In some ways it's taken me decades to come clean and make honest work - and still to this day, sometimes I find myself wanting to hide behind my work and deny the more biographical aspects.
I have rituals for cleaning out resentments, disappointments, heartbreak, depression and for work. One of the things I do is go over old stuff if I have been unable to write for a while.
It really matters whether people are working on generating clean energy or improving transportation or making the Internet work better and all those things. And small groups of people can have a really huge impact.
Women speak because they wish to speak, whereas a man speaks only when driven to speak by something outside himself like, for instance, he can't find any clean socks.
Your mom seems like someone who gets her way a lot." Adrian cast a covert look to where Lissa and my mom stood talking across the room. He lowered his voice. "It must run in the family. In fact, maybe I should get her help on something." "Getting a h...
I think love is sort of a con you play on yourself. I think the whole conception of love is something the previous generation invents to justify having created you. You know I think the real reason children are born is because parents are so bored th...
B-b-but who will I have cleaning marathons with?” “Casey. I’ll be there in spirit.” “She’s not neurotic and cranky like you.” “You’ll miss that, ay?” “Hell yes, I’ll miss that! When you’re obsessive and pissy, you tell those...
Sooner or later your fingers close on that one moist-cold spud that the spade has accidentally sliced clean through, shining wetly white and giving off the most unearthly of earthly aromas. It's the smell of fresh soil in the spring, but fresh soil s...
Inside the maize mill, the owners no longer had any use for a broom. The hungry people kept the floors cleaner than a wet mop. At the beginning of the month, the mill was packed full of those waiting for fallen scraps. The crowd would part long enoug...
If the life you're living is unsatisfactory, you've been sending out mixed messages—conducting multiple simultaneous phone conversations with the Universe (not to mention talkin' smack). If change is what you're after, you need to unify your broadc...
One of the biggest difficulties in our contemporary society is that we try to locate the evil in somebody else and then we try to get rid of him. The police are pigs or the students are worthless, and so on and so on. The Marxists are the devils or t...
There are no guarantees with finally being honest and coming clean with people. Sometimes you don’t win love back. Sometimes you lose the love you had. Sometimes you crush people that cared. Sometimes you break apart families. Sometimes you lose yo...
Liesel Meminger: Do you think my mother really loved me? Max Vandenburg: Of course. Every mother loves her child. Even Hitler's. Liesel Meminger: Do you think she writes to him? Max Vandenburg: "Dear Führer, just wait until your father gets home! Lo...
Tom Reagan: Last I heard, Leo was still running this town. O'Doole: Yeah, well, he won't be for long if this keeps up. It's no good for anyone. You said as much yourself... Tom Reagan: First off, O'Doole, I can say what I please to Leo and about him....
A philosophical thought is not supposed to be impervious to all criticism; this is the error Whitehead describes of turning philosophy into geometry, and it is useful primarily as a way of gaining short-term triumphs in personal arguments that no one...
Laura Dannon: You're quite a pill. Brendan Frye: Uh-huh. Laura Dannon: Where are you going? Brendan Frye: Home. Laura Dannon: Why did you take a powder the other night? Brendan Frye: Same reason I'm taking one now. Laura Dannon: Hold it. I wanna help...
I mean, all I do here is do the work that my bosses tell me to do the way they tell me to do it. I don't have to think at all. It's like I just put my brain in a locker before I start work and pick it up on the way home. I spend seven hours a day at ...
Then it suddenly and theatrically began to clean itself in the way cats do when they want you to know what a big deal you aren't.
The brainless serenity of charwomen and janitors working late at night came over us. In a messy world we were at least making our little corner clean.
The efficiency of the cleaning solution in liquefying wizards suggested the operation of an antithetical principal,which-" "Did you have to get him started?" Cimorene asked reproachfully.
I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem.
