By Mathew Goodsell.
By Mathew Goodsell.
Sandman:The Kindly Ones: Rose Walker: "Have you even been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnrable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love." --Neil Gaiman
Behind the Shadow: The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see, and to see, we have only to look. Life is so generous a giver but we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendour, woven of love, by wisdom, with power: Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the Angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trail, a sorrow, or a duty: believe me, that angel's hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an over-shadowing Presence. Our joys, too: be not content with them as joys, they too conceal diviner gifts. Life is so full of meaning and of purpose, so full of beauty - beneath its covering - that you will find that earth but cloaks your heaven. courage, then to claim it: that is all. but courage you have: and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home. ---Fra Giovanni.
Horrorscopes - How to tell a Bastard by his Starsign: Gemini is particularly hard to spot. He'll be standing in front of you, talking at you in one instant and he'll be a blur in the distance the next. This is a real problem if you want to shoot him. How to entrigue one: Don't require sympathy. Or consistency. Or fidelity. Or company. Don't ask where he is going. Or when he might be coming back. or if he's coming back. And don't ever ask anything more emotionally demanding than 'How are you?' or 'Where did you get your shoes?'. ---Adele Lang and Susi Rajah.
The Midnight Club: Yet just before he jumped he remembered back to the day he had first left the Louvre: his joy, his excitement , and most of all, his love. And he wondered where it had all gone, and if Teresa had as much to do with what he had lost as he believed. For he understood in that moment that it was his love that had made Teresa wonderful in his eyes. He understood that something inside him- and not just the outside circumstances- had changed. But what had that change been? It seemed obvious. He had been an angel and had become mortal. He had been divine and had become human. But he wondered, as he stood on the rail of the bridge above the freezing water if it was not possible for a human to become divine, if it was not a two-way process. It was a funny thought, one he had never had before. But it touched him in some deep part of his soul. Yes, he felt he had a soul again. He climbed off the rail and back onto the main part of the bridge. He looked at the sky, seeing the stars shine through the smog above the city, and he felt blessed. Herme left the bridge. He went to rediscover what he had lost. He set out to find himself. ---Christopher Pike
Arctic Dreams: How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light. --Barry Lopez
Out of Solitude When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice,solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate now knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. --Henri Nouwen
Alice in Wonderland: Be what you would seem to be -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise. --Lewis Carroll
The Hitch Hiker's Guide To the Galaxy Trilogy
Written
by Douglas Adams this was originally a radio broadcast that was so popular that
Douglas Adams decided to write a book for it. The books are:1. Hitch Hiker's
Guide To the Galaxy, 2. The Resturant at the End of the Universe, 3.Life, the
Universe and Everything, 4. So Long and Thanks For All The Fish. They are hilariously
funny. The characters are as follows: Arthur Dent, who woke up only to realise
that his house is going to be demolished to create a street bypass. Ford Prefect,
who knows that any minute now the earth is going to be demolished in order to
create a hyperspace bypass; Zapod Beeblebrox, the president of the galaxy and
also on the run from the galaxy police; Trillion, a young woman who Zapod happened
to pick up while visiting Earth; and Marvin, a robot who has gigantic intelligence
matched only by his personality disorders. So what's the meaning of life, the
universe and everything? 42!
The Joy Luck Club *Amy Tan*: This is such a touching book, There was a film based on it which in my opinion was even better than the book. It's the tale of four women from China, their struggles in life and their hopes of raising their "ideal" daughter. So all together it's really 8 tales in one book.
Babyhood *Paul Reiser* This is pure gold! Reiser tells the story of his experience with babies and it is not only true, it is one of the funniest things I've ever read. His recounts are like no other, and he also has another great book: Parenthood. An excerpt from Parenthood can be found on my sex page where he rambles on about the fake letters in Penthouse magazine. Funny!
Dave Barry's Guide to Guys *Dave Barry* Bloody friggin hilarious! Of all of his books this one has to be the funniest one yet. This book is so jam packed with quotables it's not funny.. no wait.. it is. In my site I have two extracts from this book, his rantings on Sex (on the sex page) and the Guy's Toilet Problem.
My Point...And I Do Have One *Ellen Degeneres*Yes... her point.. and she does have one... 89 of em actually.Ellen Degeneres is soooo funny). If this book doesn't get you to smile, you're weird. Actually this book is very silly.. I think that's what makes it funny. She's also made a good point about horrible animal expressions like Curiosity killed the cat and why put a weasel in the blender when you can chop it up by hand?