i find people confusing

I find people confusing… The… main reason is that people do a lot of talking without using any words. Siobhan says that if you raise one eyebrow it can mean lots of different things. It can mean “I want to do sex with you” and it can also mean “I think that what you just said was very stupid.”

Siobhan also says that if you close your mouth and breathe out loudly through your nose, it can mean that you are relaxed, or that you are bored, or that you are angry, and it all depends on how much air comes out of your nose and how fast and what shape your mouth is when you do it and how you are sitting and what you said just before and hundreds of other things which are too complicated to work out in a few seconds.


The curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon. Random House. 2003. Chapter 29.

touched by God's living coal

What is preaching without praying! Sermons are but pulpit performances, learned essays, rhetorical orations, popular lectures, or it may be political harangues, until God gives, in answer to earnest prayer, the preparation of the heart, and the answer of the tongue. It is only he who prays that can truly preach. Many a sermon that has shown no intellectual genius and has violated all homiletic rules and standards has had dynamic spiritual force. Somehow it has moved men, melted them, molded them. The man whose lips are touched by God’s living coal from off the altar may even stammer, but his hearers soon find out that he is on fire with one consuming passion to save souls.


Arthur T. Pierson, The Fundamentals, Vol. IX., P.67 as found in Doctrine and Covenants Commentary by Hyrum M. Smith and Janne M. Sjodahl. Deseret Book. 1965. p.435

barren of spiritual results

…Pray to Him; call upon His holy name; make known His wonderful work among the people. Prayer and preaching must go together. A sermon without prayer may be a perfect specimen of homiletic effort; it may be a marvelous piece of rhetoric; it may be a correct ethical discourse, or an admirable philosophical essay; it may be amusing, entertaining, and instructive; and yet, without the power that comes from prayer, it will be barren of spiritual results.


Doctrine and Covenants Commentary by Hyrum M. Smith and Janne M. Sjodahl. Deseret Book. 1965. p.398

died giving a talk

I have heard that no one has ever died giving a talk in a general conference. If that is the case today, I sincerely apologize.


Claudio D. Zivic, “After All We Can Do,” Ensign, Nov 2007, 98–99