My grandparents are holocaust survivors so I was really aware at a young age how horrible human beings can be to one another.
Love supposes, is, and does many things, but basically it is practiced in the act of sharing.
You and I can profit by asking ourselves: What do I see when I look through the lens of my attitude toward myself? Am I more a critic than a friend? Do I look beyond the surface blemishes to find the truly beautiful and unique person that I am? Or do I play the destructive "comparison game"? What verdict does the juror of my mind pass on me: "good at heart" or "guilty on all counts"?
I also see the world of religion. I see some of my brothers and sisters trying to be religious without being fully human. They seem a little rigid and narrow at times, wanting to be holy, but not human. They seem to be winning a place in heaven, without realizing or enjoying the beauty of earth. They keep the ten commandments, but their observances look so joyless. Such a world seems small and the air in that world is stale.
More than 90 percent of all the prisoners in our American prisons have been abused as children.
Attitudes are capable of making the same experience either pleasant or painful.
What is disgraceful and outrageous is that 18,000 children die of hunger every day, every one of them a preventable death. That's what the controversy should be about.
To play well the scenes in which we are 'on' concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.
All writers have roots they draw from - travel, work, family. My roots are in science and it is fertile ground for fiction.
What hope is there for individual reality or authenticity when the forces of violence and orthodoxy, the earthly powers of guns and bombs and manipulated public opinion make it impossible for us to be authentic and fulfilled human beings? The only hope is in the creation of alternative values, alternative realities. The only hope is in daring to redream one's place in the world - a beautiful act of imagination, and a sustained act of self becoming. Which is to say that in some way or another we breach and confound the accepted frontiers of things.
Just as a tree, though cut down, sprouts up again if its roots remain uncut and firm, even so, until the craving that lies dormant is rooted out, suffering springs up again and again.