The smile was so painfully swift and fleeting that it was like the flash of a knife.

The smile was so painfully swift and fleeting that it was like the flash of a knife.

The full and joyful acceptance of the worst in oneself may be the only sure way of transforming it.

Every day the choice is presented to us, to live up to the spirit that is in us, or deny it.

If you are well off and can afford to spend ten or twenty-five dollars a day to hire some patient soul to listen to your troubles you can be readjusted to the crazy scheme of things and spare yourself the humiliation of becoming a Christian Scientist. You can have your ego trimmed or removed, as you wish, just like a wart or bunion.

Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. It's a sort of spiritual clap, I should say.

Somewhere along the way one discovers that what one has to tell is not nearly so important as the telling itself.