Is it better to win over the hearts and minds of the people, or imprison them and torture them into telling you they love you? These are the tough decisions a future tyrant, I mean President, may have to make.
No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don't.
All my contemporaries— hundred-and-fivers or convicts— will tell you how we lived in barely sentient fear, raising children for the executioner, prison, or the torture chamber.
The stories people tell you about themselves seem to retain the possibility of being false. But what you discover about them by yourself seems to be the truth.
Let me tell you something, kid," said Mrs. H of Boston and Beacon Hill. "Magic is just a word for what's left to the powerless once everyone else has eaten their fill.
People assume it takes years and months to love someone and that our affection must be rationed to only the best of the best. Well, I think that’s bullshit. Life’s too short not to tell those we love that they mean something to us.
I settle into my imagination so that I might someone when the real world tells me I'm no one.
I didn't want to leave things the way we had, unresolved, ... and tried to tell myself he cared about me enough not to look elsewhere for what I wasn't giving him.
Like a lot of people, I’ve always enjoyed commenting on strangers’ outfits. Unlike a lot of people, I now had a new megaphone to do it with. And, let me tell you, commenting on people’s hilarious clothing choices through a megaphone makes it so...
As far as I can tell, it doesn't make any difference to adults how clever children are. They always stick together. Unless you are sick or dying or mortally wounded, they will always side with the other adult.
But I was still determined to protect her. It might be the one good thing I would ever do in my life. I wondered if God would even notice.
I recalled something I’d read a long time ago about Satan. When he appeared, it wouldn’t be as a demon but as an ordinary-looking guy with a convincing message of peace.
I see why our little Braith likes you.” “Does she?” “Can’t you tell?” “I’m male. I have no idea what you females are thinking.
That's the difference between you and Greta. She has better things to do. She gets involved in clubs, activities. She has friends. But you? You slump around in that room of yours--
I dream about people who don't need to have sex to know they love each other. I dream about people who would only ever kiss you on the cheek.
It's the most unhappy people who want to stay alive, because they think they haven't done everything they want to do. They think they haven't had enough time. They feel they've been shortchanged.
I stared hard, trying to find a pattern. Thinking if I kept looking hard enough, maybe the pieces of the world would fit back together into something I could understand.
I like the word clandestine. It feels medieval. Sometimes I think of words as being alive. If clandestine were alive, it would be a pale little girl with hair the color of fall leaves and a dress as white as the moon.
Our mind is a crazy nightclub of cacophonous sound filled with strange images and one-night stands: our mind tells us lonely, loveless tales that leave us frightened but really have no lasting power
I don’t see the me that you see. I wish for just a little bit I could climb into you and then you could climb into me and then we could tell each other what we saw there.
I love the smell of my mother’s hair after she washes it. I love the feel of the scratchy stubble on my father’s face before he shaves. But I’ve never been able to tell them.
