I Gravitate Toward Quotes

I was drawn to his aloofness, the way cats gravitate toward people who’d rather avoid them.

He started to say something, maybe an apology and maybe not, and then he stopped, he leaned over and pulled me toward him - like by gravitational force. He kissed me, hard, and his skin was stubbly and rough against my cheek. My first thought was, I guess he didn't have time to shave this morning, and then - I was kissing him back, my fingers winding through his soft yellow hair and my eyes closed. He kissed like he was drowning and I was air. It was passionate, and desperate, and like nothing I had ever experienced before. This was what people meant when they said the earth stopped turning. It felt like a world outside of that car, that moment, didn't exist. It was just us.

I think that every reader on earth has a list of cherished books as unique as their fingerprints....I think that, as you age, you tend to gravitate towards the classics, but those aren't the books that give you the same sort of hope for the world that a cherished book does.

I had a theory that we gravitate toward the stories we need in life. Whatever we are looking for- adventure, excitement, emotion, connection-we turn to stories that help us find it. Whatever questions we’re struggling with- sometimes ones so deep, we don’t even really know we’re asking them- we look for answers in stories.

If I was being candid with her, she’d only find out that I felt something for her that could only be the equivalent of a gravitational pull towards the center of the earth. She was a magnet for me and I was powerless to resist. It was more than a mere attraction.

I think some people are just inexplicably bonded. Drawn by forces beyond their own comprehension, they have no choice but to gravitate toward one another. Destined by fate to keep crossing paths until they finally get it right.

His eyes gravitated towards the wall-to-wall bookshelf at one end of the room. 'You folks like books, I see.

I fell in love all the time. Just... nobody fell in love with me back. Fiction really kind of was all I had in the romance department. But that wasn't a weakness. That was a strength. I had a theory that we gravitate toward the stories we need in life. Whatever we're longing for—adventure, excitement, emotion, connection—we turn to stories that help us find it. Whatever questions we're struggling with—sometimes ones so deep, we don't even really know we're asking them—we look for answers in stories.

I’d found the haven for my mind, body, and soul. Everyone needs such a place. Don’t reject the space you gravitate toward just because the windows aren’t stained glass and the congregation isn’t saved.

I think broken people gravitate toward one another, like our shattered pieces connect on a level that unscarred people never know.

At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical. The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the suffering of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful.

I always gravitate towards things that are not beautiful, but broken and weird and fascinating

Maybe we’ll all have to get used to the uncertainty. Maybe that’s what frightens me. The way you can get used to anything if you’ve got nothing better to gravitate toward.

In my youth, I was always one for the dramatic entrance. Now, in keeping with my character, I gravitate more toward the subtle and refined. Okay, with the occasional feathered serpent thrown in.

I gravitate towards peace, and away from chaos.

In my favorite books, it’s never quite the ending I want. There’s always a price to be paid. Mom and Libby liked the love stories where everything turned out perfectly, wrapped in a bow, and I’ve always wondered why I gravitate toward something else. I used to think it was because people like me don’t get those endings. And asking for it, hoping for it, is a way to lose something you’ve never even had. The ones that speak to me are those whose final pages admit there is no going back. That every good thing must end. That every bad thing does too, that everything does. That is what I’m looking for every time I flip to the back of a book, compulsively checking for proof that in a life where so many things have gone wrong, there can be beauty too. That there is always hope, no matter what. After losing Mom, those were the endings I found solace in. The ones that said, Yes, you have lost something, but maybe, someday, you’ll find something too. For a decade, I’ve known I will never again have everything, and so all I’ve wanted is to believe that, someday, again, I’ll have enough. The ache won’t always be so bad. People like me aren’t broken beyond repair. No ice ever freezes too thick to thaw and no thorns ever grow too dense to be cut away. This book has crushed me with its weight and dazzled me with its tiny bright spots. Some books you don’t read so much as live, and finishing one of those always makes me think of ascending from a scuba dive. Like if I surface too fast I might get the bends.

My advice to women who habitually gravitate toward musicians is that they learn how to play an instrument and start making music themselves. Not only will they see that it's not that hard, but sometimes I think women just want to be the very thing they think they want to sleep with. Because if you're bright enough--no offense, Tawny Kitaen--sleeping with a musician probably won't be enough for you to feel good about yourself. Even if he writes you a song for your birthday. Don't you know that a musician who writes a song for you is like a baker you're dating making you a cake? Aim higher.

The more they overestimated their own skill relative to luck, the less they learned from what the environment was trying to tell them, and the worse their decisions became: the participants grew increasingly less likely to switch to winning stocks, instead doubling down on losers or gravitating entirely toward bonds.

I think sometimes we gravitate toward broken people, not ’cause we want to fix them, but ’cause we want to fix ourselves. The line between selflessness and selfishness is thin and intangible. It’s imaginary. We can’t see it. People project their problems onto other people’s problems. It happens all the time. We see ourselves in each other. We can’t help it. It’s human nature.

The reality is that there are plenty of trustworthy people in the world rebuilding their lives. It was a very gradual process for me to open up and talk about what was really going on in my recovery. The more I started to take risks by talking to others, however, the more I had an opportunity to exercise boundaries. As I asserted new boundaries, I started to gravitate towards people with integrity, warmheartedness and decency.

