In the hollow steel-lined bin, my unfortunate eruption resonated such that it would have humiliated me if my first concern had been social acceptance. My first concern, however, was survival. At the moment, I didn’t have the capacity for embarrassment because terror filled me.
Nature frequently works to impress upon us our absurdity and thereby remind us that we are not the masters of the universe that we like to suppose we are.
I rarely drink, but there are times when even drinking too much is not enough.
At his passing, there was not even an eddy in the snow, neither the briefest glimpse of the occluded moon nor the faintest stirring through the trees. In this regard, her death, when sooner or later it came, would be like his: the world indifferent, turning smoothly onward toward the fascination of another dawn.
That’s life. Always something, more good than bad, but always interesting if you’re paying attention.
Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days for which we, in our dissatisfaction, so often yearn are already with us; all great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in this momentous day.
An elaborately jointed array of bones landed in my lap, spasming like a broken crab. My cry was every bit as manly as that of a young schoolgirl surprised by a hairy spider. I knocked the thing off me, onto the floor. It.
Dedicated Practitioners of Evil,” or DPEs.
Once a weapon was drawn, it was more likely to be used, and not always as wisely as you might expect to use it.
The dance of life occurred not yesterday or tomorrow, but only here at the still point that was the present. This truth is simple, self-evident, but difficult to accept, for we sentimentalize the past and wallow in it, while we endure the moment and in every waking hour dream of the future.
I couldn’t make up anything as weird as what is.
He saw that, without exception, human beings were driven by self-interest.
If you’re still, and if you don’t hope too much, peace will come to you. It’s a grace.
All time – past, present, future – existed in the instant the universe came into being, but also in all the infinite number of universes that exist alongside one another. Time is one big ocean encompassing all those possible worlds. And so for those who truly understand time and the uses to which it can be put, not only the past and future can be visited, but so can universes floating far, far away from theirs in the sea of time.
Envy, Bob. Envy eats them alive. If you had money, they’d envy you that. But since you don’t, they envy you for having such a good, bright, loving daughter. They envy you for just being a happy man. They envy you for not envying them. One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren’t happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others.
All of us are cowards at some time in our lives...
I swung up and into this most inadequate of hidey-holes and lowered the lid, closing myself in the feed bin with the hope that its name wouldn’t prove to be as apt now as it had been in the past.
Even someone like Mrs. Bonnaventura, who had lived a mostly blameless life, when ushered into the awesome presence of the Creator of the infinite universe and also of the butterfly, would discover ten thousand fearsome new layers of meaning in the word humility.
If an eighty-six-year-old woman has been clear-seeing from a young age, she will have gone through a lot of life developing a keen eye for snares and pitfalls, an ear for deceit, and a good nose for knavery. And by such an age, a smart woman with no illusions is one to whom courage comes far more readily than it does to those young people who don’t yet know the world for what it is.
After a thoughtful silence, she said, “If a man is a beast, he’s a beast in his heart, and that’s not the kind of heart that beats in you.