if we were talking to you on your first day of physical life experience, we would say to you, Welcome to Planet Earth. There is nothing that you cannot be, or do, or have. You are a magnificent creator. And you are here by your powerful and deliberate wanting to be here. Go forth, giving thought to what you are wanting, attracting life experience to help you decide what you want and once you have decided, giving thought only unto that.

if the beginning of the thought or theory is not rooted in reality, the end or the final results of such a thought or theory could well be disastrous in practice.

if the Northern states refuse, willfully and deliberately, to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain can not be broken on one side, and still bind the other side.

if requiring you to show your ID is a method of oppression, then there is an awful lot of oppression going on in this country. Airports are full of oppression. Liquor stores? Oppression. Want to buy a pack of cigarettes? Hope you like your oppression extra smooth. Want to buy a car? Careful, oppression loses half it's value the minute you drive it off the lot.

if a special geometry has to be invented in order to account for a falling apple, even Newton might be appalled at the complications which would ensue when really difficult problems are tackled.

how monstrous the people you loved could be.

how hard it is to keep alive someone who doesn't want to stay alive. First you try logic (You have so much to live for), and then you try guilt (You owe me), and then you try anger, and threats, and pleading (I'm old; don't do this to an old man). But then, once they agree, it is necessary that you, the cajoler, move into the realm of self-deception, because you can see that it is costing them, you can see how much they don't want to be here.

her lips were as red as a stop light.

he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying 'to die will be an awfully big adventure.

he was doing a breath hydrogen test. If you know the amount of hydrogen someone is exhaling orally, it's a simple matter to extrapolate the amount they're exhaling rectally. This is because a fixed percentage of hydrogen produced in the colon is absorbed into the blood and, and when it reaches the lungs, exhaled. The breath hydrogen test has given flatus researchers a simple, consistent measure of gas production that does not require the subject to fart into a balloon.

he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered. He wanted her to be a virgin and not a virgin all at once. He wanted to know her. Intimate secrets: Why poetry? Why so sad? Why that grayness in her eyes? Why so alone? Not lonely, just alone -- riding her bike across campus or sitting off by herself in the cafeteria -- even dancing, she danced alone -- and it was the aloneness that filled him with love. He remembered telling her that one evening. How she nodded and looked away. And how, later, when he kissed her, she received the kiss without returning it, her eyes wide open, not afraid, not a virgin's eyes, just flat and uninvolved.