Emma convinced herself she'd lost him because she was fast. She was also adept at convincing herself of things that might not be - good at pretending. She could pretend she took classes at night by choice, and that blushing didn't make her thirsty-- ...
The evening I went for a walk. To walk for the sake of walking is something I seldom do.Inside my apartment I'd felt inexplicably anxious. I needed to talk to someone, to be reassured. Or perhaps I needed to confess my sin: I was once again having im...
I started going over the lines in my head for this French play I’m in at school. I play a rabbit called Janot Lapin, who’s the leader of a group of farm animals. It’s not the most interesting play in the universe, but we only know three verb te...
Each day we wake up and make myriad choices that affect others. We clothe ourselves with shirts, pants, and shoes that may have been sewn together by women working in factories fourteen-plus hours a day for a nonliving wage; we buy products manufactu...
The American writer and dilettante Logan Pearsall Smith once said: 'Some people think that life is the thing; but I prefer reading.' When I first came across this, I thought it witty; now I find it—as I do many aphorisms—a slick untruth. Life and...
I want you to stop being subhuman and become 'yourself'. 'Yourself,' I say. Not the newspaper you read, not your vicious neighbor's opinion, but 'yourself.' I know, and you don't, what you really are deep down. Deep down, you are what a deer, your Go...
Madoka: I'm always... making somebody else fight for me. I can't do anything... Does that make me a coward? Kyōko: Why do you gotta be a magical girl? Madoka: "Why"...? Kyōko: ...This work isn't about playing around. When the job's about putting yo...
The Mommy Mystique tells us that we are the luckiest women in the world -- the freest, with the most choices, the broadest horizons, the best luck, and the most wealth. It says we have the knowledge and know-how to make "informed decisions" that will...
Our simple daily decisions can become our best friend or our worst enemy. They can draw us towards our goals or send us orbiting into a galaxy far, far away. These are the days of our lives. We are offered choices every day; sickness or health, pover...
A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of...
Alcohol does not a change a person’s fundamental value system. People’s personalities when intoxicated, even though somewhat altered, still bear some relationship to who they are when sober. When you are drunk you may behave in ways that are sill...
The choice between James’s vision of a Jewish religion anchored in the Law of Moses and derived from a Jewish nationalist who fought against Rome, and Paul’s vision of a Roman religion that divorced itself from Jewish provincialism and required n...
We have gone on too long blaming or pitying the mothers who devour their children, who sow the seeds of progressive dehumanization, because they have never grown to full humanity themselves. If the mother is at fault, why isn't it time to break the p...
Don’t you get it? There is no other you. Out of the six and a half billion people on earth, not a single one of them has had the same experiences in life that you have had. None of them share the exact same passions and struggles. None of them have...
What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do? What a waste, what a senseless waste! But what of those things which you actually didn't like, not because you were not supposed to l...
She even told me how to treat a girl on a date, which was very interesting. She said that with a girl like Mary Elizabeth, you shouldn't tell her she looks pretty. You should tell her how nice her outfit is because her outfit is her choice whereas he...
Life is a series of conflicts between the right way and the easy way each day.The thing is you head up straight. And when you make that choice. And when you decide turn your back to what's comfortable, and safe and what someone calls common sense. So...
Life is serious conflicts between the right way and the easy way each day.The thing is you head up straight. And when you make that choice. And when you decide turn your back to what's comfortable, and safe and what someone calls common sense. So, th...
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other peopl...
We pick and choose who to love. We pick and choose who to hate. We pick and choose our friends and ignore those that invade our space. We pick and choose who should live. We pick and choose who should die. We pick and choose who we say hello to and i...
if only you could see through my eyes at the life that I've lived and if only you could think through my thoughts & hear every word that was said and seen and how it made me feel as all of those words were forced down my ears and stabbed in my chest ...
