Now he asked, his voice as careful and unslurred as only a true alcoholic’s can be, whose turn it was to tell a tale.
Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. It has no plan, no point, no hidden mysteries that make up for the oh-so-obvious miseries and banalities.
He’d used a ladder to get three … maybe four meters … up on the bole of the tree. Built a sort of platform. For his feet. Broken the arrestor rods off … little more than spikes … then sharpened them....
Having sex or a domestic quarrel with the house monitors on is like undressing in front of a dog or cat … it gives you pause the first time, and then you forget about it.
For our race to achieve the true satori, for us to move to that next level of consciousness and evolution that so many of our philosophies proclaim, all facets of human endeavor must become conscious...
Duré smiled, obviously still puzzled. We all expected to triumph or die the first night, said the Consul. We hadn’t anticipated a long stay here. Brawne Lamia stood and brushed off her trousers. I’m g...
Do you think it's ready? I [Silenus, The Poet] asked. It's perfect... a masterpiece.Do you think it'll sell? I asked. No fucking way.
Dad, said Rachel, I’m going to ask you a question I’ve asked about a million times since I was two. Do you believe in God? Sol had not smiled. He had no choice but to give her the answer he had given...
Crawford reacted in the fashion of small towns immemorial – some tongues wagged constantly, some people could not keep the pity and pleasure at someone else’s misfortune out of their voices and gazes...
Clemens laughed until he began coughing again. Don’t you see, James? he said at last. You and I are only minor characters in this story about the Great Detective. Our little lives and endings mean not...
But this is human life: the war, the deeds, The disappointment, the anxiety, Imagination’s struggles, far and nigh, All human; bearing in themselves this good, That they are still the air, the subtle...
But love...of whom? I say at last. Of what? What great passion would forestall death?Her graceful eyebrow arches, You do not know? You, a poet?I do not know. I say as much.She leans forward so that I...
Arete is simply excellence and the striving for excellence in all things, said Odysseus. Arete simply means the act of offering all actions as a sort of sacrament to excellence, of devoting one’s life...
And it was one of these observers who designed the tests and simulations carried out on Old Earth during the last three centuries of its exile in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud to better explain our spec...
All this natural misery, Dr. Goodsir said suddenly. Why do you men have to add to it? Why does our species always have to take our full measure of God-given misery and terror and mortality and then ma...
Ah, yes, poverty, said Chatterjee and smiled as if the word had deeply ironic connotations. Indeed, there is much poverty here. Much squalor by Western standards. That must offend the American mind, s...
After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal pri...
Admiral, said Gladstone, is it absolutely necessary to destroy the singularity sphere as soon as the Ousters have penetrated our cordon sanitaire? Couldn’t we wait another few minutes to judge their i...
According to Bishop Edouard, the College of Cardinals has elected someone below the rank of monsignor for the first time in the history of the Church. This says that the new Pope is a Jesuit priest … ...
Head. The Core has devised a parasitic, organic device called the cruciform, she said. It … brings back … the dead. After a few generations, the humans will be retarded, listless, and without a future...