She was not quite as arresting in photographs as she was in the flesh, for her beauty was sprung directly from her soul, and proved that physical features count little unless they are illumined from w...
Nobody steals books except kleptomaniacs and university students. In most places you can leave a book on the street and come back for in the next day.
I saw how greatly he suffered the requirement of being clever. It separated him from his soul, and it didn’t get him anything other than a living.
All great discoveries...are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents.
Reason excludes faith," Alessandro responded, watching the blood-red mite as it made a dash for the rim. "It's deliberately limited. It won't function with the materials of religion. You can come clos...
To the sight of the swallows dying in mid air, Alessandro was finally able to add his own benediction. Dear God, I beg of you only one thing. Let me join the ones I love. Carry me to them, unite me wi...
Though the house itself was a fortress, still, Isaac Penn had thought to make sure that anyone who did manage to break in would be kept busy. Thus the vault was not a vault but rather a solid plug of...
In fact, one might make the case that New York would not have shone without its legions of contrary devils polishing the lights of goodness with their inexplicable opposition and resistance.
I'm not afraid, Rafi said. Why not? If I die tomorrow it will have been useless to have been afraid today.
The craftless anarchy of the Beat poets on the one hand, and the extreme control of Henry James on the other, suggest that for most human beings, just as both freedom and discipline are necessary in l...
To cite Montaigne, Nature always gives us happier laws than those we give ourselves.125
When finally the sky grew ink-black, the trees were visible only as their swaying branches blotted out the stars that crossed in blazing showers, as sometimes they do. The language of the stars, seldo...
What a place to put a city, right on the front line of absolute zero. No wonder a cow burned it down.
We have been so enthusiastic in our welcome as to be obsequious—to machines.
The best thing in the world is the truth. You find it out anyway, in the end, or sooner.
Only bad actors memorize lines. Good actors are perpetually writing them as they act.
Justice came from a fight amid complexities, and required all the virtues in the world merely to be perceived.
It was easy to be clever, but hard to look into the face of God, who is found not so much by cleverness as by stillness.
I don't have a system. Theology is a system. Not my theology. Then what is it? What is it? It's the overwhelming combination of all that I've seen, felt, and cannot explain, that has stayed with me an...
Because two propositions can be true at once, he said. Because the world is imperfect. Because we are imperfect. Because sometimes we're called upon to do terrible things. And because we define oursel...