I remembered some of what I'd read in the past: the small group of the original Impressionists, including one woman-Berthe Morisot- who'd first banded together in 1874 to exhibit works in a style that...
He brought his great hand to rest on an early edition of Bram Stoker's novel and smiled, but said nothing. Then he moved quietly away into another section.
Besides, there are things you have to do for yourself, even if everyone else thinks you’re crazy.
And why should I do such a thing- tell you something that can only dismay you? Well, that is the nature of love: it is brutal in its demands.
A shame that these images had become iconic, a tune we were all tired of humming.
It was the beginning of that long bifurcation that became my life: Obey and hate yourself, survive. Disobey, redeem yourself, perish. I thought later how simply and quickly they had introduced that co...
It was a paradise of learning, and I prayed for eventual admission.
In my mortal life, I saw mainly those texts that the church sanctioned--the gospels and the Orthodox commentary on them, for example. These works were of no use to me, in the end.
I wondered if a novel could have the power to make something so strange happen in actuality.
Her lack of maidenly scruple would have amused me at another moment, but just now her face was so grimly determined that I could only wonder what she had in mind. Nothing could have been less seductiv...
For the first time, I had been struck by the excitement of the traveler who looks history in her subtle face.
For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history’s terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only...
Didn’t Catholicism deal with blood and resurrected flesh on a daily basis? Wasn’t it expert in superstition?
Didn’t Catholicism deal with blood and resurrected flesh on a daily basis? Wasn’t it expert in superstition? I somehow doubted that the hospitable plain Protestant chapels that dotted the university c...
As an adult I have often known that peculiar legacy time brings to the traveler: the longing to seek out a place a second time, to find deliberately what we stumbled on once before, to recapture the f...
I grant you that anyone who pokes around in history long enough may well go mad.
And I always return to the illusion that we are still together, and then -unwillingly- to the knowledge that you have made a hostage of my memory...
These atheist cultures were certainly diligent in preserving the relics of their saints.
That is the beauty of the solid Marxist education you did not have the privilege of receiving. Believe me, you can find labor issues in any topic if you look hard enough.
People seem to believe that despair is the same as anguish, but it is not. It's true that despair is surrounded by anguish, but at its core, despair is a silent, blank page.