. . . hell is wanting to be somewhere different from where you are. Being one place and wanting to be somewhere else . . . . Wanting life to be different from what it is. That's also called leaving without leaving. Dying before you die. It's as if th...
People will be jealous of you for anything. Do bad and they will be jealous of you for being bad, do good and they will be jealous of you for being good, pull yourself up out of the ashes and they will be jealous of your strength, work hard and succe...
And then I decided to be pro me. Be pro you to the end. No more cutting up myself and serving up myself like pieces of a pie for everyone's tasteless palates. And that doesn't mean you don't know how to say sorry; because being pro you means being pr...
Be careful who you choose as your hero or who you choose to deify, be it Clay Aiken or Barack Obama. You put all you're hope and all your dreams and all your ideas about stuff into one human being. They're a human being they're going to let you down....
The concept of humanity is an especially useful ideological instrument of imperialist expansion, and in its ethical-humanitarian form it is a specific vehicle of economic imperialism. Here one is reminded of a somewhat modified expression of Proudhon...
writing is like being in love. You never get better at it or learn more about it. The day you think you do is the day you lose it. Robert Frost called his work a lover's quarrel with the world. It's ongoing. It has neither a beginning nor an end. You...
Spirituality is about being awake. It’s the attempt to transcend the mundane, sleepwalking experience of life we all fall into, to tap into the wonder of being a conscious and grateful thing in the midst of an astonishing universe. It doesn’t req...
There is something magical to me about literature and fiction and I think it can do things not only that pop culture cannot do but that are urgent now: one is that by creating a character in a work of fiction you can allow a reader to leap over the w...
We rightly scorn those who have no made use of their defects, who have not exploited their deficiencies, and have not been enriched by their losses, as we despise any man who does not suffer at being a man or simply at being. Hence no graver insult c...
You ask me if I do not think that men are strange beings - I do indeed, I have often thought so - and I think too that the mode of bringing them up is strange, they are not half sufficiently guarded from temptation - Girls are protected as if they we...
You make the world come alive. You make the world colorful. You are the inspiration behind all that happens. You are the pillar of strength to many around you, the centrifugal force of your own little world, called family. I love being a women and ce...
Because that was the problem, really, wasn’t it, with being human? You couldn’t just be, couldn’t just live and exist without dragging your feet through the mud. You had to communicate, congregate, collaborate, cohabiate. You had to corroborate...
Nothing is more important to human beings than an ecologically functioning, life sustaining biosphere on the earth. It is the only habitable place we know of in a forbidding universe. We all depend on it to live and we are compelled to share it; it i...
Charlie: Mr. Anderson? Can I ask you something? Bill: Yeah. Charlie: Why do nice people choose the wrong people to date? Bill: Are we talking about anyone specific? [Charlie nods] Bill: Well, we accept the love we think we deserve. Charlie: Can we ma...
Sam: So, I'm guessing you've never been high before. Charlie: No. No, no, no. My best friend, Michael, his dad was a big drinker, so he hated all that stuff. Parties too. Sam: Well, where is Michael tonight? Charlie: Oh, he shot himself last May. I k...
Patrick: I'll tell you Sam, this one is tough. I have received a harmonica, a magnetic poetry set, a book about Harvey Milk, and a mix tape with the song Asleep on it twice. I mean, I have no idea. This collection of presents is so gay that I think I...
Sam: Patrick? Patrick: Yeah? Sam: Who's this? Patrick: This is... Charlie: Charlie... Kelmeckis. Patrick: Kelmeckis! No shit! Your sister's dating Ponytail Derek, isn't she? Charlie: Is that what they call him? Sam: Would you leave Ponytail Derek alo...
Withnail: [Withnail sees Marwood eating some brownish fluid out of a bowl with a spoon] You've got soup. Why didn't I get any soup? Marwood: Coffee. Withnail: Why don't you use a cup like any other human being? Marwood: Why don't you wash up occasion...
[Alvy fantasizes being in love with the Wicked Queen from Snow White] Wicked Queen: We never have any fun any more. Alvy Singer: How can you say that? Wicked Queen: Why not? You're always leaning on me to improve myself. Alvy Singer: You're just upse...
Tugger: She just sprung it on me, just... [pauses, flips lighter open and closed] Tugger: It's a hell of a thing to spring on a guy. I don't remember much, Laura talked me down after, said whatever... she knew her, said it wasn't true, but I still th...
But perhaps there are insensitive hearts, still incapable of receiving this Light because the weight of their sins prevents them from seeing it. Let them not imagine that they Light is absent because they do not see it, for on account of their sins t...