There's something about sober living and sober thinking, about facing long afternoons without the numbing distraction of anesthesia that disabuses you of the belief in the externals, shows you that strength and hope come not from circumstances or the acquisition of things, but from the simple accumulation of active experience, from gritting the teeth and checking the items off the list, one by one, even if it's painful and you're afraid.
Anesthesia is quite remarkable. Its lost time. And you wake up kind of refreshed.
I had rather get a root canal without anesthesia than to call your customer service office for help.
I'd written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing one's own neurosurgeon sans anesthesia). No. I'd made a habit--and eventually a profession--of memoir because I hail from one of those families where shows of emotions are discouraged.
Fantasy, at its best, is balm for the soul. But it is faulty logic to assume that balm is necessarily mind-numbing anesthesia.
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
Anesthesia: wounds without pain. Neurasthenia: pain without wounds.
There is such a thing as anesthesia of pain, engendered by pain too exquisite to be borne.
My haircutter figured out I whine less if I'm under general anesthesia. I just hope when I awaken they haven't given me a Brazilian wax.
I'm a big believer in anesthesia. I think it should be used for every medical procedure, indlucing routine physicals.
Politics is the art of anesthesia.
