The shrewdest of the great generals in China’s history once said that perfection in war lay in so sapping the opponent’s will that he surrenders without fighting.
My husband is a brute. And I’ve got a cruel stepmother just like Snow White. I mean, Cinderella. And my Pop thinks I’m imaginary. But I love you all anyway because you’re all I’ve got.
Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.
Not bleedin’ likely, Aunt Nanny Goat. I toughened my feet for karate – I can break a four-by-nine with my feet and get nary a bruise. Or run on sharp gravel.
I laugh because I dare not cry. This is a crazy world and the only way to enjoy it is to treat it as a joke. That doesn’t mean I don’t read and can’t think. I read everything from Giblett to Hoyle, from Sartre to Pauling. I read in the tub, I read on the john, I read in bed, I read when I eat alone, and I would read in my sleep if I could keep my eyes open.
But there was winter in my heart and I was looking for the door to summer.
Spanish is so musical that a soap powder commercial in Spanish is more pleasing to the ear than the best free verse in English – the Spanish language is so beautiful that much of its poetry sounds best if the listener does not understand the meaning.
A present should show that you considered that person’s tastes. Something he would enjoy but probably would not buy.
Pop says cops and courts no longer protect citizens, so citizens must protect themselves.” “I’m afraid he’s right.” “My husband, I can’t evaluate my opinions of right and wrong because I learned them from my parents and haven’t lived long enough to have formed opinions in disagreement with theirs.” “Deety, your parents did okay.
When I was younger, I thought I could change this world. Now I no longer think so but for emotional reasons I must keep on fighting a holding action.
Only enough to protect the organization. Friday, you are well aware that the absence of Eyes and Ears today simply means that they are concealed. Be assured that I am shameless about protecting the organization.
I recall the day you swiped one of my cigars, and how sick it made you. Your mother and I carefully avoided noticing that you couldn’t eat dinner that night and I’ve never mentioned it to you until now – boys have to try such things and discover for themselves that men’s vices are not for them.
God invented people to amuse Him because He didn’t have television.
Solipsism, for heaven’s sake! God invented people to amuse Him because He didn’t have television – that makes just as much sense!
He did not expect reasonable conduct from human beings; most people were candidates for protective restraint. He simply wished they would leave him alone! – all.
I told her that no born leader seeks command; the mantle descends on him, he wears the burden because he must.
He knew that he did not invent the information brought to him by his senses. There had to be something else out there, some otherness that produced the things his senses recorded. All philosophies that claimed that the physical world around him did not exist except in his imagination were sheer nonsense. But.
People treat me nice, I treat them nice. If they don’t, I walk away. I don’t worry much.
Sharpie, I thought you liked Star Trek?” “I do. But I’ve seen five years of it and we’ve got our own Star Trek now.
I had an unsettling feeling that I had been completely mistaken as to the very nature of the world I was in, as if every part of it was something wildly different from what it appeared to be – like discovering that your own mother isn’t anyone you’ve ever seen before, but a stranger in a rubber mask.
She was relaxed with what she was – “liked herself” as Lazarus thought of it – and liking yourself was the necessary first step toward loving other people.