The conscience is a communal organ—a way of knowing that we do with others formed always in reference to others.
You think I'm gorgeous?” “When I look at you, all I can think about are the the different ways I'd like to fuck you.” “So that's a yes then?” she said shyly. “No, darlin. It's an I-hope-you-weren't-planning-on-sleeping-alone-tonight.
writers like Jack Kerouac (who called himself an "urban Thoreau") set forth to redefine and rediscover ways to live in America without slogging through what Kerouac called the endless system of "work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume...
That's the problem with relationships," George was saying. "It's a contract. You agree to be some unchanging caricature of yourself. To act the same way all the time. Never to change. It's counter-evolutionary. How can anything new and good come into...
In the silence, she felt the past and the present shift and mix, but that was a mirage. There was no way to comfort the lost boy he'd been back then. But she had the grown male. She had him right in her arms, and for a brief moment of whimsy, she ima...
Moody had no small genius for the art of diplomacy. As a child he had known instinctively that it was always better to tell a partial truth with a willing aspect than to tell a perfect truth in a defensive way. The appearance of cooperation was worth...
So often, she had found herself transported by music. She would get lost, lose herself to the time and fullness of the tones, the way it conjured up air around her as she listened or as she played. But this, she thought, one did not get lost in this ...
It's always fallen to women to forge the peace between all these hot-blooded men, always ready to go to war at the slightest provocation....Why do men behave the way they do, warring?" "What do you think?" he asked. "Maybe because they've got no sens...
I learned that it's okay to feel the way I do: that my life has no meaning unless I have a boyfriend. A real man is like the perfect vampire-boy and all the perfect guys in Twue Wuv.
Is there a way to choose a few things and do them well rather than do a lot of things halfway or not at all? Can we accept the fact that we may be in a season when we need to say no with the understanding that the season will not last forever?
Why should you want to give up a child's wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since not-understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas defensiveness and scorn are a participation in precisely what, by these mean...
Society in its wisdom has found ways of constructing refuges of all kinds, for since it has been disposed to make the love-life a pastime, it has also felt obliged to trivialize it, to make it cheap, risk-free and secure, as public pleasures usually ...
Isn't telling about something--using words, English or Japanese--already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention? The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in under...
Away with the world’s opinion of you – it’s always unsettled and divided. Away with the pursuits that have occupied the whole of your life – death is going to deliver the verdict in your case. ... It’s only when you’re breathing your last...
The dilemma of the eighth-grade dance is that boys and girls use music in different ways. Girls enjoy music they can dance to, music with strong vocals and catchy melodies. Boys, on the other hand, enjoy music they can improve by making up filthy new...
I'd spent way more years worrying about how to look like a poet -- buying black clothes, smearing on scarlet lipstick, languidly draping myself over thrift-store furniture -- than I had learning how to assemble words in some discernible order.
Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.
I would do anything for you. Anything." With that, he pushed his way out...and as the door eased shut, she realized that I love you could indeed be said without actually uttering the phrase. Actions did mean more than words.
You can learn more in half an hour's direct contact with a source of knowledge (no matter the apparent reason for the contact or the subject of the transaction) than you can in years of formal effort.
Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed...
I keep telling myself that maybe, eventually, we’ll get to know each other, and he might like me. A lot. But that’s a long way off, and in the meantime, I already know I like him. A lot. And I don’t know what to do with these feelings.