We tell lies when we are afraid… afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.
You are only a prisoner when you surrender.
Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You’ll find what you need to furnish it – memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.
After all, is it not the way we humans shape the universe, shape time itself? Do we not take the raw stuff of chaos and impose a beginning, middle, and end on it, like the simplest and most profound of folktales, to reflect the shapes of our own tiny lives? And if the physicists are right, that the physical world changes as it is observed, and we are its only known observers, then might we not be bending the entire chaotic universe, the eternal, ever-active Now, to fit that familiar form?
Learn a lot about the world and finish things, even if it is just a short story. Finish it before you start something else. Finish it before you start rewriting it. That’s really important.
It’s to find out if you’re going to be a writer or not, because that’s one of the most important lessons.
Most, maybe 90% of people, will start writing and never finish what they started. If you want to be a writer that’s the hardest and most important lesson: Finish it. Then go back to fix it.
…Coca-Cola and fries, the wafer and wine of the Western religion of commerce.
Confident. Cocky. Lazy. Dead.
A well-aimed spear is worth three.
Never trust people that like to call things by initials, that’s my philosophy.
Every time we tell a lie, the thing we fear grows stronger.
You show me what someone listens to, I’ll tell you everything you want to know about his soul. (For instance, a bunch of Nickelback albums would have indicated he never had a soul in the first place.)
She had to find her own story, and she could make it whatever shape she thought best.
He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.
Ah? A small aversion to menial labor?” The doctor cocked an eyebrow. “Understandable, but misplaced. One should treasure those hum-drum tasks that keep the body occupied but leave the mind and heart unfettered.
If God is all-powerful, then the Devil must be nothing more than a darkness in the mind of God. But if the Devil is something real and separate, than perfection is impossible, and there can be no God… except for the aspirations of fallen angels.
Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me.
As for monkeys, I would have five, and they would be named: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, Do Pretty Much Whatever The Hell You Want, and Expensive Attorney.
The wisdom of our parents, grandparents, ancestors. In each individual life, it seems, we must first reject that wisdom, then later come to appreciate it.
People in science fiction flicks always seemed to know useful things about the places time travel took them. But what if the time traveler had been only an average history student? What then?
Honor is the only really good disguise for an occasional act of dishonor.
Sleep. To lie down and shut out the noise, the fear, the unceasing misery.
I mean, you could lie here day after day, if you wanted to, and think about nothing but waterbugs. Not chase waterbugs, mind you, just think about them. You could spend your whole day, every day, just wondering and pondering about waterbugs, and talking to others about waterbugs . . . and before you realized it, you’d be old. One day you’d realize that you’d never actually seen a waterbug . . . but by then you wouldn’t want to, because it would spoil all your beautiful ideas.
We are none of us promised anything but the last breath we take.
You have to go down before you can come out — that’s how these things always work.
Though talent is wonderful, dance is 80% work and 20% talent.
