Don't ever criticize yourself. Don't go around all day long thinking, 'I'm unattractive, I'm slow, I'm not as smart as my brother.' God wasn't having a bad day when he made you... If you don't love yourself in the right way, you can't love your neigh...
This, I suppose, constitutes one of the greatest dangers of retiring, the sudden cutting off of motive power while the mechanism is still running at top speed. It would be so much better and easier, if it were possible, to cut off the motive power gr...
To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural sel...
Faith is the surrender of the mind, it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other animals. It's our need to believe and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that a...
We know of no spectacle more ridiculous—or more contemptible—than that of the religious reactionaries who dare to re-write the history of our republic. Or who try to do so. Is it possible that, in their vanity and stupidity, they suppose that the...
One of the bigger mistakes of our time, I suppose, was preaching the demonization of all judgment without teaching how to judge righteously. We now live in an age where, apart from the inability to bear even good judgment when it so passes by, still ...
This imagined notion of who we are and how others are supposed to see us, is called aham. Aham constantly seek validation from external world. When that is not forthcoming it becomes insecure. Aham makes humans accumulate things; through things we ho...
When the time is right, you might right, you might consider telling Theo that you’ve been in love with him for a long time now.” Lucy sniffed. “And I’m supposed to do this without Milk Duds? As if!” Doris laughed. “You know, being true to...
You don't buy poetry. (Neither do I.) Why? You cannot afford it? Bosh! You spend Editions de luxe on a thirsty friend. You can buy any one of the poetry bunch For the price you pay for a business lunch. Don't you suppose that a hungry head, Like an e...
Contrary to popular belief, the past was not more eventful than the present. If seems so it is because when you look backward things that happened years apart are telescoped together, and because very few of your memories come to you genuinely virgin...
So I suppose one danger is that we might get the idea that, you know, “to blurt, is to be.” The idea that whatever comes out is good and is us. Whereas someone who has really worked with text realizes – well, that neither one is “really” yo...
I realized I had a novel on my hands, but didn't know where it was going to go. So I thought, 'I'm going to do everything that you're not supposed to do when you plan a novel; I'm going to step back and let this thing take itself wherever it wants to...
...I don't ever want to feel that way. Feel as if there are no surprises left. The surprises make life worth living. Expecting nothing, accepting it all. Accepting isn't the right word. ACKNOWLEDGING it all. I suppose I'll just try to figure it out a...
I mean in the community that I grew up in, you know, a very, you know, mixed, almost entirely African Diaspora community, one of the things that we were not ever supposed to say was how much self-hatred and colorism determined and guided what we woul...
There will be many times in your lives--- at school, and more particularly when you are a grown up---when people will distract or divert you from what needs to be done. You may even welcome the distraction. But if you use it as an excuse for not doin...
Let me just acknowlege that the function of grammar is to make language as efficent and clear and transparent as possible. But if we’re all constantly correcting each other’s grammar and being really snotty about it, then people stop talking beca...
I have never been one for musicians. I know girls are supposed to go crazy for frontmen who close their eyes when they sing and nod their heads when the drums kick in, but I'm like Shania Twain with that stuff: That don't impress me much. I'll take w...
I wanted to wear the most impenetrable suit of armour ever known to mankind. 'Hello, Mr. Rotten...' You can't say anything about me. You can't put me down in any way shape or form - I'm rotten to the core... you know, what's left for you? Pleasantrie...
Lennie Pike: Then what happens next? I'll tell you what happens: Then they all decide that I'm supposed to get a smaller share! That I'm somebody extra special stupid, or something! That they don't even care if it's a democracy! And in a democracy, i...
Juno MacGuff: My dad had this weird obsession with Roman or Greek mythology or something and he decided to name me after Zeus' wife. Mark Loring: Zeus' wife? Juno MacGuff: Yeah and I mean Zeus had tons of lays but I'm pretty sure Juno was his only wi...
Milo Tindle: Alright, I'll do it. Where do you want me to break in? Andrew Wyke: Not so fast. You've got to get disguised first. Milo Tindle: What for? Andrew Wyke: Suppose somebody saw you coming. Milo Tindle: Here? In the middle of nowhere? I could...
