Martha N. Beck

...Refusing to feel desire is the only thing more painful than failing to get what you want, and that learning not to yearn, far from preventing disappointment, ultimately guarantees it.

Have you ever felt your destiny unfolding, beloved? Have you experienced the intensity of the hunt, the fixation of attention that only fate can explain? Have you ever told yourself your feelings wereexcessive, but known that something huge and pivotally important was carrying you along like a riptide? You can fight that current all you want; you know it will still have its way with you. Or you cantry swimming along with it, and grow amazed by your own power__ntil you pause and realize that you aren__ moving but being moved. You__e not in control, not at all, and that__ what makes the feeling soexquisitely exciting.

All for all, always.

Diana frowns. __ou__e taking me home, right? You just said you would._ __oink hoink! Of course, piglet. But I meant your real home._ __hich, last I checked,_ says Diana acidly, __s in Los Angeles, California, United States of America, solar system, planet Earth._ __mm,_ says the boar, hiccupping dreamily. __hat__ what you think, darling. Tell me, can you say you__e felt really at home at that address? Haven__ you been homesick your whole life?

The mirror image of suffering is the truth. Try it. Change the story. Change the course of your entire history. Right now._ __ou want me to lie about my past?_ Diana wipes tears from her face with the back of her hand. __o, to tell the story a truer way,_ says Herself. __ny story can be told infinite ways, dear, but listen to me. Listen well. If a story liberates your soul, believe it. But if a story imprisons you, believe its mirror image.

Just like any civilized person, you__e spent practically your whole life torturing an innocent wild creature. Starved it, then force-fed it, cut it, cursed it, driven it to exhaustion. Imprisoned it with other creatures who tormented it.___hat?_ Diana shakes her head in miserable confusion. __ don__even kill spiders! I never wanted to hurt anything.___he innocent wild creature to which I refer, my darling, is you.

You are consciousness dressed in form, my love. Consciousness is divine. Matter is divine. Creation is divine. Everything is divine. Are you somehow the only exception?

Cruelty, whether physical or emotional, isn't normal. It may signal what psychologists call the dark triad of psychopathic, narcissistic and Machiavellian personality disorders. One out of about every 25 individuals has an antisocial personality disorder. Their prognosis for recovery is zero, their potential for hurting you about 100 percent. So don't assume that a vicious person just had a difficult childhood or a terrible day; most people with awful childhoods end up being empathetic, and most people, even on their worst days, don't seek satisfaction by inflicting pain. When you witness evil, if only the tawdry evil of a conversational stiletto twist, use your ninjutsu, wait for a distraction, then disappear.

...they needed someone to explain, to spin, the parts of the tale that couldn't be suppressed. Someone reputable and educated. Someone brilliant yet absolutely committed to the faith. Someone like my father.

The way that other people judge me is none of my business.

...he is constantly reminding me that real magic doesn't come from achieving the perfect appearance, from being Cinderella at the ball with both glass slippers and a killer hairstyle. The real magic is in the pumpkin, in the mice, in the moonlight; not beyond ordinary life, but within it.

My real feeling, the one I couldn't articulate yet, was that my entire life hinged on knowing that there were people who would continue to love me unconditionally, even if I were damaged, even if I were sick. Such love was the only thing that had sustained me during the turmoil of the past months. If I eliminated my child because of his disability, if I put him out of my life, I would be violating the only thing that was keeping me alive.

You'll never be hurt as much by being open as you have been remaining closed.

It comes from looking at the heart of things, from stopping to smell not only the roses but the bushes as well. It is a quality of attention to ordinary life that is so loving and intimate it is almost worship.

They decided to allow their baby to be born. What they did not realize is that they themselves were the ones who would be 'born,' infants in a new world where magic is commonplace, Harvard professors are the slow learners, and retarded babies are the master teachers.

It is a frightening thing to love someone you know the world rejects.

It reminds me that we are born innocent but ignorant, and that to remedy the second of these conditions we inevitably surrender the first.