It was made clear to me that I wasn't supposed to trouble the moody Creator with any pesky questions about the eccentricities of His cosmic system....Thus my idea of heaven was that I got to spend ete...
I talk about going to [George W. Bush's] Inauguration and cryingwhen he took the oath, 'cause I was so afraid he was going to
Heaven, such as it is, is right here on earth. Behold: my revelation: I stand at the door in the morning, and lo, there is a newspaper, in sight like unto an emerald. And holy, holy, holy is the coffe...
And all they see is a mash-up of naked prisoners and an American girl in fatigues standing there giving a thumbs-up. As I write this, the United States of America is still a city on a hill; and it's s...
We were breathing sooty air. The soot was composed of incinerated glass and steel but also, we knew, incinerated human flesh. When the local TV news announced that rescue workers sorting through the r...
That story is proof of the theorem that then as today in Chicago, the mysterious equation of whiskey plus music equals what can only be called happiness.
It's such a hopeful, almost utopian word, that word phase. As if any minute, we would suffer some sort of Joad overload, come to our senses, and for heaven's sake, do something about our godforsaken s...
I guess if I had to pick a spiritual figurehead to possess the deed to the entirety of Earth, I'd go with Buddha, but only because he wouldn't want it.
But when I am around strangers, I turn into a conversational Mount St. Helens. I'm dormant, dormant, quiet, quiet, old-guy loners build log cabins on the slopes of my silence and then, boom, it's 1980...
There is anything to be learned from the conspiracy—other than when in doubt, bet on George Washington—it is to beware the pitfalls of certainty.
[Martin Luther King, Jr.] concluded the learned discourse that came to be known as the 'loving your enemies' sermon this way: 'So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the eyes of all my bro...
We are flawed creatures, all of us. Some of us think that means we should fix our flaws. But get rid of my flaws and there would be no one left.
To me, every plaque, no matter what words are inscribed on it, says the same magic informative thing: Something happened! The gum cost a dollar, but the story was free.
To Arendt’s point about post-revolution stability deriving from pre-revolutionary experience in self government, it’s worth remembering that two of Henry’s less chatty fellow burgesses became the firs...
The best part about being a nerd within a community of nerds is the insularity – it’s cozy, familial, come as you are. In a discussion board on the Web site Slashdot.org about Rushmore, a film with a...
Standing there at Powell’s grave, telling my nephew about a buried skull, I realize how much of our relationship revolves around body parts and severed heads. Once Owen learned to walk, we started pla...
My lips are chapped from the winds of change.
In other words, every cent the French government spent on guns for the Americans was another centime it would not have to spend on butter for the starving peasants who would one day storm Versailles.
I like that the Mall serves as our national Tuppaware, reliable and empty, waiting to be filled with potluck whatever.
History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.