There's a problem with the hierarchical orientation, though. When the numbers get too big, the thing breaks down. A pecking order can hold only so many chickens.
It was as natural and obvious to me as breathing. So I assumed that everyone else was doing it too. When I realized that everyone else was not doing it -- that they couldn't do it even if they tried -- I told myself, 'I'm different from other people,...
When we share in each other's grief and pain, we lighten it. Or maybe we just give each other permission to feel it fully and, through that act of acceptance, the grief becomes more bearable. Because, like the rain, tears too have an end. And with de...
I've ceased to smile long ago, The bitter winds now chill my lips, Another hope was just let go, Another song was added since. Against my will, I'll cede this song To people's laughter and offense, Because love's silence for the soul Is too unbearabl...
Everything passes away-suffering,pain, blood, hunger,pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the Earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, w...
If somebody says 'I love you' to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? 'I love you, too'.
As he was forced to tell his father more than once, “I said I’d fight for my mother’s throne. I never said I’d die for it.” Then he’d add, simply to annoy the old bastard into one of his frothy temper tantrums, “Don’t you think I’m ...
Though he wouldn't dare admit that he might have felt more for her. He wasn't ready to care for a person that much when he still didn't care too highly for himself. most days Landon regarded himself as a lost soul, a wanderer. Who could love such a m...
I want to tell him that it's just a stupid car, but bits of me are scattered all over town; the graveyard, school, Cassie's room, the motel, and standing in from of the sink in my mother's kitchen. It takes too much energy to gather all the bits toge...
All this, and discontent too! Otherwise, why am I sitting here dreaming of England? Why am I gazing at this campfire like a lost should seeking a hope when all that I love is at my wingtips? Because I am curious. Because I am incorrigibly, now, a wan...
Oh, and one thing. Please, please don’t depend on me too much. I mean that. I’m not going to be of much help. If your plots come to a head—if things go wrong at the last moment and you’re in danger or distress—don’t think of me. I will fa...
Very much on the defensive, I admitted that I liked to read. "Sure," Sammy said, "I never said I had anything against reading books..." "The publishers will be relieved to know that," I tried to insert, but Sammy was too quick for me and was already ...
I love Jere more than anybody. He’s my brother, my family. I hate myself for doing this. But when I see you two together, I hate him too.” His voice broke. “Don’t marry him. Don’t be with him. Be with me.
You think too much.' 'I suppose I do; but I can’t help it, my mind is so terribly active. When I give myself, I give myself. I pay the penalty in my headaches, my famous headaches--a perfect circlet of pain! But I carry it as a queen carries her cr...
Love, at its best, wipes commonsense Away. Much as drops will condense From hidden liquid in the air, So, too, do lovers soon compare Their temp’ratures til, happily, Their judgement fogs up suddenly.
I loved him in that moment more than I thought possible, but it would end when this night did. We might chase the phantoms of these feelings for a while afterward, but in the end we’ll concede defeat and move on. Nothing is meant to last past its n...
Zsoronga, Sorweel was beginning to realize, possessed the enviable ability to yoke his conviction to his need — to believe, absolutely, whatever his heart required. For Sorweel, belief and want always seemed like ropes too short to bind together, f...
I had a dream about you. Too many people died that day for us to talk about love. But through the stench of rotting corpses, all I could think about was how beautiful you were and how much I wanted to avoid prison.
He knew himself well enough to know his own faults. Impatient and judgmental and stubborn and often too quick to act: he would try never to crush her, never to overwhelm her or bend her to his will, but if she did not demand only the best from him, i...
I wanted something that I could look back on and say, yes, you were fighting too, you burned to be alive, and whatever failure or accident of nature caused you to be killed could be explained by something other than the fact that I'd missed your givi...
[D]on’t cling to your self-righteous suffering, let it go. . . . Nothing is too good to be true, let yourself be forgiven. To the degree you insist that you must suffer, you insist on the suffering of others as well. (90)
