It ain't that you get religion. Religion gets you and then milks you dry. Won't let you drink a little whiskey. Won't let you make no fat-assed girls grin and giggle. Won't let you do a damn thing except work for what you'll get in the hearafter. I l...
Today you had a very important lesson on taking punches. A lot of people will tell you that the first thing you have to learn is how to take a punch. But I believe the first thing you should know is that you can take one and survive. A punch won't ki...
A robin perched on the branch of the apple tree, his feathers ruffled, his red chest blazing. 'No need to look so down in the mouth,' he chirruped. 'Things'll get worse before they get better.' 'I don't know what it is about that tree,' Geno grumbled...
I feel closer ties and more intimate bonds with certain characters in books, with certain images I’ve seen in engravings, than with many supposedly real people with the metaphysical absurdity known as ‘flesh and blood’. In fact, ‘flesh and bl...
It reached a point where the paranoia was getting to me. Everywhere I looked, it seemed like people were hanging out, wanting to date, hooking up, wanting to hook up—it was relationships, relationships, relationships everywhere. Guys checking out g...
My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, b...
I really loathe [the bumper sticker] 'Proud Parent of a Terrific Kid!' Why not a bumper sticker for the unlucky parents, something like: 'My Fifteen-Year-Old's in Detox and Not Speaking to Any of Us' or 'My Kid Robbed a 7-Eleven and is in a Center fo...
A blanket could be used to say hello to a man who’s not only tone deaf, but also regular deaf. Just wave the blanket up and down, and be advised: If that blanket is red, he’s liable to charge you like a bull. I’d charge you too, if only I had y...
Bricks could be used to promote social progress. If we could amass enough bricks to build a prison big enough to cage every citizen, then everybody would be equal. And I think our current political leadership is savvy enough to see this, and is takin...
But when you love somebody, things don't always go the way you want them to. Sometimes you have to stick through adversity and not give up. You know, I think love can be a test. When it gets difficult, that's when we learn if our love is real, and if...
--she walked into her bathroom, stripped, and entered the shower. The door opened a minute later to expose Riley standing there, beer in hand. Scraping damp strands of red off her face, she glared at him. "I don't remember giving you an invitation." ...
I walked down Paseo del Prado, losing myself to the sights, sounds, and dense magic of the city. There's something weirdly calming about being alone in a big city. It made me feel like the universe was hugely generous, and that my species was so damn...
Too many of us live with an uncontrolled thought life. It is possible to learn to identify destructive thoughts and make wiser choices. Instead of letting those thoughts rumble freely about in my mind, I make the choice to harness them and direct the...
Launching a turnaround takes courage. I cannot measure that and so it is not going to be included in my analysis, but behind the moments of change there are always a few people within these societies who have decided to try to make a difference.
I'm a patient man, but I'm not going to wait endlessly." "But...," She stammered. "But what?" "It's so fast." He growled. "When I went slow, you wanted fast. Now I'm going fast, you want slow. Luanne Mayfair, are you trying to drive me crazy on purpo...
It is precisely that requirement of worship that has been the principal source of suffering for individual man and the human race since the beginning of history. In their efforts to impose universal worship, men have unsheathed their swords and kille...
My angel-boy is close now, as in five-feet-away close. There's no way I'm going to burst into song in front of him. But then the contrary part of me says, you're going to let a boy keep you from singing out loud? Sing, sister! Sing! So I do, and my a...
If a blanket could be used to keep one person warm, then it stands to reason that all the blankets in the world are to blame for global warming, and I think our political leaders, with all their wisdom, should confiscate all blankets and burn them. T...
But it's a changeable world! When we consider how great our sorrow , and how small they ; how we think we shall die of grief, and how quickly we forget, I think we ought to be ashamed of ourselves and our fickle-heartedness. For, after all, what busi...
How was the light today?” “Big. Hot. Yellow-white. The sky’s blue was like a drumbeat. I watched the black tree shadows revolve. When the sun went down it was like someone’s hand was pulling it, very gently. It was soft-edged and orange. The ...
I fear that we live in an ahistorical age in which we believe that we are so wise that we no longer need the lessons of the past, perhaps most disturbingly of all that technology has put us beyond the lessons of the past.
