Actually, Bush, technically speaking, is not really President-because he refused to take the Oath of Office. I don’t know how many of you noticed this, but the wording of the Oath of Office is written in the Constitution, so you can’t fool around...
You could become paralyzed with worry about what might happen to your family, or if you hadn’t yet had children you could decide not to, as a sort of proactive damage control. Either way, you would be derailing your life voluntarily out of fear tha...
So I figured I might as well see if I could find something Gaspard didnt already know about. Like an herb or potion or something." "Hmm," said Georgia, looking off into some invisible dreamworld. "Or maybe bathing naked in the Seine under the light o...
He assaulted the man with a psychic wave. "You are a cockroach." In his inebraited state, Cody had no resistance at all to a vampire mind control. He fell to the floor and scurried around the foyer on all fours. "I am a cockroach" he muttered in a sq...
Remember when your curiosity inspired your investigative mind to explore and learn… you weren’t bogged down with resentment, cynicism, and emotional baggage… just think about how great it would be to return to that mindset of unencumbered learn...
To summarize, using money to motivate people can be a double-edged sword. For tasks that require cognitive ability, low to moderate performance-based incentives can help. But when the incentive level is very high, it can command too much attention an...
Think of how you feel when you are sick, or how you felt when you were learning to ride your bike. The physical state of your body has a direct effect on how you think about the world, on the state of your mind. I don’t think it would be an exagger...
I decided early in graduate school that I needed to do something about my moods. It quickly came down to a choice between seeing a psychiatrist or buying a horse. Since almost everyone I knew was seeing a psychiatrist, and since I had an absolute bel...
He takes two steps back. Closer to the portal. I can't stop myself. "Ben," I call. And I'm not even embarrassed about how helpless my voice sounds. Don't go. "I'll come back for you." He takes another step back. "I promise." Stay. "Janelle Tenner," h...
Boy or girl? I had never thought about that. The men who work at the palace, they use words to govern the country and use strength to protect it. Bringing all kinds of brilliant men from the kingdom, and they all have amazing talents. But...how are t...
If we wish to draw philosophical conclusions about our own existence, our significance, and the significance of the universe itself, our conclusions should be based on empirical knowledge. A truly open mind means forcing our imaginations to conform t...
Pride measures prosperity not by her own advantages but by the disadvantages of others. She would not even wish to be a goddess unless there were some wretches left whom she could order about and lord it over, whose misery would make her happiness se...
Lacan wrote about two levels of speaking, one in which we know what we are saying (even when struggling with something difficult or contradictory) and another in which we have no idea of what we are saying. In this second level of speaking there are ...
Yes, it was true that Franny had gotten thicker in the last decade, but that was what happened unless you were a high-functioning psychotic, and she had other things to think about. Franny knew plenty of women who had chosen to prioritize the eternal...
The way he said it spoke of an ache I recognized. I knew that no matter how similar they were, no two losses were the same, but despite his loss being from a different circumstance, I felt his sadness as my own. We sat there in silence with my hand r...
I've always told people that for each person there is a sentence--a series of words--which has the power to destroy him. When Fat told me about Leon Stone I realized (this came years after the first realization) that another sentence exists, another ...
But, mad or sane, Matthews was a man of no ordinary persistence. He was not prepared to renounce the peace plan, any more than he would be prepared to renounce his madness a few years later. A month later he was back in France, this time for an exten...
I didn’t hear words that were accurate, much less prideful. For example, I never once heard the word clitoris. It would be years before I learned that females possessed the only organ in the human body with no function than to feel pleasure. (If su...
To share out your soul freely, that is what metanoia (a change of mind, or repentance)really refers to: a mental product of love. A change of mind, or love for the undemonstrable. And you throw off every conceptual cloak of self-defense, you give up ...
In the deepest, darkest depths of her heart where she kept all her dreams locked up in a pink journal decorated with ponies and unicorns, she’d fantasized about declaring her love for Sasha Karimi for two years. In those scenarios, he generally fel...
And what do I think about? What thoughts do I have! - What thoughts! a whole host, multitude, and world of thoughts, I keep devising new ones and reworking old ones, some of the old ones are concluded and are only thought of as conclusions, whole wor...