So what are you going to do? Let your future be shaped by the injustices and cruelties of the past, or do you shape your own future? Do you walk down those mean streets without becoming mean yourself, or do you lie down and whimper? Victim of everyon...
I still get angry when older people assume that everyone in my generation, screws around. They're probably the same ones who think all kids use dope. It's true that we are more open than our parents but that just means we accept sex and talk about it...
Does rejecting feminism mean rejecting women's equality? No, because that's not what feminism is about. Rejecting feminism means recognizing that women don't need feminism to make them equal to men because they already are equal--just not the same.
There's a Palestine that dwells inside all of us, a Palestine that needs to be rescued: a free Palestine where all people regardless of color, religion, or race coexist; a Palestine where the meaning of the word "occupation" is only restricted to wha...
Maybe the Truth of the Meaning of Life, Ancient and Arcane Knowledge of the Great Unknowable Universe is handed down only to persons presenting with the correct brand-name footwear. If you turn up wearing Shoe City knock-offs, you don't get to pass G...
but when i write, i feel like the most important man in the world, because when i write, i give meaning to things. i create significance, and i create meanings, and as hard as that may for you to believe, that's really even more important in the long...
As far as how my mom might view me, I can imagine her saying something like this to me: “You may be ugly, son, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be rich. In fact, it kind of means you have to be rich. At least if you don’t want to be asexual an...
Want of imagination makes things unreal enough to be destroyed. By imagination I mean knowledge and love. I mean compassion. People of power kill children, the old send the young to die, because they have no imagination. They have power. Can you have...
Science tries to record and explain the factual character of the natural world, whereas religion struggles with spiritual and ethical questions about the meaning and proper conduct of our lives. The facts of nature simply cannot dictate correct moral...
It is very useful, when one is young, to learn the difference between "literally" and "figuratively." If something happens literally, it actually happens; if something happens figuratively, it feels like it is happening. If you are literally jumping ...
A brick could be used to keep a level head. I don’t mean remaining rational, I mean literally, keep your head still and balanced and don’t let the brick fall off. Actually, keeping the brick stable on your head might keep you emotionally stable, ...
She has gone back to Brooklyn,' her mother would say. And, as the train rolled past Macmire Bridge on its way towards Wexford, Eilis imagined the years already when these words would come to mean less and less to the man who heard them and would come...
A metaphor is not merely a linguistic expression (a form of words) used for artistic or rhetorical purposes; instead, it is a process of human understanding by which we achieve meaningful experience that we can make sense of. A metaphor, in this "exp...
...But this number, like all the others, must be seen not as 5.7 million, which is an abstraction few of us can grasp, but as 5.7 million times one. This does not mean some generic image of a Jew passing through some abstract notion of death 5.7 mill...
For if indeed God became a man, then Truth condescended to became a truth, from whose historical contingency one cannot simply pass to categories of universal rationality; and this means that whatever Christians mean when they speak of truth, it cann...
Time is not a means to keep or prove your worth in the world, but a means to experience the richness of all that is.
As I'm sure you know, there are two types of "What?" in the world. The first type simply means "Excuse me, I didn't hear you. Could you please repeat yourself?" The second type is a little trickier. It means something more along the lines of "Excuse ...
I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning...
The word 'risk' derives from the early Italian risicare, which means 'to dare'. In this sense, risk is a choice rather than a fate. The actions we dare to take, which depend on how free we are to make choices, are what the story of risk is all about....
The thing that strikes me more and more, is the extraordinary viciousness and dishonesty of political controversy in our time. I don’t mean merely that controversies are acrimonious. They ought to be that when they are on serious subjects. I mean t...
[It's Not About You, Mr. Santa Claus,] is a fun read and a twist on Christmas, because it does involve Santa Claus and Jesus, and it doesn’t say that Santa Claus is bad, but it’s the child explaining to Santa Claus the true reason for the season ...
