Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.
Passing judgment on others for decisions that affect only themselves is absolutely noxious to any anarchist – not to mention it makes them less likely to experiment with the options you offer.
How many young men fear that there is a monster inside them? People are supposed to fear others, not themselves. People are supposed to aspire to become their fathers, not shudder at the thought.
Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts. What they subvert is the notion that things have to be the way they are, that you are alone, that no one has ever felt the way you have.
There is always a brave new world. But only, you know, for very special people. The lucky ones. The ones who carry the making of that world within themselves.
What was reckless, I decided, was the way people were writing off huge swaths of the world as unsafe, unstable, unfriendly, when all they needed to do was go and see for themselves
Whores, Anna once read, make the very best wives. They are accustomed to the varying moods of men, they keep their broken hearts to themselves, and easy women always ease through grief.
It's all about educating people to value you as much a they value themselves. If you respect your time, others will too.
Privileged groups, like everyone else, want to think well of themselves and to believe that they are acting generously and justly.
One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.
Men lie to get laid, women lie about orgasms, and hermaphrodites lie to themselves.
A lot of men tend to want "models" I tell men, unless they look like a model themselves, they can't expect to land one.
The sole agents, indeed, in the action of her novels are individual human beings. And the comedy is the outcome of their making fools of themselves and of one another.
Quoting : "Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.
Poor people never, or hardly ever, ask for an explanation of all they have to put up with. They hate one another, and content themselves with that.
I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.
Conscious minds can, at the most, comprehend that the whole idea of a 'God' is his superiority, his omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience; and therefore, at the least, desire him, someone far greater than themselves.
There are some people, she says, not many, who have within them the power to change things. The courage to act in the service of somethin greater than themselves.
Sex is one of those things that's complete loss of control. You give yourself up, in your most vulnerable state, to another person, and they give themselves to you.
Someone who is said to have a big ego is thought to be full of themselves, to lack the ability to listen, to always rush to be at the top of the tree and to think their own ideas are the best.
Sex only makes people more like themselves. A powerful, secretive woman becomes only more powerful and more secretive in the throes of passion.
