Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure. . . Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain...
See, being a person is kind of random and arbitrary business. You may have noticed that. And you need to believe in something to keep it from being too random and arbitrary to handle. Some people take religion, or success, or patriotism, or family, b...
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would no...
I am tired of people saying that poor character is the only reason people do wrong things. Actually, circumstances cause people to act a certain way. It's from those circumstances that a person's attitude is affected followed by weakening of characte...
Asif Ali maneuvers the gleaming Mercedes down the labyrinthine lanes of Old Kolkata with consummate skill, but his passengers do not notice how smoothly he avoids potholes, cows and beggars, how skilfully he sails through aging yellow lights to get t...
In , written in the early 1950s, Czeslaw Milosz wrote that Eastern European intellectuals, reading in clandestine editions, were amazed to find that its author had never visited the Soviet Union. How, then, had he captured its mental and moral atmosp...
Didn’t your mom teach you to not creep up on a girl in a hearse?” I snapped even though I knew my situation wasn’t normal at all, and no mom taught their kid that. He chuckled lightly as he stared at me, humour in his eyes. “No. Actually miss...
He thought of trying to explain something he had recently noticed about himself: that if anyone insulted him, or one of his friends, he didn't really mind--or not much, anyway. Whereas if anyone insulted a novel, a story, a poem that he loved, someth...
Every day it got swept. All of the dirt each piece of dust and even the tiniest bread crumb of secret midnight snacks. It lay under that rug. Years went by nobody noticed it’s more defeated crumbled appearance with all the misshaped lumps and bumps...
I like the trail that the Internet created. For example, I was watching one of those Douglas Sirk movies, and I noticed that Rock Hudson towered over everyone, and I typed in "How tall was" and I saw "How tall was Jesus," and I'm like, "Sure," and ha...
The doctor's wife wasn't a bad woman. She was sufficiently convinced of her own importance to believe that God actually did watch everything she did and listen to everything she said, and she was too taken up with rooting out the pride she was prone ...
Awareness is our true self; it’s what we are. So we don’t have to try to develop awareness; we simply need to notice how we block awareness, with our thoughts, our fantasies, our opinions, and our judgments. We’re either in awareness, which is ...
When we refuse to work with our disappointment, we break the Precepts: rather than experience the disappointment, we resort to anger, greed, gossip, criticism. Yet it's the moment of being that disappointment which is fruitful; and, if we are not wil...
A child isn’t born bitter. I point no fingers as to who tainted the clean, pure pool of my childhood. Let’s just say that when I realized that I didn’t want to grow up, the damage was already done. Knowing that being grown up was no swell place...
I have noticed more than once in life that a taste for the ineffably twee can go hand-in-hand with a distinctly uncharitable outlook on the world, I once shared an office with a woman who had covered the wall space behind her desk with pictures of fl...
Today I want to belong. I want to feel safe and at home. I want to be aware of what it is like simply to be, without defenses or desires. I will appreciate the flow of life for what it is-my own true self. I will notice those moments of intimacy with...
[Old Sixsmith notices the "shooting star"-shaped birthmark] Old Rufus Sixsmith: That's a very peculiar birthmark. Luisa Rey: Yeah, my mom was sure it was going to be cancerous and kept trying to get me to remove it, but... I kinda like it. Old Rufus ...
[Emma notices Bumstead's accordian] Emma Murdoch: It's beautiful. Inspector Frank Bumstead: It was a gift from my mother. She died recently. I keep it with me to remind me of her. Emma Murdoch: I'm sorry. Inspector Frank Bumstead: It's a funny thing,...
Pa Bailey: Of course it's just a hope, you wouldn't consider coming back to the Building & Loan would you? George Bailey: Well I... [notices Annie eavesdropping] George Bailey: Annie, why don't you draw up a chair and then you'll be more comfortable ...
Batman: You know, I don't want to spoil the party but, does anyone notice that we're stuck in the middle of the ocean on this couch? Do you know what kind of sunburn I'm going to get? None, 'cause I'm covered in latex, but you guys are going to get s...
[a nightmare switches between a ladies' garden club and a Soviet/Chinese military hospital] Chairlady: You will notice that I have told them they may smoke. I've allowed my people to have a little fun in the selection of bizarre tobacco substitutes.....
