There is a stage you reach, Deagle thinks, a time somewhere in early middle age, when your past ceases to be about yourself. Your connection to your former life is like a dream or delirium, and that person who you once were is merely a fond acquainta...
One small but scientifically sound study from Japan found that jogging thirty minutes just two or three times a week for twelve weeks improved executive function. But it's important to mix in some form of activity that demands coordination beyond put...
The most effective alternative process [to punishment] is probably extinction. This takes time but is much more rapid than allowing the response to be forgotten. The technique seems to be relatively free of objectionable by-products. We recommend it,...
You don't know how much I needed to hear from you. I wanted to write you many a time but I dug how much I must have hurt you and so I didn't write. But now I feel like a man who's been trying to climb up out of some deep, really deep and funky hole a...
Gus and I talk about girls a lot, but we can't figure them out. They are so confusing. Like, if you look at them, they get mad. And if you don't look at them, they get mad. And if you're nice to them, they think you like them. And if you're mean to t...
I feel that some people have a hard time with the truths around us, not only the sexual abuse by priests, but all bad things. I call it chosen ignorance. This modified form of ignorance is found in people who, if confronted with certain truths realiz...
A culture that denies death is a barrier to achieving a good death. Overcoming our fears and wild misconceptions about death will be no small task, but we shouldn't forget how quickly other cultural prejudices--racism, sexism, homophobia--have begun ...
Bloody men are like bloody buses — You wait for about a year And as soon as one approaches your stop Two or three others appear. You look at them flashing their indicators, Offering you a ride. You’re trying to read the destinations, You haven’...
The Hopi, an Indian tribe, have a language as sophisticated as ours, but no tenses for past, present and future. The division does not exist. What does this say about time? Matter, that thing the most solid and the well-known, which you are holding i...
Stop entertaining two faced people. You know the ones who have split personalities and untrustworthy habits. Nine times out of ten if they telling you stuff about another person, they're going to tell your business to other people. If they say, "You ...
This is how I recognize an authentic poet: by frequenting him, living a long time in the intimacy of his work, something changes in myself, not so much my inclinations or my tastes as my very blood, as if a subtle disease had been injected to alter i...
As I recall, St. Paul stood by and held the coats of the men who were stoning him (Stephen). Apparently he wasn't a believer at the time. In fact, I think he was regarded as the most terrible enemy of the Church. And yet he later repented, didn't he?...
In the half-century of his life, a tick on the Doomsday clock, he had borne witness to the most unbelievable technological advances. He had started off listening to an old Bush radio in the corner of the living room and now he had a phone in his hand...
A person is not a closed system, they can never be fully self-sufficient. We need each other because we cannot make everything ourselves. Everything was invented, but it was not done alone, so we should revere the times we are able to fill this compl...
This is going to hurt, but you will have to watch other couples be happier, richer and louder than you. Wait. No obstacle can withstand patience. Wait. You may not think so now, but there will come a time when you will be tempted to run away. Would t...
People often ask where I get my ideas from, sometimes as often as eighty-seven times a day. This is a well-known hazard for writers, and the correct response to the question is first to breathe deeply, steady your heartbeat, fill your mind with peace...
I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out. I do not believe that, on the balance, religious belief has been a force for good. Although I am prepared to admit that in certain times an...
For about four years, I’ve been telling people I hate sour cream. One time I sent back nachos because they had sour cream on them. I started saying this because a friend I admire hates sour cream. I told him I hated it too so we could have a funny ...
I learned that the day "The Viper's Drag" slipped from between my fingers. But whatever might be lost or broken or forgotten is nothing compared to the miraculous rebirth that occurs every time the needle hits the groove. Here is Fats Waller Himself,...
Press conference [on the movie ] yielded the usual crop of daftness. I've been asked if I related personally to Carrington's tortured relationship with sex and replied that no, not really, I'd had a very pleasant time since I was fifteen. This elicit...
, she told herself. Also, she had made a promise to herself that she intended on keeping. She was never going to go out with another writer: no matter how charming, sensitive, inventive or fun they could be. They weren't worth it in the long run. The...
