thoughtful

Most people, by the time they get old, have grown tough little shells around their hearts. Babies, like little Laila, start off with tender, loving, trusting hearts, but gradually, gradually, they learn to protect themselves and, as the years go by, grow tougher and tougher layers. Look at this! The outside layers of the artichoke are so tough they aren__ even worth eating but they become more and more tender as you come closer to the heart. These tough outer layers stop you feeling so much, so people walk around with hard little hearts that no one can touch. Of course there are some people who don__ have a choice _ they just never learn to protect themselves...now that can be both a blessing and a burden.

He had pulled out of that grief, eventually _ out from under the suffocating weight of it. Suffering had formed him: made him silent and deliberate, thoughtful: deep.

It__ not that I__e been invited to the hole I__ standing in. It__ that I accepted the invitation.

It was like a bomb had just gone off in the kitchen, and instead of cleaning up the rubble, people were stepping around it and eating mini-quiche.

Among other possibilities, money was invented to make it possible for a foolish man to control wise men; a weak man, strong men; a child, old men; an ignorant man, knowledgeable men; and for a dwarf to control giants.

Normalization takes place not because there is Western-ideology that normalizes third-world texts in any special way (other than the usual play with exoticism) but because this academic seeks to domesticate everything, even Marx.

Last night your thin walls invited me to the party next door / reminded me I am a quiet person in a quiet life.

Unless you are silent, you will notknow your urgent heart, how it beatsbetween the thin skin of yes and no.

I need a break after school," she told me later. "School is hard because a lot of people are in the room, so you get tired. I freak out if my mom plans a play date without telling me, because I don't want to hurt my friends' feelings. But I'd rather stay home. At a friend's house you have to do the things other people want to do. I like hanging out with my mom after school because I can learn from her. She's been alive longer than me. We have thoughtful conversations. I like having conversations because they make people happy.

The most powerful thought is a prayerful thought. When I'm praying for you, I am praying for my own peace of mind. I can only have for myself what I am willing to wish for you.

I'd laugh, only my stupid lizard brain has disabled the laugh button for now. I'm too frozen up with tension.I am owed so much laughter. Sometimes I hope I'm building up a stockpile of missing laughs, and when I've recovered, they'll all come exploding out in one gigantic fit that last twenty-four hours.

It goes without saying that even those of us who are going to hell will get eternal life__f that territory really exists outside religious books and the minds of believers, that is. Having said that, given the choice, instead of being grilled until hell freezes over, the average sane human being would, needless to say, rather spend forever idling in an extremely fertile garden, next to a lamb or a chicken or a parrot, which they do not secretly want to eat, and a lion or a tiger or a crocodile, which does not secretly want to eat them.

To some believers, being on the pill or using a condom is a nonverbal way of telling God to go to hell.

Never try to outgrow the people who were helping you walk, when you could not even walk.

It doesn__ matter whether you believe in ghosts. The ghosts believe in you.

That's the funny thing about life. We're rarely aware of the bullets we dodge. The just-misses. The almost-never-happeneds. We spend so much time worrying about how the future is going to play out and not nearly enough time admiring the precious perfection of the present.

Introspection does not need to be a still life. It can be an active alchemy.

The greatest thing a father can do for his children is to respect the woman that gave birth to his children. It is because of her that you have the greatest treasures in your life. You may have moved on, but your children have not. If you can__ be her soulmate, then at least be thoughtful. Whom your children love should always be someone that you acknowledge with kindness. Your children notice everything and will follow your example.