These men are in prison: that is the Outsider’s verdict. They are quite contented in prison—caged animals who have never known freedom; but it is prison all the same. And the Outsider? He is in prison too: nearly every Outsider in this book has t...
I close my mouth and shut my eyes. I can feel the tears building the tears building up again. I beg myself not to cry, not here, not in assembly with Sally right next to me so desperate for me to crumble. I feel a finger tap on my left shoulder. Sall...
Presence is not a question of judging or evaluating a client or a client’s situation. Presence is to see the client’s situation in a positive and creative light with a vision for how the present situation of the client relates to his further spir...
One thing I've noticed since I quit drinking is that a person usually has two or three sets of impulses scratching away at some internal door at any given time. If you're sober--if you're alert, and paying attention to those impulses, and not yieldin...
I can't tell you how sorry I am. About everything. About your poor cat, about that horrendous funeral my dad concocted, and really about my lunatic father in general. I'm sorry you had to move in next to a family of complete weirdos. I don't know how...
I can answer that only by hearsay," returned the Guide, "for pain is a secret which he has shared with your race and not with mine; and you would find it as hard to explain suffering to me as I would find it to reveal to you the secrets of the Mounta...
It is undoubtedly true that religion is often socially conservative. By binding a people together under a shared God, a common cosmology and a common morality, religion creates order and stability and its rituals create social cohesio...n. By promisi...
The harder you slam a ball into the ground, the higher it bounces back up... A divorce, a breakup, losing a job, or just feeling seriously down can ground you, rough you up a bit, leave calluses on your feet and grit under your finger nails. But more...
Where in the Bible are we told in one verse not to do a thing and in the next to do it? ‘Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.’ Prov. xxvi. 4. ‘Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his ow...
But I do like Scotland. I like the miserable weather. I like the miserable people, the fatalism, the negativity, the violence that's always just below the surface. And I like the way you deal with religion. One century you're up to your lugs in it, t...
It puzzled K., at least it puzzled him looking at it from the policemen's point of view, that they had made him go into the room and left him alone there, where he had ten different ways of killing himself. At the same time, though, he asked himself,...
...And another item from the growing file of people who voluntarily wear dunce caps... You'll be talking cordially to someone and make an offhand reference, 'I recently read where--' and they'll cut you off and say, 'Oh, I don't read'... This is a tr...
Asscrown," I muttered under my breath as I headed to my next class. I wasn't proud of swearing at a complete stranger, no. but he started it. Noah matched my pace. "Don't you mean 'assclown'?" He looked amused. "No," I said, louder this time. "I mean...
In the 300 years of the crucifixion of Christ to the conversion of Emperor Constantine, polytheistic Roman emperors initiated no more than four general persecutions of Christians. Local administrators and governors incited some anti-Christian violenc...
Are you okay?” She looked up, her eyes glistening. “I just . . . I . . .” “Hey.” He stood up and rounded the picnic table, sitting next to her on the bench. He wrapped his arm around her, the feeling of her, so warm and female and way too t...
Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, an in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me. Even in the night, in bed, they woke me. T...
Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn’t care to sit next ...
Just jump, make that call, take the next step and say NO, I'm done, that's it! As long as you entertain fearful thoughts, you’ll continue to feel the pain. So, just take some kind of action now. Even if you feel that fear while you’re taking acti...
Find joy in the faces of children who view life as so magical. Give thanks every day for your life and for your existence. Your life matters, you matter. So many people think and care about you and you’re never really alone! Remember your loved one...
Have you ever been writing something when you just forgot where you were, and what time it was, and you kept diving down deeper into your words? No, it's more like diving down your words--past them, and way further down into someplace out. In fact, i...
Outside he hurried again, for he had several blocks to walk and the beer turned out to be no more than cool. He told himself he would remember next time to deal from the bottom - but the civil sirens sounded, surprising him with his silly private tho...
