We could, you know, go out for hot dogs. Don’t worry—they’re not actually dogs. It’s just a name. They’re these meat things that you put on buns—that’s a kind of bread—and then you top them with other things and—” ...
He smiled all the way to physics class. He almost laughed out loud when he passed through the door and saw her shadowy, hunched-over form casting around for a seat in the back. She was in his class; this was excellent. Maybe she’d call him a name i...
I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I ...
Mental illness People assume you aren’t sick unless they see the sickness on your skin like scars forming a map of all the ways you’re hurting. My heart is a prison of Have you tried?s Have you tried exercising? Have you tried eating better? Have...
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda .... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, t...
It is recorded in the monastic rules that a monk once performed an abortion on a girl; the Buddha judged his action seriously wrong, which incurred him the highest offense in the monastic rule. A monk committing this kind of wrongful deed must be exp...
I've never had sex," repeated Artemis. "Never wanted to." It was her turn not to look at him as she spoke. "Not with a man or with a woman, or with an animal, though my family joke about it. And I never will. The thought of it disgusts me. But the ot...
We typically misunderstand what's wrong about consumerism. It's not that it makes us love material things too much. To be a good consumer, you have to desire to get lots of things, but you must not love any of them too much once you have them. Consum...
You know what?' said Vimes aloud. 'This is going to be the world's first democratically killed dragon. One man, one stab.' Then you've got to stop them. You can't let them kill it!' said Lady Ramkin. Vimes blinked at her. Pardon?' he said. It's wound...
That cat doesn't have a lick of sense,' I said, sighing. Well, honey, he's not right in the head,' Dad said, flipping his cigarette into the front yard. I glared at him. 'And just what do you mean by that?' Dad counted on his fingers. 'He's cross-eye...
If you went twenty-four hours without cigarettes, I'd drink a can of pop. Regular pop. The whole can." Isaw the glimmer of Adrian's earlier smile returning. "You would not." "I totally would." "Half a can would put you into a coma." Sonya frowned. "A...
My job is not to worry about what everyone else thinks about me but to discover what I think. If I actually want to know what someone else thinks, my job is then to ask that person. More often than not, however, it isn’t important to know. It’s o...
One great help here - and I make no claim that it is the only help or even a necessary condition for forgiveness - is sincere repentance on the part of the wrongdoer. When I am wronged by another, a great part of the injury - over and above any physi...
We have no way of knowing, of course, why some are born in health and affluence, while others enter broken bodies or broken homes, or emerge into a realm of war or hunger. So we cannot give definite meaning to our place in the world, or to our neighb...
Do you know that when one who has influence with youth- be he teacher, leader or parent- seriously weakens the foundations upon which a young person has built, by faith-destroying challenges the youngster is not yet equipped to meet, he fashions a di...
You taste injustice, even if it’s fictional, really taste it,it has a way of doing that. Sometimes, you can never put the shoe on the other foot. We can’t go back in time and know what it was like to be a black person then. Even today, when thing...
The temperature in the room seems to have gone up about ten degrees. My armpits are sweating and I notice myself vigorously massaging my left hand with my right hand. I am clenching my jaw tight and my body seems rigidly fit for a casket. But enough ...
I don't see the use of reading the same thing over and over again,' said Phillip. 'That's only a laborious form of idleness.' But are you under the impression that you have so great a mind that you can understand the most profound writer at a first r...
And out floated Eeyore. "Eeyore!" cried everybody. Looking very calm, very dignified, with his legs in the air, came Eeyore from beneath the bridge. "It's Eeyore!" cried Roo, terribly excited. "Is that so?" said Eeyore, getting caught up by a little ...
Activities such as chanting, bowing, and sitting in zazen are not at all wasted, even when done merely formally, for even this superficial encounter with the Dharma will have some wholesome outcome at a later time. However, it must be said in the mos...
In fact the "mask" theme has come up several times in my background reading. Richard Sennett, for example, in "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism", and Robert Jackall, in "Moral Mazes: The World of Cor...