I’d been raised to be confident and see no limits, to believe I could go after and get absolutely anything I wanted. And I wanted everything. Because, as Suzanne would say, why not? I wanted to live with the hat-tossing, independent-career-woman zest of Mary Tyler Moore, and at the same time I gravitated toward the stabilizing, self-sacrificing, seemingly bland normalcy of being a wife and mother. I wanted to have a work life and a home life, but with some promise that one would never fully squelch the other. I hoped to be exactly like my own mother and at the same time nothing like her at all. It was an odd and confounding thing to ponder. Could I have everything? Would I have everything? I had no idea.

Even before I wholly knew I was a lesbian, it was the lesbian in me who pursued that elusive configuration. And I believe it is the lesbian in every woman who is compelled by female energy, who gravitates toward strong women, who seeks literature that will express that energy and strength. It is the lesbian in us who drives us to feel imaginatively, render in language, grasp, the full connection between woman and woman.

My mother's suffering grew into a symbol in my mind, gathering to itself all the poverty, the ignorance, the helplessness; the painful, baffling, hunger-ridden days and hours; the restless moving, the futile seeking, the uncertainty, the fear, the dread; the meaningless pain and the endless suffering. Her life set the emotional tone of my life, colored the men and women I was to meet in the future, conditioned my relation to events that had not yet happened, determined my attitude to situations and circumstances I had yet to face. A somberness of spirit that I was never to lose settled over me during the slow years of my mother's unrelieved suffering, a somberness that was to make me stand apart and look upon excessive joy with suspicion, that was to make me keep forever on the move, as though to escape a nameless fate seeking to overtake me. At the age of twelve, before I had one year of formal schooling, I had a conception of life that no experience would ever erase, a predilection for what was real that no argument could ever gainsay, a sense of the world that was mine and mine alone, a notion as to what life meant that no education could ever alter, a conviction that the meaning of living came only when one was struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless suffering. At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical. The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the sufferings of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful. It made me want to drive coldly to the heart of every question and it open to the core of suffering I knew I would find there. It made me love burrowing into psychology, into realistic and naturalistic fiction and art, into those whirlpools of politics that had the power to claim the whole of men's souls. It directed my loyalties to the side of men in rebellion; it made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.

For these two years I have been gravitating towards your doctrines, and since the publication of your primula paper with accelerated velocity. By about this time next year I expect to have shot past you, and to find you pitching into me for being more Darwinian than yourself. However, you have set me going, and must just take the consequences, for I warn you I will stop at no point so long as clear reasoning will take me further. {Letter of support to Charles Darwin on his theory of evolution}

Mom and Libby liked the love stories where everything turned out perfectly, wrapped in a bow, and I’ve always wondered why I gravitate toward something else. I used to think it was because people like me don’t get those endings. And asking for it, hoping for it, is a way to lose something you’ve never even had. The ones that speak to me are those whose final pages admit there is no going back. That every good thing must end.

He was uninterested in art, politics, culture, people. While his brain burrowed through rock toward a very specific knowledge goal, mine preferred to warren the air; his brain operated a drill bit while mine launched a thousand aimless kites that tangled strings or bounced along the invisible currents, disconnected and alone. Cognitively, we were the gravitational negatives of each other. Sometimes I wished I had his brain. But only sometimes. He suffered due to his specialized excesses; he just suffered differently from me.

It’s why I gravitated toward you without even noticing. Falling for you was effortless and final.

He gets to me every time. All he does is exist and I gravitate toward him.

I have this theory. I call it the theory of socio-magnetic homogeny. A bunch of big words, but it basically says that people gravitate toward people who share their interests and whatnot.

I delight to come to my bearings,—not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may,—not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts me;—not hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less,—not suppose a case, but take the case that is

We can’t be a thing. My subconscious feels otherwise, though. Whenever I hear his voice, I gravitate toward it. And when he smiles at me, a nameless energy bounces off the walls of my empty heart.

But you are my whore. You’re my everything, and you become so much more with each passing day. I possess every fucking part of you, Adeline. Even when you screamed and cried that you didn’t want me, you could never let me go. All those nights you stood at your window, letting me watch you. Confronting me instead of running and instigating me knowing what would happen. And when you did run, you only ever used your mouth to try and get away. You gravitated towards me, just as I did you. And that is something no other man will ever have.

Who we loved wasn’t always a choice. Sometimes it was an irresistible pull, a gravitational force, something we couldn’t see or control that drew us toward another. Sure, we could try to fight it. But in the end, love always won because it didn’t fight fair. It had a secret weapon, a tool of sheer force to use against us—our heart. And once that son of a bitch got involved, you could kiss away all options you thought might exist.

I had a theory that we gravitate toward the stories we need in life. Whatever we’re longing for—adventure, excitement, emotion, connection—we turn to stories that help us find it. Whatever questions we’re struggling with—sometimes questions so deep, we don’t even really know we’re asking them—we look for answers in stories.

