No relationship is without its difficulties and this is certainly true when one or both of the persons involved has an autistic spectrum disorder. Even so, I believe what is truly essential to the success of any relationship is not so much compatibil...
I've learned that there is no currency like trust and no catalyst like hope. There is nothing worse for building relationships than pandering, on one hand, and preaching, on the other. And the most important quality we must all strengthen in ourselve...
I remember being a teenager and being ashamed of my musical tastes, at least some of them. My Brian Wilson and Beach Boys fandom, which is as important to me as anything else, was almost like a porn stash. Hide that shit, someone's coming! You couldn...
One night, I was out driving with a few friends of mine when the police pulled us over. We were told we fit the description of someone who had committed a robbery or stolen a car, though I don't really know what kind of description that could have be...
Curiosity is the single most important attribute with which humans are born. More than a simple desire to discover or know things, curiosity is a powerful tool, like a scalpel or a searchlight. Curiosity changes us. It is also a way to effect change,...
My mother's mother came to this country in the usual way--she got on a boat with other immigrants and sailed from Sicily. She wasn't one of them, however: neither tired nor poor or part of any huddled mass. Instead, she traveled alone, with her money...
Whatever the reason we first mustered the _Apollo_ program, however mired it was in Cold War nationalism and the instruments of death, the inescapable recognition of the unity and fragility of the Earth is its clear and luminous dividend, the unexpec...
I wake up in the morning and I see that flower, with the dew on its petals, and at the way it's folding out, and it makes me happy, she said. It's important to focus on the things in the here and now, I think. In a month, the flower will be shriveled...
When I opened my case in the hotel, he gestured excitedly at my snakeskin sandals, turquoise suede wedges and silver-speckled jellies. “But you’ve loads of shoes,” he bellowed joyfully. I shook my head sadly. Men just don’t get it, do they? T...
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...
The inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies white and unspotted, in the round of light thrown by a candle. Puffs of darkness sweep into the corners, and keep rolling through the room behind his chair. The air is silver and pearl, for the night is...
This is the spot where I will lie When life has had enough of me, These are the grasses that will blow Above me like a living sea. These gay old lilies will not shrink To draw their life from death of mine, And I will give my body's fire To make blue...
I made cranberry sauce, and when it was done put it into a dark blue bowl for the beautiful contrast. I was thinking, doing this, about the old ways of gratitude: Indians thanking the deer they'd slain, grace before supper, kneeling before bed. I was...
Everything is interconnected. My readings of classical authors, who never speaks of sunsets, have made many sunsets intelligible to me, in all their colors. There is a relationship between syntactical competence, by which we distinguish the values of...
Peace is a butterfly Flying flower to flower With a song in her heart But a great love for the beauty With a great purpose and duty. Peace is a new father Searching for a job With courage and vigor With a smile and rigor But with a great need for mon...
The Blue Fairy: You must learn to choose between right and wrong. Pinocchio: Right and wrong? But how will I know? Jiminy Cricket: [watching] How'll he know! The Blue Fairy: [to Pinocchio] Your conscience will tell you. Pinocchio: What's a conscience...
Head Nazi: White men! White women! The swastika is calling you. The sacred and ancient symbol of your race, since the beginning of time. The Jew is using The Black as muscle against you. And you are left there helpless. Well, what are you going to do...
[first lines] Prison Guard #1: Yeah, the Assistant Warden wants this one out of the block early. Wants to get it over with fast. Prison Guard #2: Okay, let's do it. [rattling the bars with his baton] Prison Guard #1: Hey come on, it's time to wake up...
You are the trip I did not take, you are the pearls I could not buy, you are my blue Italian lake, you are my piece of foreign sky. You are my Honolulu moon, you are the book I did not write, you are my heart's unuttered tune, you are a candle in my ...
When I'm born I'm black, when I grow up I'm black, when I'm in the sun I'm black, when I'm sick I'm black, when I die I'm black, and you... when you're born you're pink, when you grow up you're white, when you're cold you're blue, when you're sick yo...
Spoil all the walls with sellotape marks.