We think of ourselves as failures, rather than renounce our belief in the possibility of perfection. We hang on to the hope of eternal love by denying even its temporary validity. It´s less painful to think 'I'm shallow', 'She's self centred', 'We c...
The only absolute truth is change, and death is the only way to stop change. Life is a series of judgments on changing situations, and no ideal, no belief fits every solution. Yet humans need to believe in something beyond themselves. Perhaps all int...
Teach me your way of looking at people: as you glanced at Peter after his denial, as you penetrated the heart of the rich young man and the hearts of your disciples. I would like to meet you as you really are, since your image changes those with whom...
Sean looks up at her, and he wants to explain it all to her. Explain what it’s like to be rubbed so raw, to have your emotional threshold exceeded day after day, your psyche beaten so completely that you have no choice but to turn inward, shunning ...
The dead do not need aspirin or sorrow, I suppose. but they might need rain. not shoes but a place to walk. not cigarettes, they tell us, but a place to burn. or we're told: space and a place to fly might be the same. the dead don't need me. nor do t...
True Christian fortitude consists in strength of mind, through grace, exerted in two things; in ruling and suppressing the evil and unruly passions and affections of the mind; and in steadfastly and freely exerting and following good affections and d...
I think that people with autism are born outside the regime of civilization. Sure, this is just my own made-up theory, but I think that, as a result of all the killings in the world and the selfish planet-wrecking that humanity has committed, a deep ...
Modern life seems to recede further and further away from nature, and closely connected with this fact we seem to be losing the feeling of reverence towards nature. It is probably inevitable when science and machinery, capitalism and materialism go h...
Seemed to me a phone was an impersonal instrument. If it like it, it let your personality go through its wires. If it didn't to, it just drained your personality away until what slipped through at the other end was some cold fish of a voice, all stee...
She'd stutter all the reasons why she shouldn't, shaking her head adamantly. But her body..her body would grow hot with excitement. She'd get wet at the thrill of it. So fucking wet that i'd smell her, telling me she's not even wearing panties to smo...
To me it seems that those sciences are vain and full of error which are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, first-hand experience which in its origins, or means, or end has passed through one of the five senses. And if we doubt the certa...
You mean that because I have no name I cannot die and that you cannot be held answerable for death even if you kill me?" "That is about the size of it," said the Sergeant. I felt so sad and so entirely disappointed that tears came into my eyes and a ...
In front of the law there is a doorkeeper. A man from the countryside comes up to the door and asks for entry. But the doorkeeper says he can't let him in to the law right now. The man thinks about this, and then he asks if he'll be able to go in lat...
Inside me there was everything I had believed was outside. There was, in particular, the sun, light, and all colors. There were even the shapes of objects and the distance between objects. Everything was there and movement as well… Light is an elem...
There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, ho...
Combat and rape, the public and private forms of organized social violence, are primarily experiences of adolescent and early adult life. The United States Army enlists young men at seventeen; the average age of the Vietnam combat soldier was ninetee...
In other words, I have tried to learn in my writing a monastic lesson I could probably not have learned otherwise: to let go of my idea of myself, to take myself with more than one grain of salt... In religious terms, this is simply a matter of accep...
It’s funny how one summer can change everything. It must be something about the heat and the smell of chlorine, fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle, asphalt sizzling after late-day thunderstorms, the steam rising while everything drips around it. Somet...
Experience is like evidence. When you're young and don't have much experience yet, you don't have much basis for confidence. All you really have is hope, and that can get shaken pretty easily. But as years go by, you start to gather this evidence. Yo...
Eve turned away as a whispered “yes, ma'am” reached her ears. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Why was she saving this asshole? Eve opened her eyes and unlocked the heavy steel bolt securing the five-by-two slab of oak. She looked back, r...
I was so happy when I found out the wounds you’d inflicted weren’t serious, that you had stopped.” “Yes, I stopped. Barry, all of you, see what I did as this suicide attempt. But I didn’t want to die. I only wanted my mom to hear me. To com...
