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No matter how much we avoid it, the day will come when our parents will not be able to get by without us, just as we would not have been able to grow up without them.

"If I cut off your arm, will your husband take you again?" "My husband loves me very much." So he started cutting. "There was no alternative."

I spoke very little in my early years and my mother says that my silence scared her. She never knew what was going through my mind. She was afraid I was hiding something.

The importance of humour, including in the workplace, is often undervalued, as a series of studies suggest.

In my humble but literary-educated opinion, Tim Winton is Australia’s finest living novelist. Since winning publication of his first novel in a competition for young writers in 1981, he has had 10 more novels published, as well as collections of stories, plays, books for younger readers and a handful of non-fiction works. Winton has won Australia’s top literary prize—the Miles Franklin Award—on four...

She refused the comfort and tranquillity so desired and sought after today because she saw the needs of the simple people and she unwittingly sparked a revolution of love. She went down in history, not with any title of nobility, but simply as Mother Teresa.

An experimenter is like a hunter who, instead of waiting quietly for game, tries to make it rise, by beating up the locality where he assumes it is. – Francis Bacon, 17th-century English philosopher

Let’s not go back to the abnormality of before! This is one of the messages which the French hung from their balconies on May 1, when the activities that would usually happen on this national public holiday could not take place. What can we change and what is worth changing after COVID-19?

When a closed window shade becomes an SOS sent by those used to living on their own but afraid of dying alone, something has fundamentally changed in a society that not long ago valued human relationships.

Because life in developed societies follows a more or less regular pattern, sociologists have managed to identify the age at which conditions are most conducive to forming a friendship. It's not that people who are not of this age are unable to form meaningful connections with other people, but at other ages, life takes us on different paths, without asking for our permission.

By 2030, epidemics will be eradicated; life, rejuvenated by injections, giving lifespans of 150 years; and cars almost obsolete with aeroplane ownership common. These were the 1930 predictions of FE Smith, a British politician and friend of Winston Churchill.

The sun was shining on that wonderful July Sunday when you were enjoying your summer vacation. Your parents were with you on your walks in the park and watched you ride your bike without the slightest care in the world. Their smile gave you hints of the purest parental love.

Eye-catching banners on high-traffic websites, marketing campaigns, genuine or illusory discounts, deals that vanish in seconds. Shopping lists, fierce price hunts, early morning alarms. Jumping the gun, millions in sales, ecstatic or dissatisfied customers, delayed deliveries, and blown budgets. In a word: Black Friday.

When I was four years old, my younger brother was born. My parents focused on my brother and spent less time with me. It was only 40 years later that I discovered how this had affected me.

As the balmy Australian summer took a chilly turn, I found myself sitting one day in a pub in Jindabyne, New South Wales with a friend attempting to escape the bitter autumn weather. As I took in the ambience, I reflected on what was a largely alien environment to me.