...the very greatest satire, I came to think -- the kind that lives forever -- ultimately grew out of a debunking attitude toward the self. To see the world mock-heroically was necessarily to engage in a sort of preliminary self-burlesque. You couldn...
i think about how - if I want to welcome the inevitable transformations of my life - I'm going to have to fully open myself to spirit-speak, to a seemingly cheesy-Earth-Momma vulnerability. I'm going to have to cede control - not just mentally or phy...
You have never seen such animals as these who without a sound or a sign carry you off. You race with them across the long familiar ground that in that moment seems so glorious, so charged with beauty, strange. In their jaws you are carried so effortl...
No, but if I were an illegal, experimental replicant hiding the truth of an international conspiracy I would try and put myself out of the way of those investigating it, wouldn't you? I don't think hiding under a bed will be very successful. But, if ...
Tonight was... well, it was perfect for me too. You've turned my world upside down. I've fallen in love with you, chica, and it scares the fuckin' shit outta me. I've been shakin' all night, because I knew it.I've tried to deny it, to make you think ...
You know what's awkward?" David asked, the corner of his mouth lifting. "Our entire existences?" Now the grin was real. "That," he acknowledged. "And when you make a big, dramatic gesture because you think you're going to die, and then you-" "Don't d...
Condoms seemed to her inherently wicked. But they were also inherently funny. They were like rubber gloves with only one finger, and every time she saw one she had to be severe with herself or she’d get the giggles, a terrifying thought because the...
I'm so tired. Once, I wanted to watch the floods coming into a canyon, to stand on the edge and see it happen, on ground that was safe but shaking. I thought, Now I think it might be a terrifying, bright relief to stand on the canyon floor and see th...
It’s not complicated and it doesn’t compare to my problem, now give me a damn cookie I think I earned it,” Jill snapped. Chris grinned like it was Christmas morning. “Yes, you did.” He brought her a cookie. “Very good, my young one. You�...
The most dangerous thing about an academic education is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract thinking instead of simply paying attention to what’s going on in front of me.
It’s hard to say how it happens. How all of the bits of me – even the broken ones – start to tumble. I think it’s my toes that go first. Next – my legs and the hallow spaces behind my ribs. And then my arms all the way down through my wrist...
Think of your husband as a house. You are allowed to give him a fresh coat of paint and change out the furniture now and then. But if you're constantly trying to pour a new foundation or replace the roof, you're in serious trouble.
So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to...
Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all over again. The matron doesn't want to repeat her g...
He wanted to hide by shrinking past zero, through the dot at the end of himself, to a negative size, into an otherworld, where he would find a place— in an enormous city, too large to know itself, or some slowly developing suburb— to be alone and...
how does she know it's the right room?' wondered Descant. Oh, I don't know; mabye it's the magical red glow coming from the doorway, or perhaps it's the deafening howl of the temporal winds.' said Mervall. Descant nodded.'You could be right, brother....
You didn’t think I’d let you go alone, did you?” “No, but I’m grateful that I had you with me.” “Grateful is all I’m going to get, isn’t it?” “What else were you hoping for?” “Adoration, devotion, affection, infatuation, or ...
(On having being just proposed to) 'Have you been thinking of this for long?' she managed jerkily, praying for the shock to recede so that she could behave a little more normally. 'Let's say it crept up on me,' he suggested lightly. That didn't sound...
God forgives us, as—when—we forgive them who injure us—and ourselves. These last weeks I think I have understood what many times in the past I thought I knew—but we never know—we never reach the end of understanding—the understanding of G...
If you give up before your goal has been reached, you are a "quitter." A QUITTER NEVER WINS AND A WINNER NEVER QUITS. Lift this sentence out, write it on a piece of paper in letters an inch high, and place it where you will see it every night before ...