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By AnonymWill Boast
A smart girl," Pin said. "She will get there. She doesn't like being the queen of drama." Six years ago, Pin had come over from one of our Taiwanese partners. She still had a little idiom hiccup now and then. "Well, when is she going to toughen up? I know how important the tuition program is to her, how expensive vet school is. But how will she even get through if she can't handle a dead animal or two?" "Yes, but better she begin with compassion. Not everyone has it
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By AnonymWill Boast
Depression is just a survival mechanism. Ego reinforcement. There's a little voice in you that says, "No one has ever suffered like this. No one. I'm special. I've received some special punishment. No one can /ever/ understand what it's like to be me." You see, our overwhelming sense of individual destiny keeps us from erasing ourselves. It's a purpose-built, evolutionary mechanism. Because the sole specimen really isn't of consequence, but species survival, of course, is of the utmost.
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By AnonymWill Boast
In a world where everyone was trying to radiate success while praying for actual profits, Brooke's margins narrowed and narrowed.
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By AnonymWill Boast
I told him that if the protesters really wanted change, they should call their senator, raise money, donate, go out canvassing. They talked about real democracy, but no one wanted to slog through legal challenges, legislation, lobbying, fielding candidates, campaigning. "Too much hard work. All the drums and chanting and meetings and speeches" -- I grabbed my phone from him, tossed it on the couch, took his hand in mine and wrestled with him, letting myself brush up against a little attack-- "they're just to make people /feel/ like something's happening
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By AnonymWill Boast
Politics is /all/ emotion-- hating the other side, valorizing your own, propping up your own identity. I'm right, I'm righteous, I /care/. No one can stand to admit they're as compromised and clueless as everyone else. People decide something /feels/ right, then they warp all their thinking around that.
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By AnonymWill Boast
Some people enjoyed these wild swings. They crested and troughed, thrilled and wallowed, and came out strangely purified. I probably would have to fire Staci for her sensitivity, her excess. After all, she might go on like this her whole life. Or maybe, with all her yawning lows and staggering highs, she'd finally just get worn down. Maybe.
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By AnonymWill Boast
The emotions of others affect us unpredictably. Sometimes they resonate like a struck bell. Just as often they clank and mean nothing at all. Bill's story /was/ sad, yet, today, it couldn't reach me.
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By AnonymWill Boast
The human brain is the universe's most implausible science experiment.
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By AnonymWill Boast
We should at least /talk/ about it. You're mad at me. Admit it. It was completely my fault we were even there." But I didn't blame him for his curiosity. I'd been curious too. And it wasn't up to him to know my limits, especially when I'd been testing them myself.
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By AnonymWill Boast
With the muffling of the pills, my response to him was bland, impersonal, and I saw him more clearly: a man so afraid of being ignored or passed over that he'd turned himself into the group's villain just to get some, any, kind of recognition.
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By AnonymWill Boast
You all probably think I'm a real dragon." She was weighing her answer carefully. "Go ahead," I said. "I can take it." "We give you the doubt benefit. Always doubt benefit. Not easy to be the boss." It took a moment to untangle the idiom, and then I liked it too much to correct her.
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