Maman: Jamal, time has come to turn professional. Youngest Jamal: Really? Maman: But first, let me hear that song Darshan Do Ghanshyam, my favorite bhajan. Youngest Jamal: [sings] Darshan Do [stops and commands] Youngest Jamal: Fifty rupees! Maman: [...
Taking risks, choosing growth, challenging ourselves, and asking for promotions (with smiles on our faces, of course) are all important elements of managing a career. One of my favorite quotes comes from author Alice Walker, who observed, "The most c...
I’d say that most of these [poems in Jason Mashak's book SALTY AS A LIP] are just straightforward enough, but not entirely explainable or attributable to a single cause/effect, which makes them the kind of poems I want to read many times… “Salt...
The Lord has put more hardships atop the shoulders of my neighbors — more than I can even fathom coping with. I will strive to find a way to turn pity into admiration, for what use is it to send pity back at the world. Admiration and awe are much m...
In times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings--artists, scientists, clowns and philosophers--to create order. In times such as ours, however, when there is too much order, too much management, too much...
One of Mom's favorite passages from Gilead was: "This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me, and which his father told him. When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it i...
But he [Depression] just gives me that dark smile, settles into my favorite chair, puts his feet on my table and lights a cigar, filling the place with his awful smoke. Loneliness watches and sighs, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over h...
I stopped in St. Bernadette's Cemetery one of my favorite places... The trunks of six giant oaks rise like columns supporting a ceiling formed by their interlocking crowns. In the quiet space below, is laid out an aisle similar to those in any librar...
The first rule of snooping is to come at it sideways--when you began writing me dizzy letters about Alexander, I didn't ask if you were in love with him, I asked what his favorite animal was. And your answer told me everything I needed to know about ...
Richard Nixon has never been one of my favorite people, anyway. For years I've regarded his very existence as a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream; he was a foul caricature of ...
But the truth is, I want to be some woman's work boots, not her high heels." "Work boots?" What was sexy about that? And did women have work boots? "Yeah. You know, the boots she pulls out when she wants to get down and dirty, hiking or gardening or ...
One of Tobasonakwut's favorite phrases is , which means "seek your dream," but is lots more complicated. It means that first you have to find and identify your dream, often through fasting, and then that you also must carry out exactly what your drea...
Popping open a bottle of Southern Comfort to wet our whistles, we’d remember with a sense of having been personally cheated all our favorite musicians were dead, Hendrix and Morrison prime examples of people who refused to grow up, heroes of ours a...
It was her favorite story, that she remembers, but she would be hard-pressed to retell it now, faithfully, as it had been told to her. All she could recall were frayed, sleep-watered images of a forgotten castle in the middle of a wild forest, stone ...
If your favorite politician got ran over by a bus, I’d express my condolences by telling you I know how you feel. Why just the other day I ran over a rat, and I felt so guilty about it that I bought a whole gallon of ice cream, rather than just the...
Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a n...
Her favorite stepping-aside technique was to lay out a dizzying mountain of complex steps and then pronounce the conclusion self-evident. Excuse me? Things that are self-evident don't need you or the presentation anyway. Relying only on logic, on wha...
Our assholes will be clean but we must never wash our hands. Our immune systems will be strengthened by our being dirty. Not filthy. Just mildly grimy. Filthy fingernails have always been a favorite fashion accessory of mine. Especially when you plac...
When you arrive in the afterlife, you find that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley sits on a throne. She is cared for and protected by a covey of angels. After some questioning, you find out that God's favorite book is Shelley's Frankenstein. He sits up at ...
But then fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favo...
Tzedakah is different than charity. Charity comes from the word charitus, which means heart. Tzedakah comes from the word tzedek, which means justice, so when you are giving tzedakah, you are not just making the world a better place by contributing t...
