Well, I just don’t want you to think that this piece of shit is anything other than a pathetic, human defect. Nothing more. Not a monster, not a bogeyman. Nothing but another reason to feel better about yourself. Understand that it’s just a perso...
While we can learn or study techniques for almost anything we might want to accomplish, real understanding is not the mere accumulation of knowledge. Understanding cannot be realized by listening or reading about the realization of others. It must be...
Such nonsense!" declared Dr Greysteel. "Whoever heard of cats doing anything useful!" "Except for staring at one in a supercilious manner," said Strange. "That has a sort of moral usefulness, I suppose, in making one feel uncomfortable and encouragin...
One of the biggest contradictions in self-proclaimed open-mindedness is to say that we're all one but when a true bigot comes around tell him we're all different. It's usually the case that neither side is correct. One might have the right to do some...
First, psychotherapy is an art. It is not a science (the human-beings-are-laboratory-rats mentality of the behaviorist notwithstanding). A friend of mine, a philosopher of esthetics, defines art as: anything that people treat as art. So it is with ps...
It’s not about being ready or feeling prepared all the time; sometimes you just have to do what you know you have to do. And when you do – you will always see that you’re more ready and more prepared than you realize. Never doubt yourself or yo...
Belonging to me doesn’t mean I’ll make you do anything, it just means I consider you mine for as long as this lasts. It means I protect you, it means I take care of you. For another man, it might mean something different. Don’t confuse me with ...
Money’s like poison, Anna. Too much of it kills anything that’s worth having. Too much dough makes you paranoid, always wondering who―if anybody―loves you, and who’s just trying to get a piece of you. Truth be told, no one loved your Ma, no...
I was used to being invisible. People rarely saw me, and if they did, they never looked close. I wasn't shiny and charming like my brother, stunning and graceful like my mother, or smart and dynamic like my friends. That's the thing, though. You alwa...
I knew he would never leave me, never let me down-because the man had never abandoned anything in his long life. If I hadn’t taken the gold rope of our bond, I knew Adam would have sat on me and hog-tied me with it. I liked that. A lot.
Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature— at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it comes— is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been st...
You aren't happy," Estela says. "I can't be happy," I say. "Look at me, Kenzie." "I'm looking at you, Estela." "Do you know your own heart?" "I don't know anything." "Go," she says, "and think. And don't come back until you know.
Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing--until the eventual point w...
What’s your name?” I ask again. “Chris,” he says. “Chris Young.” I exhale dramatically, blowing my bangs out of my eyes. “I can take you,” I reply. “But if you try anything, I’ll shoot you right between the eyes. Seriously.” He ...
Edward finds Elinor crying for her dead father, offers her his handkerchief and their love story commences. Ang [Lee] very anxious that we think about what we want to . I'm very anxious not to anything and certainly not to think about it.
In the case of Albertine, I felt that I should never discover anything, that, out of that tangled mass of details of fact and falsehood, I should never unravel the truth: and that it would always be so, unless I were to shut her up in prison (but pri...
If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn't make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart — reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn't care what you t...
Just think about it," he said softly. "You can do practically anything. You can have practically everything. And none of it will keep you from being alone." "Shut up shut up...Everybody's alone." He nodded. "But some people learn how to live with it.
As a rule, from what I've observed, the American captain of industry doesn't do anything out of business hours. When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to st...
Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself.
Leonard asks me if there's anything I need to know before he dies, I think about it for a minute, turn to him, say what's the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that's an easy one, my son, it's whatever you want it to be.