If people concentrated on their responsibilities, others would have their rights.
Metaphors are an interesting example of creating magic in prose.
I will not eat cakes or cookies or food. I will be thin, thin, pure. I will be pure and empty. Weight dropping off. Ninety-nine. . . ninety-five. . . ninety-two. . . ninety. Just one more to eighty-nine. Where does it go? Where in the universe does it go?
. . . It felt like they were telling each other secrets. Everything they said felt like that—whispered, tender, full of other meanings, like when you tell someone a dream or talk about your astrological signs as code for all the things you love about each other.
He said that black sheeps express everyone else's anger and pain. It's not that they have all the anger and pain-they're just the only ones who let it out. Then the other people don't have to.
You are so intense. Like a storm. It's shocking how intense you are.
Under the ground seep the toxins of the population that lives above. If you have to, you will eat roots and earthworms. It is always night. Candles burn in lanterns made from tin cans. When it is nighttime up above, you can crawl out, but only for a little while. You feel ashamed of your matted hair, your torn clothes, the dirt on your face. Who would want to speak to you? They are all shiny and pretty. They have parents and house with gardens. What do you have? The earth. Whole handfuls of it. The lizard people with their slit eyes and scaly skin. Your loneliness. Your longing.
I can't sit around having coffee. I have all these appointments, and a lot of my friends sit around having coffee talking about the jobs they didn't get.
Assuming that he believes at all, the everyday Christian is a pitiful figure, a man who really cannot count up to three, and who besides, precisely because of his mental incompetence, would not deserve such a punishment as Christianity promises him.
By creating an artificial environment, we're not stimulating our immune system enough. Germs are immune-stimulants. They challenge you to be prepared.
Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.