The Man Upstairs: You know the rules, this isn't a toy! Finn: Um... it kind of is. The Man Upstairs: No, actually it's a highly sophisticated inter-locking brick system. Finn: But we bought it at the toy store. The Man Upstairs: We did, but the way I...
[first lines] Writer: So, you were raised in a zoo? Adult Pi Patel: Born and raised. In Pondicherry, in what was the French part of India. My father owned the zoo, and I was delivered on short notice by a herpetologist, who was there to check on the ...
Sheba Hart: This is going to sound sick, but something in me felt... entitled. You know, I've been good all my adult life. I've been a decent wife, a dutiful mother coping with Ben. This voice inside me kept saying "why shouldn't you be bad, why shou...
Dave: Sure throwing him in is the best way to get him to learn how to swim? The Count: Absolutely. Dave: Ok. The Count: On second thought, it might just be for kids. Angus: I can't touch the bottom! The Count: Yeah, that's right. Throw a baby in, it ...
Charlie Fineman: Are you a faggot?. Alan Johnson: Don't say faggot, you just don't call people faggot that's rude. Charlie Fineman: To a gay guy it is, to you it's just a funny word like poundcake or pickle... You really need some Mel. Charlie Finema...
I wanted to tell a dream-come-true story about going from a closeted gay kid who loved pop culture to an out adult man making pop culture. I went from being told when I was 21 that I should never go on TV because of my crossed eyes to winding up bein...
Non-alcoholic ways in which parents may not 'be there' for the children can include: - violence and sexual abuse - workholism - gambling - transquilliser addiction- - womanizing - frequent journeys abroad - death - suicide - being unemployed or unemp...
Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation– the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for exampl...
Outside Styx's apartment was not the first time Rochester and I had met, or would it be the last. We first encountered each other at Haworth House in Yorkshire when my mind was young and the barrier between reality and make-believe had not yet harden...
It is as if the soul of the continent is weeping. Why does it weep? It weeps for the bones of the buffalo. It weeps for magic that has been forgotten. It weeps for the decline of poets. It weeps for the black people who think like white people. It we...
On Earth, Liz was constantly occupied with studying and finding a college and a career and all those other things that the adults in her life deemed terribly important. Since she had died, everything she was doing on Earth had seemed entirely meaning...
Adult obesity and overweight statistics have increased by about 50 percent since the Dietary Goals were announced. [by the federal government, in 1977] That bears repeating: a 50 percent increase in obesity/overweight correlated with a 10 percent dec...
I used to believe, although I don't now, that growing and growing up are analogous, that both are inevitable and uncontrollable processes. Now it seems to me that growing up is governed by the will, that one can choose to become an adult, but only at...
I fell in love with him. But I don't just stay with him by default as if there's no one else available. I stay with him because I choose to everyday that I wake up, everyday that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him ov...
A child who is being abused on an ongoing basis needs to be able to function despite the trauma that dominates his or her daily life. That becomes the job of at least one ANP [alternate personality], whom the child creates to be unaware of the abus...
Basically, having a gift for happiness was a bit like being good at maths or games: it depended partly on the development of the brain after you were born, ad even before, but also on how your parents or other adults had brought you up when you were ...
He doesn’t want to step out of the present, this present. Because once he does, there will be college applications and college acceptances (just one will do) and the last of everything (last class, last party, last night, last day, last goodbye), a...
More than that, the thought rattled uncomfortably in my child brain that I would one day become one of them. My body then was sexless. Though I had seen the curves of adults, I couldn’t fathom the chrysalis that would turn my featureless body into ...
The French believe that kids feel confident when they're able to do things for themselves, and do those things well. After children have learned to talk, adults don't praise them for saying just anything. They praise them for saying interesting thing...
So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialized, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it gives you the opportunity to define your own reality. You can say: This did happen to me. It was that bad. It was t...
Oh, come on, Jace," Clary said. "You can't wait for perfect behavior from everyone. Adults screw up too. Go back to the Institute and talk to her rationally. Be a man." "I don't want to be a man," said Jace. "I want to be an angst-ridden teenager who...