She tried to remind herself that beauty was only skin deep, but that didn't offer any helpful excuses when she was berating herself for never knowing what to say to people. There was nothing more depressing than an ugly girl with no personality. It h...
We were all born to be peaceful citizens of the world. Take care of your global garden and do not allow evil gardeners try to convince you which flowers are ugly and which should be destroyed. This is God's universe and he is the master gardener of a...
What sorts of books are placed by garbage cans on garbage night in the town of Sterns? Mainly they're old class books, the kind people carry around in boxes in their basements for twenty years and then one day think: I will never again in my entire l...
[Patricia Greenfield] concluded that “every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others.” Our growing use of the Net and other screen-based technologies has led to the “widespread and sophisticated development of visual-spati...
I also never would have imagined I'd quote back a church lesson, but when the rest of the crowd stood up to take communion, I found myself saying to Dimitri: "Don't you think that if God can supposedly forgive you, it's kind of egotistical for you no...
I've always felt that the performance of a raag resembles a novel - or at least the kind of novel I'm attempting to write. You know,' he continued, extemporizing as he went along, 'first you take one note and explore it for a while, then another to d...
He said, "Were he only like his sister—what a difference that would make! For there never was such a sweet and gentle lady! I hear her footsteps, as she goes about the world. I hear the swish-swish-swish of her silken gown and the jingle-jangle of ...
There are a lot of things I can't control. I don't know what's going to happen in the next few days.I don't want what I am going to face, what kind of choices I am going to have to make. I can't predict it. I can't control it. It's too big.' I nodded...
The spiritual energy of our time, as I've come to understand it, is not a rejection of the rational disciplines by which we've ordered our common life for many decades - law, politics, economics, science. It is, rather, a realization that these disci...
If you love Alex now, then love him forever. Make him laugh again, and cherish the time you spend together. Take walks and ride your bikes, curl up on the couch and watch movies beneath a blanket. Make him breakfast, but don't spoil him. Let him make...
June is gone. For the first time, the enormity of that hits me. Every muscle aches, my heart most of all. I am throbbing with how much I miss her. It hurts worse than anything. I don't know how I'm supposed to be expected to live day to day carrying ...
WE ALREADY HAVE everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement. All these trips that we lay on ourselves—the heavy-duty fearing that we’re bad and hoping that we’re good, the identities that we so dearly cling to, the rage, the jealo...
That is the way with us when we have any uneasy jealousy in our disposition: if our talents are chiefly of the burrowing kind, our honey-sipping cousin (whom we have grave reasons for objecting to) is likely to have a secret contempt for us, and any ...
Don’t worry, though, because Prince Hubert is very handsome and kind. That’s all you wanted in a boyfriend, wasn’t it?” “No,” I said. She raised an eyebrow. “It must be. If you had admired any other qualities you would have developed th...
Feelings, whether of compassion or irritation, should be welcomed, recognized, and treated on an absolutely equal basis; because both are ourselves. The tangerine I am eating is me. The mustard greens I am planting are me. I plant with all my heart a...
The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omni...
Algol is the name of the winking demon star, Medusa of the skies; fair but deadly to look on, even for one who is already dying. Ah, the bright stars of the night. Almost they obliterate the clear white pain. A thousand stars shining in the ether; bu...
If this were a proper world, beautiful faces would belong to beautiful people. Good people with kind hearts and clever minds would always have bright eyes and dazzling smiles, and bad people would have scraggly hair and warty noses. That way if you s...
Stories come in all different kinds." Hester scooted closer, clearly enjoying the subject at hand. "There's tales, which are light and fluffy. Good for a smile on a sad day. Then you got yarns, which are showy-yarns reveal more about the teller than ...
In a group of five workouts, I tend to have one great workout, the kind of workout that makes me think in just a few weeks I could be an Olympic champion, plus maybe Mr. Olympia. Then, I have one workout that’s so awful the mere fact I continue to ...
I kind of hate Nick right now, too, but there's someone else higher on my list, someone I hate more than Saddam Hussein and any asshole named Bush combined, hate more than that fuckhead who canceled 'My So-Called Life' and left me with a too-small bo...
