My Parents Were Constantly Afraid They Would

We Know Summer Is The Height Of Of Being Alive. We Don't Believe In God Or The Prospect Of An Afterlife Mostly, So We Know That We're Only Given Eighty Summers Or So Per Lifetime, And Each One Has To Be Better Then The Last, Has To Encompass A Trip To That Arts Center Up At Bard, A Seemingly Mellow Game Of Badminton Over At Some Yahoo's Vermont Cottage, And A Cool, Wet, Slightly Dangerous Kayak Trip Down An Unforgiving River. Otherwise, How Would You Know That You Have Lived Your Summertime Best? What Is You Missed Out On Some Morsel Of Shaded Nirvana?

One Should Learn From A Book. Books Have A Lot To Teach Us. They Have A Lot Of Empathy To Impart To Us, But They Should Also Be Fun. This Stuff Is Fun! You Shouldn't Pick Up A Book And Say, "oh My God, I'm Gonna Better Myself By Reading This." You May Better Yourself By Reading This, But Who Cares? Just Have Fun.

Do Not Throw Away Your Heart. Keep Your Heart. Your Heart Is All That Matters ... Throw Away Your Ancestors! ... Throw Away Your Shyness And The Anger That Lies Just A Few Inches Beneath ... Accept The Truth! And If There Is More Than One Truth, Then Learn To Do The Difficult Work -- Learn To Choose. You Are Good Enough, You Are Human Enough, To Choose!

She Took My Hand And Pulled Me After Her, Her Shoulders Giving Off A Sweet Peppermint Concoction That The Bodies Of Young Women Sometimes Produce To Make My Life More Difficult.

The Greatest Books In Russian Literature Are Satires. Gogol's Dead Souls, For Example, Is A Very Over-the-top Satire About Life In Russia. I Think It's The Thing We Do Best.