His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing by the pump of a gas station at the outskirts of Madison, Kentucky.
Just because somebody smiles when he hands me a bag of shit, that doesn't mean I have to take it. I don't give a damn how friendly he is. It's what he does that matters.
What about God? The idea embarrassed him. It was only in moments of absolute fear that he had ever thought about God and prayed to him, always embarrassed because he did not believe and felt so hypocritical when he prayed out of fear, as if in spite of his disbelief there might be God after all, God who could be fooled by a hypocrite. When he was a child, then he believed. He certainly did believe when he was a child. How did it go, the nig..
If the passage absolutely demands cursing, be moderate. A little of it goes a long way. I've seen beginning writers pepper curse words through sentence after sentence. 'If you don't -blanking- get your -blanking-blank-blank- in to this house this -blanking- minute, I'm going to -blank- your -blank- and nail it to the -blanking- door.' Two things happen when I read this junk: I get bored and I get angry. I didn't pick up your book to read ga..
If he had really wanted to control himself, he could have. He simply had not wanted to control himself. To live his way, he had been determined to fight anyone who interfered. So all right then, in a way he had fought for a principle. But it was not that simple, because he had also been proud and delighted to show how good he was at fighting.
The posters and rock-star buttons and banners were valueless without the perspective of the mind that had attached significance to them. Souvenirs have no worth without nostalgia, after all. They're meaningless if a memory isn't linked to them.
The guitar. Rubbing the gentle polish On Every smooth contour. On the lap. Knowing every curve As the light shines from it. On stage a planned metamorphosis Takes places as the hours go by and the Space is transformed to a concert hall. The energetic nemesis has struck. The risers are transformed into a stage And black boxes turned into powerful Pieces of sound equipment. The spring is taut. Backstage while pandemonium Sweeps the hall and p..
Except that it was no more home, just the place where he had grown up, and that first day back, touring the once familiar places only made him realize that he had already lived close to half his life.
Don't give in to doubt. Never be discouraged if your first draft isn't what you thought it would be. Given skill and a story that compels you, muster your determination and make what's on the page closer to what you have in your mind. The chances are that you'll never make them identical. That's one reason I'm still hitting the keyboard. Obsessed by the secrets of my past, I try to put metaphorical versions of them on the page, but each tim..
So they spread the paintings on the lawn, and the boy explained each of them. "This is the school, and this is the playground, and these are my friends." He stared at the paintings for a long time and then shook his head in discouragement. "In my mind, they were a whole lot better." Isn't that the truth? Every morning, I go to my desk and reread yesterday's pages, only to be discouraged that the prose isn't as good as it seemed during the e..
Fasting is the only method of suicide permitted by the Catholic Church. All other ways imply despair, a distrust of God's wisdom, an unwillingness to bear the hardships with which God tests his children. An absolute sin, suicide's punishment is eternal damnation in the fires of Hell. But fasting is undertaken for the purpose of penance, meditation, and spiritual ecstasy. It purifies the spirit by denying the body. It brings a soul closer to..
We act upon assumptions that control our view of reality, even though reality might be quite different... By definition, what is unthinkable isn't part of our reality... your assumptions about what is possible prevent you from accurately seeing the reality before you.
Hey, what about you? That monastery didn't make you soft, I hope." "The Cistercians?" Chris laughed. "Make me soft? They're the toughest order in the Catholic Church." "They really don't talk?" "Not only that. They believe in brutal daily work. I might as well have spent another six years in Special Forces."
La Griffe, "The Claw." Simple and small. The index finger goes through the hole near the blade. Favored by climbers and boaters. Designed by Fredric Perrin, manufactured by Ernest Emerson. (Emersonknoves.com)"
I suppose none of what I'm saying matters. In a few years a search like this won't even be necessary. We have instruments now that can be mounted on the underside of an airplane. To find a man all you have to do is fly over the spot where you think he is, and the machine will register his body heat. Right now there aren't enough of those machines to go around. Most of them are in the war. But when we come home from there, well, a man on the..
A knife slash with a sharp blade almost never caused pain unless delivered with force. As the skin parted, there was only a stinging sensation. Spinning,
Cavanaugh believed that the term "martial arts" was a self-contradiction. When it came to combat, there was nothing artistic, nothing smooth and graceful about it."
Fine motor skills, which use dexterity and hand/eye coordination to perform precise movements (accurate shooting, for example) disintegrate at 115 heartbeats per minute. Complex motor skills, which help muscle groups perform a series of blunt movements (kicks and punches, for example) disintegrate at 145 heartbeats per minute. But most hand-to-hand combat causes the heart to surge to 200 beats per minute. In that frenzy of adrenaline, the c..
I fear I am losing my mind. I do not mean "losing my grasp of reality." I know perfectly well what is happening. But I am powerless to prevent the outcome. Each day, I have less strength of mind to resist." --
A friend is somebody who accepts your faults, who's there for you always, even when you're not your best, somebody who'll do anything for you, somebody you can count on totally, just as a friend can count on you. It's the most powerful relationship there is. Most
Lies were told to start the war. Lies were told to cover mistakes. The Pentagon wouldn't fully commit to special-operations units, which meant that conventional tactics were used against guerrilla forces. That's a losing strategy. Good men died because of that. Other good men are still being held captive because of it. And Rambo--well, if winning now means he has to die as well, he'll die. No fear. No regrets. That more than anything is wha..