School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anythin...
Elend, my dearest Elend who brings a pile of books to each ball he attends and ignores everybody in favour of having a nice read. Elend who has to grow up rather suddenly in the face of the revolution he has read extensively about, but never thought ...
The thing about pain, whether physical or emotional, is there's no running away. You can't escape it and you can't hide from it. Not by ignoring it, not by drugging it, not by doing a swan dive into a bottle. Sooner or later you'll have to take a bre...
Daniel came to sit beside me, ignoring my wariness and settling into the thin, worn cushion. “Who’d you think I was that first night we met?” “The night you attacked me, you mean? I thought you were a vampire.” “A vampire?” His look was...
The doctrine that future happiness depends upon belief is monstrous. It is the infamy of infamies. The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation and experience merits everlastin...
Of all human activities, writing is the one for which it is easiest to find excuses not to begin – the desk’s too big, the desk’s too small, there’s too much noise, there’s too much quiet, it’s too hot, too cold, too early, too late. I ha...
George P. A. Healy; "I knew no one in France, I was utterly ignorant of the language, I did not know what I should do when once there; but I was not yet one-and-twenty, and I had a great stock of courage, of inexperience—which is sometimes a great ...
How merciful a thing is man's ignorance of his immediate future! What a ghastly, paralysing thing it would have been if all those present could have known what was about to happen within a matter of seconds! For nothing short of pre-knowledge could h...
Epic sex?" I sputtered. "By what standards, precisely, is sex judged to be epic?" "And tons and tons of mortal simps like you used as pawns." Bob sighed happily, ignoring my question. "There are no words. It was like the Lord of the Rings and All My ...
I pulled him close. “You can try your best. The only problem is after this is all over with reality is going to be waiting for me.” He took my shirt off and tossed it over his shoulder pulling me down on the couch. He kissed me again, biting at m...
And that is how Goodwin problems were always fixed. Fix them on the surface but don't go to the root, always ignoring the elephant in the room. I think that morning was when I realized I'd grown up with an elephant in every room of my life. It was pr...
Public and civic value require commitment and hard work among the core group of participants. It also requires that these groups be self-governing and submit to constraints that help them ignore distracting and entertaining material and stay focused ...
People are ignorant of what any street clock knows. Why? Because the crack that cleaves existence also swallows their existence-reflecting consciousnesses. Thrown back into existence, the poor souls don't suspect that a moment ago they didn't exist -...
Traditionally, there have been two major strains of motivation (or perceived motivations) in anarchist politics: Duty and Joy. Like any duality, it is easy to fall into the trap of simplistic black and white labels, ignoring the more realistic contin...
There is a very pervasive web of falsehoods that the dreamer must wake from in order to start on her path. These are the lies of the mad world, the system of delusion maintained by human drama and ignorance.
Mankind in the aggregate I have found to be brutish, ignorant and unkind, whether those qualities were covered by the coarse tunic of the peasant of the white and purple toga of a senator. And yet in the weakest of men, in moments when they are alone...
We’ve entered dangerous territory. You can’t kiss someone with so much emotion if you’re preparing to walk away. Alarms ring through my head, too loud and too obvious to be ignored. There are way too many complex emotions being passed between u...
This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogm...
Don't think for a minute that bad publicity and endless criticism don't leave their claw marks on everyone concerned. Your friends try to cheer you up by saying lightly, "I suppose you get used to it, and ignore it." You try. You try damned hard. But...
Writer's block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you should feel the need to say something. Why? If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts. Th...
... when someone sees a soul disturbed and unable to see something, he won't laugh mindlessly, but he'll take into consideration whether it has come from a brighter life and is dimmed through not having yet become accustomed to the dark or whether it...
