Monsieur Josserand died very quietly - a victim of his own honesty. He had lived a useless life, and he went off, worthy to the last, weary of all the petty things in life, done to death by the heartless conduct of the only human beings that he had e...
You can't do passion halfway. Living your passion means you're all in. You trust your heart and trust your gut wherever that takes you.
Because of an imaginary voice, Nicholas had become a whole person; rather than the partial person he had been in Berkeley. If he had remained in Berkeley he would have lived and died a partial person, never knowing completeness.
The outrageous madonna/whore duality that we mock in Women’s Studies 101 has its subtle, and very insidious, expression in the good/bad mother paradigm that we grapple with every day of our lives.
Every family has a destiny to fulfill....Every child is the future of his or her family and nation at large....Every father is a hero to his son (child).....Fathers are you truly heroes to your children....check your thoughts, actions and motives.......
Our mind takes an inventory of past events and uses them to project the probability of success in the future. Depending on the information it gathers, we either move forward—or the fear response is triggered and forward progress is circumvented. Pa...
I tried to lose myself in school and friends as best as I was able, trying to put Dorian's world out of my mind. But that was pretty much impossible with Clarrisa's constant, homicidally cheerful presence, which was, I supposed, something like making...
The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who had syphilis, said that only a person of deep faith could afford the luxury of religious skepticism. Humanists, by and large educated, comfortably middle-class persons with rewarding lives like ...
To The Veterans of the United States of America Thank you, for the cost you paid for our freedom, thank you for the freedom to live in safety and pursue happiness, for freedom of speech (thus my book), and for all the freedoms that we daily take for ...
Sometimes people don't get sick from bacteria or a virus- -living organisms alien to the human body- -but from the human brain itself. Our brains can be our worst enemy, our cruelest opponent.
This is how we came by our factions: Candor, Erudite, Amity, Abnegation and Dauntless." Max smiles. "In them we find administrators and teachers and counselors and leaders and protectors. In them we find our sense of belonging, our sense of community...
Living in musty shadows and dismal, oppressive silence, Thérèse could see her whole life stretching out before her totally void, bringing night after night the same cold bed and morning after morning the same empty day.
My own sense is that the acquisition of self knowledge has been made difficult by the modern world. More and more human beings live in vast urban environments, surrounded by other human beings and the creations of human beings. The natural world, the...
Remember,too,that all who succeed in life get off to a bad start,and pass through many heartbreaking struggles before they "arrive". The turning point in the lives of those who succeed usually comes at some moment of crisis,through which they are int...
I did not imagine anyone reading my rambling, ranting stories. I was writing for myself, trying to shape my life outside my terrors and helplessness, to make it visible and real in a tangible way, in the way other people's seemed real -- the lives I ...
I cover my bedroom windows with tinfoil, because it keeps out the morning sun, and it makes it seem like I’m living on a spaceship. Neil Armstrong once called me to learn how to walk on the path of love, and I told him, “One giant leap, followed ...
Some people sleep their lives away. But I also want to sleep death away. If I sleep long enough, maybe death will think I’m already dead and pass me by.
I live in a tourist town, and I hang out in souvenir shops because it feels like home. Visitors want to buy everything from postcards to my love, and I love that. However, only the postcards are for sale—and not my love. No, my love is for rent.
We live in the post-trash, man. It'll be a real short eon. Down in the ectoplasmic circuitry where humanity's leaders are all linked up unconsciously with each other and with the masses, man, there's been this unanimous worldwide decision to trash th...
The rumor is that my cousin dates phoenix sculptures made out of cheese. It has to be true, because it's too weird not to be. Also, consider the evidence. He lives in Wisconsin and does not own a microwave. It's the kind of thing you wish to read abo...
There’s no room in my life for a woman. I mean I live in a closet, and I suppose I could squish my clothes over and she could squeeze in, but where is she supposed to put her clothes? And her shoes, what about her shoes?