It's not that racism doesn't exist. Lots of people in New York, and elsewhere, hate because of color and gender, religion and national origin. It's just that I rarely worry about those things because there's a real world underneath all that nonsense;...
I thought I was over him! So why did my heart still rip? Why did I still feel this sorrow? I got this strange sensation that God was with me. And he was angry. He was very angry--not at me and not at Jack. God was angry at the pain I was going throug...
I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of all things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no war...
But nothing happened there now of a nature to provoke a disturbance. There were no complaints to the management or the police, and the dark glory of the upper galleries was a legend in such memories as that of the late Emiel Kroger and the present Pa...
Was I the first boy that you had ever found in the darkness? I hurt everywhere and maybe you just didn’t know how to hold me. The sincerest thing I ever said to you was that I was sorry for being. You said back to me, ‘Don’t be sorry for how un...
When we did eventually get to the party - me walking next to Dad's Volvo driving at five miles an hour - I had a horrible time. Everyone laughed at first but then more or less ignored me. In a mood of defiant stuffed oliveness I did have a dance by m...
But sometimes you simply can't make yourself feel like acting. And in those situations, motivational advice risks making things worse, by surreptitiously strengthening your belief that you need to feel motivated before you act. By encouraging an atta...
Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task; it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction – purpose and dignity – that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and ...
,' it used to be called, even by Jews. 'The Jewish Question.' I find I quite like this interrogative formulation, since the question—as Gertrude Stein once famously if terminally put it—may be more absorbing than the answer. Of course one is flir...
I swear, with Chloe Bear once again as my witness... That my problems and failures will not stop me, nor will they dictate who I am. That I will continue to be my own person. That life is too short, and I will live every day as the best person I can ...
Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, "Well, that's pretty much what I thought I'd see," you a...
Father sat down on the edge of the narrow bed. "Corrie," he began gently, "when you and I go to Amsterdam-when do I give you your ticket?" I sniffed a few times, considering this. "Why, just before we get on the train." "Exactly. And our wise Father ...
I pull his mouth to mine and I kiss him. I kiss him for always having the perfect thing to say. I kiss him for always being there for me. I kiss him for supporting whatever decision I think I might need to make. I kiss him for being so patient with m...
The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. It may be said even that the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogm...
He was perfectly capable of looking after himself, although after his marriage he had lost the knack for it. He missed the comfort of all the small things Charlotte did for him,but these were nothing compared to the loneliness. There was no one to ta...
Most dancers find their confidence in dancing. Right is mere millimeters away from wrong. Failure is always louder than success. But there is an accumulation of all the things you don’t do wrong, and it becomes your confidence. You can even get to ...
You know what I was thinking about on my way home? How different my life would be if you’d made that gash a little deeper. Or how different yours would be if I’d vaulted myself off a roof nine years ago. Do you ever think about things like that? ...
It seemed to her everyone had too much self-protective pride to truly strip off down to their souls in front of their long-term partners. It was easier to pretend there was nothing more to know, to fall into an easygoing companionship. It was almost ...
At first happiness might seem like just desserts for biological fitness (more accurately, the states that would have led to fitness in the environment in which we evolved). We are happier when we are healthy, well-fed, comfortable, safe, prosperous, ...
After all, you can argue – argue until you cry – about what modern, codified misogyny is; but straight-up ungentlemanliness, of the kind his mother would clatter the back of his head for, is inarguable. It doesn’t need to be a ‘man vs woman�...
I had a dream about you. You were eating a salad with lots of lettuce and tomatoes. All that green and red reminded me of Christmas, and I began to cry. You thought the saltwater coming out of my eyes was draining the world’s oceans, which you perc...
