I wish people were more like animals. Animals don't try to change you or make you fit in. They just enjoy the pleasure of your company. Animals aren't conditional about friendships. Animals like you just the way you are. They listen to your problems,...
If you are a Buddhist, inspire yourself by thinking of the bodhisattva. If you are a Christian, think of the Christ, who came not to be served by others but to serve them in joy, in peace, and in generosity. For these things, these are not mere words...
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.
Jennifer Anne had prepared some complicated-looking recipe involving chicken breasts stuffed with sweet potatoes topped with a vegetable glaze. They looked perfect, but it was the kind of dish where you just knew someone had to have been pawing at yo...
I wouldn’t joke if you weren’t always patching me up,” Davin retorted. He looked at Chad again. “You must have noticed, right? It’s kind of cute, actually.” Though my heart fluttered, I tried to shoot him a warning glare. He ignored me. �...
I had a dream about you. I had converted a beached whale into a tour bus, and I asked you to be my driver. You asked what kind of people you’d be driving around, and I said, “Dead people.” You frowned and said, “Dead people don’t tip.” An...
I had a dream about you. You wanted to go for a walk, and I wanted to start a parade. I suggested we team up, but you said you’d rather have sex with a cactus. I was taken aback, but then I offered to introduce you to a Congressman, because I think...
I had a dream about you. You sold canned laughter, and I sold fresh laughter, straight out of my throat. You sold more of it, but nobody really liked your product. Plus, the people who bought your cans weren’t the kind of people to recycle, so most...
I was raised thinking that moral and ethical standards are universals that apply equally to everyone. And these values aren't easily compatible with the kind of religion that posits a Creator. To my way of thinking, an omnipotent being who sets up a ...
The people who really thirst for life, who stand daily on the brink of every kind of death, who struggle desperately to distinguish some light in the seated mystery of human existence— these are the people to whom the Gospel of salvation is primari...
It is easy to surround yourself with people who think in the same ways, believe the same ideas, and live life in similar patterns. Many communities are made up of the same kind of people to the extent that we intentionally have to seek people whose s...
Language can't describe reality. Literature has no stable reference, no real meaning. Each reader's interpretation is equally valid, more important than the author's intention. In fact, nothing in life has meaning. Reality is subjective. Values and t...
This highest kind of truth is never something the artist takes as given. It's not his point of departure but his goal. Though the artist has beliefs, like other people, he realizes that a salient characteristic of art is its radical openness to persu...
In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble--because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in s...
When I date women now, I have learned to simply not care what they think about it. I’m the same person I always have been. Faithful. Dependable. Kind. Sweet. Funny. Awesome. And if they want to discount me because of something as insignificant and ...
Larry has been absorbed, as he wished, into that tumultuous conglomeration of humanity, distracted by so many conflicting interests, so lost in the world's confusion, so wistful of good, so cocksure on the outside, so diffident within, so kind, so ha...
But the vicar of St. Botolph's had certainly escaped the slightest tincture of the Pharisee, and by dint of admitting to himself that he was too much as other men were, he had become remarkably unlike them in this - that he could excuse others for th...
Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.' I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her... I h...
its odd to be a writer, you hear someone's experience and you stash it away in some tiny part of your memory and you go on your way again, only to find; in a few lived through chapters of your story a piece of their puzzle became your pathway to hope...
I would teach how science works as much as I would teach what science knows. I would assert (given that essentially, everyone will learn to read) that science literacy is the most important kind of literacy they can take into the 21st century. I woul...
My brother Keith begged to go with us as usual. He'll turn thirteen in a few days - August 14 - and the thought of waiting two more years until he's 15 must seem impossible to him. I understand. Waiting is terrible. Waiting to be older is worse than ...
