He wasn't avoiding responsibility... Though there was one thing he clung to. An excuse, perhaps, like the dead emperor. It was the soul of the wretch. Apathy. The belief that nothing was his fault, the belief that he couldn't change anything. If a ma...
Angie was a border crosser, a wetback, a worker in the immigrant sweatshop they call this city. On days like this I understand her like a woman instead of a child. Everybody thought she was a whore. She wasn’t. She tried to step across the border o...
I believe that there is something in all of us that is seeking expression, that wants to be heard, that wants to be accepted and respected and loved. We each express ourselves in different ways - through manipulation or domination, through receiving ...
I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you re...
I love trash. I have never believed that kitsch kills. I tell you this, so you will understand that my antipathy toward 'Love Story' is not because I am immune to either sentimentality or garbage, two qualities the book possesses in abundance. When I...
What she did not know, and would never have believed, was that though her soul seemed to have been grown over with an impenetrable layer of mould, some delicate blades of grass, young and tender, were already pushing their way upwards, destined to ta...
Most of us, I believe, admire strength. It's something we tend to respect in others, desire for ourselves, and wish for our children. Sometimes, though, I wonder if we confuse strength with other words—like 'aggression' and even 'violence'. Real st...
Some people believe that it isn’t so much power that is exchanged in TPE, as it is authority. The intrinsic difference between power and authority can best be explained thusly: If we were talking about a car, then power would be what was under the ...
Although I knew enough Freud to believe that the sex urge was an important mainspring of life, it still seemed to me that any conscious manifestation of sex was necessarily ludicrous. Defecation and copulation were two activities which made a human b...
I was a terrible believer in things,but I was also a terrible nonbeliever in things. I was as searching as I was skeptical. I didn't know where to put my faith,or if there was such a place,or even what the word faith meant, in all of it's complexity....
My personal savior is common sense. And as far as God goes, I prefer to believe in one that would want me to use the excellent brain he gave us all.
When the white arm rests upon the knee it is a triangle; now it is upright - a column; now a fountain, falling. It makes no sign, it does not beckon, it does not see us. Behind it roars the sea. It is beyond our reach. Yet there I venture. There I go...
I have treated many artists. There are among them many neurotics, so many that one finally comes to believe that one cannot be an artist without being neurotic. Again I found in them that inner conflict which is characteristic of modern man: the conf...
When they are away, you will often look for the baby doll, but it is not always there, where it is supposed to be, where you left it. Sometimes The Baby moves it, or she takes it with her, and you have to settle for some other toy. You bring it into ...
I have seem even those who have long since abjured God die in grace. . . . Atheists don't use their drying to bargain for a better seat at the table; indeed they may not even believe supper is being served. They are not storing up 'merit.'; They just...
In all his imaginings, he had never envisioned her crying. He knew that her son had died, but he'd never expected that her pain might be anything he could recognize, almost as though he believed that Negroes had their own special kind of grieving rit...
Help me, Mikey, she wanted to say. I’m afraid. More afraid than you’d ever believe.’ And he’d take her hand and they’d fly across the rooftops and up into space and sit on some planet and watch a double sunrise or maybe a star being born or...
The country he had left thirty years ago had been a realistic place. There were political realities there, then and now, that precluded blind faith, that discouraged one from thinking that everything, always, would work out fairly and equitably. But ...
Have you heard," he said "that many of our people believe if you know five colloquial expressions in their tribal language, they must always provide you with nourishment and shelter? But-" He paused as though to make sure she was paying attention. "B...
Mom and Dad exchange a nervous glance and have a telepathic conversation about it. I hear every word. Do we let her out? It's past curfew. True, but look at that—at least she asked! I know! I can hardly believe it! She could have sneaked out, but s...
What I see here, what I feel here is that people in your world believe spirituality isn't distant. It's close and real. Religion seems born in the home, stays in the home. I mean, the services are even held in the home. And there's not one person in ...
