For these cultures, getting rid of the pain without addressing the deeper cause would be like shutting off a fire alarm while the fire's still going.

She took a sort of abject pride in her mecilessness toward herself.

I know I never work in whatever gets called an office, e.g., a school office I use only for meeting students and storing books I know I'm not going to read anytime soon.

No one can call themselves a writer until he or she has written at least fifty stories.

The severing of an established connection is exponentially more painful than the rejection of an attempted connection.

If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important - if you want to operate on your default-setting - then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying.

I'm very bright, but I'm terrified of sounding like someone who thinks he's very bright-because those people are assholes.