which this sign was posted: One train may hide another. This was meant, of course, as a warning to...
And that is why we must answer her hatred with love. I can't say whether it will change her in her heart - it probably won't. But if it makes her feel even just a little bit better about herself, she...
A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bound us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?
A large bird, a buzzard perhaps, was circling on high on a current of air, a tiny, soaring point of black, looking for food, of course, as all of us did, in one way or another.
Has it ever occurred to people that love at first sight might be the rule rather than the exception? How many people fall in love gradually rather than on the first occasion they meet the other person...
…like the Greeks, I suppose. They made a big thing of hoodwinking the Germans, until recently, of course. The Germans suddenly turned round and told the poor Greeks that the game was up. Oh dear. … I...
…She had been perfectly happy before she had met him; indeed she had been even slightly happier then. So the inscription might more accurately have read: To remind you of how happy you’ve been in Edin...
Unconscionable–eating the food in a supermarket was simply theft, and could be distinguished from shoplifting only by virtue of the nature of the container used to remove the property.
There were occasions on which talking about distressing things merely kept those things alive, whereas not talking about them, consigning them to the past, forgetting them, allowed one to think about...