Learn to say no to demands, requests, invitations, and activities that leave you with no time for yourself. Until I learned to say no, and mean it, I was always overloaded by stress. You may feel guilty and selfish at first for guarding your down- ti...
Some readers read a book as if it were an instruction manual, expecting to understand everything first time, but of course when you write, you put into every sentence an overflow of meaning, and you create in every sentence as many resonances and dou...
The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the firs...
Suddenly, there was an enormous flash of light, the brightest light I have ever seen or that I think anyone has ever seen. It blasted; it pounced; it bored its way into you. It was a vision which was seen with more than the eye. It was seen to last f...
I wanted to think of what could not be thought except in intersections; I wanted to satiate my fiendishness in a neutering gnosis. I wanted to see the first chimp paint it’s own likeness in a limbo state of gravitating iconostasis, flanked by altar...
I think that I'm the same Jan Brewer I was when I first ran for office way back in 1982, which is a few years ago. I always tried to do what I believed is right and I've always voted the way that I believe was the right way for my constituency, and t...
“Alright, who’s first?” Crystal asked once Carrie was in the chair that she had instructed her to sit in. Everyone was quiet. “Who wants to draw straws?” Matt asked. Carrie hadn’t realized until this moment that the subtle smile on his fa...
Westereners often think that the East is one vast Buddhist temple, which is rather like thinking the West is one vast Carthusian monastery. If the [Western people who like Buddhism] were to visit the East, he'd certainly experience many new things, b...
A person is a person through other persons. None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order t...
Before you can be effective in communication with ANYONE else, you must know who YOU are. It begins with you. Believe me when I say, I don't need anyone's approval in this classroom ... I'm great company for myself. Me, myself, and I ... we laugh a l...
Dogs don't hesitate. They stand by our side, no matter the odds, the reason, the depth of cold. If we step into the blackest of nights, they step with us, and sometimes----most of the time---they take the first step. And no matter their size---from t...
I'm tenacious, I think - I know - and I do also have a quality where if you tell me I can't do something, if I know I can't do it I'm the first to raise my hand and say, 'I can't do that.' But there is a big Bronx, New York Jew in me that just says, ...
1 John 1:4 "These things [are written] that your joy may be full." I can always measure the amount of time I'm spending in the Scriptures by how much joy (not superficial happiness, but deep down abiding joy) I have. When I find a lack of joy in my l...
When I was old enough to know better, I ate a bar of soap in the shape of the Muppets' Fozzie Bear, because I loved him so much I wanted to consume him, even if doing so made me ill. I didn't yet know the word 'foreshadowing.' Fozzie was the only fir...
Let us love. Let our lives be a perpetual song of love for God, first of all, and for all human beings who suffer, love, and mourn. Let deep joy live in us. Let us be like the lark, enemy of the night, who always announces the dawn and awakens in eac...
I love you, Julie. I loved you that first moment when I looked across the restauraunt and found you. Then you were the loveliest thing I'd ever seen; but now I've discovered how much more you are; loyal and courageous and as true as steel. There's la...
We feel the ground slipping from beneath our feet, and we want to hold on and stay in control. And so we organize and define (that is, put limits around) what first moved freely within us, flowed out of us, and motivated our action. We also dismiss, ...
I went back and listened to the first three albums I made and tried to figure out what was special about them, why people keep going back to them. I think it was because I didn't know what I was doing. I had no idea if they were going to play it on t...
Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes -- I mean the universe -- but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathemati...
I don't know who made the first Aquaman joke. I'm sure it was comics readers; maybe we all did. But it's the idea that the perpetuated story of Aquaman is that he only has powers in water, and he talks to fish. I think it's the idea of him in the mid...
I never call myself a singer, ever. I never will. I've always been really embarrassed about my voice. I've never been confident about it. I think it's a little bit better now than when I first started. There are people I admire who are genuinely bril...
