When you say 'mother' or 'father' you describe three different phenomena. There is the giant who made you and loomed over your early years; there is whatever more human-scale version might have been possible to perceive later and maybe even befriend; and there is the internalized version of the parent with whom you struggle- to appease, to escape, to be yourself, to understand and be understood by- and they make up a chaotic and contradictory trinity.

Violence always seems to me the worst form of tyranny. It deprives people of their rights, including the right to live.

Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't--and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.

I feel like we're in a truly revolutionary period, not just in terms of practical activities to overthrow regimes in the Middle East or Occupy but also in terms of radical redefinitions. I feel like workers are a big part of it, but there's so much more going on.

Time itself is our tragedy and most of us are fighting some kind of war against it.

Given a choice between their worldview and the facts, it's always interesting how many people toss the facts.

The famous Zen parable about the master for whom, before his studies, mountains were only mountains, but during his studies mountains were no longer mountains, and afterward mountains were again mountains could be interpreted as an alleory about [the perpetual paradox that when one is closest to a destination one is also the farthest).