The Devil Tree

I'm sure there are aspects of my personality buried within me that will surface as soon as I know I am completely loved.

When people claim to know who I am, I can no longer act freely.

So this is insanity. How interesting. What happens next?

I was pushing myself to extremes in order to discover my many selves.

As a child I used to lie on the floor with my eyes tightly closed and hope that people would walk past without noticing me. That would mean I was truly invisible.

There's a place beyond words where experience first occurs to which I always want to return.

I have always suspected everyone who likes me of having poor judgment. I despise them for being so easily taken in.

The recent Dictionary of Occupational Titles lists over twenty thousand specialized professions in America; being a millionaire is not one of them.

Our language has lost its ability to convey the spontaneous.

There is serenity and calm under the water's surface. You move easily and glimpse a world you have never seen before. You think of running out of oxygen and the idea of sharks dart out at you. You sense that there is something treacherous hiding behind every reef; no matter how much you explore you won't ever know what it is.

Do you realize that one out of every four Americans is unbalanced? Think of your three closest friends. If they seem normal, then you are the one.

People prefer to avoid confronting deformity and when they do it's only for kicks.

When I saw them in Africa, I thought these birds were the greatest fliers of all. Hardly beating their wings, they fly for hours, swooping upwards on air currents with no sign of physical effort. But when they land, they pitch forward on their stubby legs without stopping. They skid along on their bellies, their necks straining to absorb the shock of the landing. Their beaks dig into the sand and they collide with anything in their path. Quite often they break their wings or beaks or spines and remain for the rest of their lives in the scrubby thickets not far from where they crash. The crippled birds sit there blind, paralyzed or in shock, and struggle slowly back and forth to their nests. Some hop on one leg, some drag their crippled wings behind them like broken umbrellas. I wonder whether they ever envy their brothers soaring in the air or if they're glad to be grounded and past their trial.

Living is an arbitrary matter and I have every right to renounce it.

My cynicism continuously undermines her faith in her own ability to master her moods.

She protected herself by making herself believe no-one else could ever really understand her.

Of all mammals, only a human being can say 'no.

The native calls the baobab 'the devil tree' because he claims that the devil, getting tangled in its branches, punished by the tree by reversing it. To the native, the roots are branches now, and the branches are roots. To ensure that there would be no more baobabs, the devil destroyed all the young ones.

As a boy I got the idea that death was an animal which lay curled inside waiting to swallow us.

I deserve no punishment at all for being who I am.

At first I was afraid that I would be left defenseless, that I would babble aloud the things I've always been terrified of saying. Instead, opium made me realize that I could say anything I liked without losing my identity.

I remember how, as a boy, I used to collect the cork tips of my father's cigarettes and stick them in my stamp albums. I believed they contained his unspoken words, which one day would explain everything. I have not changed. Now I explore my memories, trying to discover the substructure hidden beneath my past actions, searching for the link to connect them all.

Karen told me about an old woman who was the last surviving inhabitant of one of the Hermit Islands. She was the only one left who could speak her tribe's language, but the anthropologists didn't realize it and never bothered to learn it from her. When the old woman died, the language died with her.

No big corporation would promote a hunchback.

We know our lives are chaotic, but we insist that everything happen in an orderly way and be logically conceived.

He had found the one calm place in the midst of the storm, a quiet voice calling him to earth.

That's why she keeps her nails long, she says, to be able to scratch and claw.