Hauntings are memes, especially pernicious thought contagions, social contagions that need no viral or bacterial host and are transmitted in a thousand different ways... Too often, people make the mistake of trying to use their art to capture a ghost...
She watched with morbid fascination as they gathered at the stumps at the ends of the man's wrists, the old scar tissue the only place on him unclaimed by Fener, but the paths the sprites took to those stumps touched not a single tattooed line. The f...
Through the round of many births I roamed without reward, without rest, seeking the house-builder. Painful is birth again & again. House-builder, you're seen! You will not build a house again. All your rafters broken, the ridge pole destroyed, gone t...
By definition, you can’t experience your own death. Death is the end of consciousness. And consciousness persists. In the language of physics, consciousness is conserved. I am the one who wakes up in the morning. Always. Every morning. I don’t di...
Mom always liked to say that we hardly ever know the decisions we make that change our lives, mostly because they are little ones. You took this bus instead of that one and ended up meeting your soul mate, that kind of thing. But there was no doubt i...
If you are going to devote your time to do something you claim you love, take this thought; "Can I pursue this till the end? Am I sure I will never give up on it?" This is persistence.
Don’t lose yourself in anger, Mac. It’s gasoline. You can burn it as fuel, or you can use it to torch everything you care about and end up standing on a scorched battlefield, with everybody dead, even you - only your body doesn’t have the good ...
It’s a neighborhood where every dad has at least one job and where parents often end conversations with the words: no guts, no glory.
Here is the story of how I died. I wish it were a glamorous story; sadly, there was little glamour in my death. The end for everyone is much the same, sad, lonely, and cold. Only, most people don’t wake up again, I did. And I was hungry, so bloody ...
One of the biggest problems with your average sales call is that the salesman doesn’t know what he is trying to achieve. He hasn’t worked out the end of the journey. So he sets off and just hopes he walks out with…something.
I now know that success can not choose me. It is waiting on a path that I must walk. In truth, it waits there for everyone. Many do not know where the path begins. Some search for a shortcut to the end. But the majority of the world does not even rea...
I am beyond good and evil at this point. I am beyond the lines drawn in the sand by society at this juncture. I am beyond fear, beyond religion, beyond the morals and mores. I am Lord of the Fucking Flies. Do you understand?
Perhaps it’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be. She thought of that, worried about it for a few days, and then wrote a column using that as a premise, to show that politicians who toadied to the Russians in orde...
A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wi...
What was it about relationships that made you feel so vulnerable? Oh, right. A relationship. In any relationship, you put yourself out there. You exposed all of your sensitive nerve endings and your heart and you just had to hope that you trusted the...
but something always went wrong, and the relationship would end precisely at the moment when she was sure that this was the person with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life. After a long time, she came to the conclusion that men brought only...
'It's okay. I understand that you're tempted and know you shouldn't grab the apple, and when you did you wanted to drop it. But I'm not good at resisting temptation. I'd rather eat the fucking thing, and enjoy it, even if I end up in hell.'
It’s not that I mind being alone, not really. I can distract myself with silly fantasies and daydreams for hours, but in the end it always comes back to me. That’s what I’m left with: just me. And that’s what scares me more than anything. Me.
There is, inside all our heads, the ego’s rabid attack dog. It is purely vicious toward others and toward ourselves as well. Learning to control that dog, and ultimately to end its life, is the process and purpose of enlightened relationships.
You'll like it less when you hear what they've been building. It's a big raised platform at the end of the square about two metres above the ground, with steps running up to it.' 'Like a stage?' Erak suggested. 'Maybe they're going to put on a play.'...
ethics is at the center of both spiritual practice and social transformation. Without a strong ethical foundation, we inevitably fall into contradictions-between means and ends, between our actions and our ideals." (p. 9)
