Most morality, thought Mma Ramotswe, was about doing the right thing because it had been identified as such by a long process of acceptance and observance. You simply could not create your own morality because your experience would never be enough to...
We always want what is not ours. It’s intriguing. We think if we can just get that, we’ll finally be happy. The lure of what we do not have is deceptive. True freedom, however, is found in being content with what we already have. Can you imagine ...
She blew a stream of smoke up at the empty clotheslines. 'These silly dreams you have when you're young. I mean, what, Katie and Brendan Harris were going ot make a life in Las Vegas? How long would that little Eden have lasted? Maybe they'd be on th...
Anything which is just born, which has just come into existence, has no past behind it. Birth, in other words, is the condition of having no past. And likewise, anything which now dies, which has just ceased to be, has no future left in front of it. ...
When you break up with someone, and I’m not talking casual breakups here, it’s hard to take the sudden absence of such an important person in your life. It reminded me of when I’d stopped going to school and the weird uneasy feeling I’d gotte...
Nobody would commit suicide if the pain of being inside herself, the agony of the sleepless, tortured hours spent watching the world get smaller and uglier, were bearable or could be relieved by other people telling her how they wanted her to feel. A...
you cannot be friends either with boy or man unless you give yourself away in the process, and Mr. Pembroke did not commend this. He, for “personal intercourse,” substituted the safer “personal influence,” and gave his junior hints on the set...
From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building. And just as it had been tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza roof to take leave of the beautiful city extending as far as the eyes could see, so now I went to t...
Society reaps what it sows in the way it nurtures its children, because stress sculpts the brain to exhibit several antisocial behaviors. Stress can set off a ripple of hormonal changes that permanently wire a child's brain to cope with a malevolent ...
Madoka: Won't anyone notice that Mami-san is dead? Homura: Mami Tomoe's only relatives are distant relations. It will be quite some time before anyone files a missing persons report. When one dies on that side of the wards, not even a body is left be...
Karma has been a pop culture term for ages. But really, what the heck is it? Karma is not an inviolate engine of cosmic punishment. Rather, it is a neutral sequence of acts, results, and consequences. Receiving misfortune does not necessarily indicat...
Ritengo di essere capace di leggere un poco nell'animo delle persone che mi circondano. Forse non è così. Nelle mie giornate migliori ho l'impressione di scrutare in fondo all'animo altrui, anche se non sono poi una gran testa. Siamo seduti in una ...
I think you're under no obligation whatsoever to forgive anything, to forget anything. You're not required to push away the years of abuse because the abuser now chooses to be sober and in his sobriety regrets his actions. And white may be small and ...
To tell you the truth, I've just been avoiding everything. I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were f...
There, there, best to bring it all up,' she said. My memory was in shreds. Imagine a photograph cut into narrow strips then jumbled up. Everything is there, but you can't see the whole picture and even the strips have no bearing on reality. I did kno...
NO. No no no. I don't want to screw you. I just love you. When did who you want to screw become the whole game? Since when is the person you want to screw the only person you get to love? It's so stupid, Tiny! I mean, Jesus, who even gives a fuck abo...
In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so muc...
Each human being deals with hurt or resentment in a unique way. When you feel insulted or bullied, you may reach for a chocolate bar. In the same circumstance, I might burst into tears. Another person may put his or her feelings quickly into words, c...
Your story is not a picture of life; it lacks the elements of truth. And why? Simply because you run straight on to the end; because you do not analyze. Your heroes do this thing or that from this or that motive, which you assign without ever a thoug...
Sometimes people carried anger around for years, in a secret box inside their bodies, and it grew tighter like a hardening knot. The problem with it getting tighter and smaller was that the people did, too, hiding it. Liyana had seen this happen even...
