What is the black shadow? It's the running inner dialogue we have with ourselves all day long about our fears of being inferior as black people. It is our internalization of the white man's lie that blacks are inferior to whites -- the very lie that ...
Do you think it’s easy for me? No, I don’t remember you. I don’t remember holding you or talking to you or falling in love with you—but I walk around with a giant hole in my heart all the time. I feel your absence every second of the day. It ...
I feel strangely free at such times. To behave properly is to be always courteous, always clever, and subtle and elegant. But now, when I am so alone, I do not have to be any of these things. For this moment, I am wholly myself, unshaped by the needs...
I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist. One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experienc...
When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.
Nobody feels ashamed of going to the dentist; it’s socially appropriate to take care of your teeth, even preventively. In short, it’s more normal to take care of our dental health than our mental health . . . it’s more acceptable to care for ou...
Lunatics are similar to designated hitters. Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can't go into the hospital, one person is designated as crazy and goes inside. Then, depending on how the rest of the family is feeling that perso...
The purpose of evil is to complement the good. If there is no hatred in this world, there can’t be any love too. While love is a positive emotion, hatred is a negative emotion. Yet the feeling of love can’t exist in a person without invoking hatr...
She found out that having something to do prevented you from feeling seasick, and that even a job like scrubbing a deck could be satisfying, if it was done in a seamanlike way. She was very taken with this notion, and later on she folded the blankets...
Washington politicians basically view the People as a capricious and dangerous enemy, a dumb mob whose only interesting quality happens to be their power to take away politicians' jobs... When the government sees its people as the enemy, sooner or la...
It's incredibly touching when someone who seems so hopeless finds a few inches of light to stand in and makes everything work as well as possible. All of us lurch and fall, sit in the dirt, are helped to our feet, keep moving, feel like idiots, lose ...
I feel like Amy wanted people to believe she really was perfect. And as we got to be friends, I got to know her. And she wasn't perfect. You know? She was brilliant and charming and all that, but she was also controlling and OCD and a drama queen and...
You know,' Shane said twenty minutes later, 'I'd feel a whole lot better about the two of us if you didn't think i was the go-to guy for breaking and entering.' She felt a flash of guilt about the breaking-and-entering part -but she had called him- j...
My point in mentioning this is only to say that people who feel any sort of regret where you are concerned will suppose you are angry, and they will see anger in what you do, even if you're just quietly going about a life of your own choosing. They m...
I'm a girl." When Deryn opened her eyes, the lady boffin was staring at her with no change of expression. "Indeed," she said. Deryn's mouth feel open. "You mean you...Did you barking ?" "I had no idea at all. But I make it a policy never to appear su...
So,' he said. 'What do you think of it?' She twisted towards the fire and watched the flames behind the blackened furnace door. 'When I hear a piece like that,' she said, 'I find it hard to believe that there isn't something more than this.' She wave...
As soon as whatever provisional well of confidence dries up, I will feel like a frightened motherless child. And I will—what? Lessee, I'll beg friends to assure me I'm fascinating, that my soul is complex so I can once more conduce to irony. An aby...
You who understand what a human mind can be, how can you bear it? I don't have the hundredth part of your mind and there are days when I think I'll go mad. I can feel it. Or hear it. It's more like hearing something creeping along the walls, just beh...
You feel as if everybody has been given an instruction manual on how to be likable, but you didn’t get it. And they are all sold out now. And if you are what you eat, then you must have surely spent the last few years of your life eating dog food a...
You feel as if everybody has been given an instruction manual on how to be likable, but you didn't get it. And they all sold out now. And if you are what you eat, then you must have surely spent the last few years of your life eating dog food and cat...
Most people feel best about their work the week before their vacation, but it's not because of the vacation itself. What do you do the last week before you leave on a big trip? You clean up, close up, clarify, and renegotiate all your agreements with...