A democratic state begins from the assumption that most of those who gravitate toward power are mediocre and probably immoral. It assumes that we must always protect ourselves from bad government. We must be prepared for the worst leaders even as we hope for the best. And as Karl Popper wrote, this understanding leads to a new approach to power, for "it forces us to replace the question: Who shall rule? By the new question: How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage?

I feel like I've been in a dark tunnel, but now I'm no longer blinded by darkness, but rather by an overwhelming brightness. A brightness that makes me barely able to open my eyes. It's like I have no choice but to gravitate towards it, like it's pulling me out into the light. It's the best feeling in the world. It's my saving grace.

I guess that’s how it goes. Opposites attract. He was the sunshine to my rain. He could find the best in an ordinary day of clouds and I gravitated towards his rays. He taught me how wonderful life could be and he gave me so much. And for that, I am truly grateful.

I've questioned this goddamn place since i could talk, some of us have depth we can't quite understand until we are much older. We rally across the world in seek of silencing this unbearable urge to speak a different tune and vibe a different energy, to fit in to a world unlike this. The isolation felt amongst thousands who don't really know you will one day have you gravitating towards a place where you can learn about yourself. Don't fight it, change with the seasons and give your life a reason. Solitude is so inviting you'll wonder why it took you this long to open its door.

This was one of those odd thoughts that came out of the blue and struck me as both clever and logical. Hot chocolate wouldn’t be something desert people would naturally gravitate toward. (There are cold deserts, of course, but with two suns I always assumed Tatooine is mostly pretty warm. Now, of course, the Star Wars Essential Atlas and other official material backs up that assumption.) I also caught way more grief for this than I ever expected. Quite a few people took me to task for putting an Earth-based drink into the Star Wars universe. Of course, those same people apparently weren’t bothered by the Millennium Falcon, or lightsabers. It was, though, a reminder that you never know what word or image might jolt someone out of their suspension of disbelief. Anyway, why would anyone want to live in that Galaxy Far, Far Away if they don’t have chocolate? Inconceivable …

There are, as we know, three modes of cognition: analytical, intuitive, and the mode that was known to the biblical prophets: revelation. What distinguishes poetry from other forms of literature is that it uses all three of them at once (gravitating primarily toward the second and the third). For all three of them are given in the language; and there are times when, by means of a single word, a single rhyme, the writer of a poem manages to find himself where no one has ever been before him, further, perhaps, than he himself would have wished to go. The one who writes a poem writes it above all because verse writing is an extraordinary accelerator of consciousness, of thinking, of comprehending the universe. Having experienced this acceleration once, one is no longer capable of abandoning the chance to repeat this experience; one falls into dependency on this process, the way others fall into dependency on drugs or alcohol. One who finds himself in this sort of dependency on language is, I suppose, what they call a poet.

Releasing me, he backs up and strips off his shirt then shucks his jeans. I burst into laughter. “If you think you’re going to Slytherin to my bed with those on, you’re wrong. I only allow full-fledged Hufflepuffs in there.” Zach glances down at his underwear and hangs his head. “Why did I have to wear this pair today? Why?” “What? I think they’re hot.” “You think my Harry Potter underwear are hot?” I nod. “You are my dream girl.” I grin and shake my head as I make my way to my bed. I do my best to straighten the covers before pulling back my side and climbing in. “I think you were right earlier.” “About?” he asks, standing on the other side. “This bed isn’t big enough for two. I think we’ll have to snuggle.” He smirks as he slides in, getting as close to me as possible. I don’t hesitate to match his movements—though I probably should. I should be weirded out that Zach’s in my bed. I shouldn’t gravitate toward him like I do. But I can’t help it. Zach makes me feel…comfortable. Safe. Warm. Wanted. We’re lying face to face in the middle of the bed, the blanket draped over our waists, grinning at each other like fools. “What?” I whisper. “I made it in.” “What?” I ask again, confused. “Your special Hufflepuff-only chamber of secrets.” “Did you really just…” Laughter consumes me and I’m rolling to my back and covering my face in embarrassment…for him. “You are such a nerd, Zach.

It may also be that, quite apart from any specific references one food makes to another, it is the very allusiveness of cooked food that appeals to us, as indeed that same quality does in poetry or music or art. We gravitate towards complexity and metaphor, it seems, and putting fire to meat or fermenting fruit and grain, gives us both: more sheer sensory information and, specifically, sensory information that, like metaphor, points away from the here and now. This sensory metaphor - this stands for that - is one of the most important transformations of nature wrought by cooking. And so a piece of crisped pig skin becomes a densely allusive poem of flavors: coffee and chocolate, smoke and Scotch and overripe fruit and, too, the sweet-salty-woodsy taste of maple syrup on bacon I loved as a child. As with so many other things, we humans seem to like our food overdetermined.

I have always gravitated towards children and teaching. I am now a special needs teacher working with children with Autism and it is very fulfilling for me.

You’re the melody I can’t capture and the notes I can’t hit. But I can’t fight your pull, always gravitating toward your world, to you.

Baking was the carpentry of cooking, and I’ve always gravitated toward pursuits that leave considerably more room for error.

Preachers’ kids who gravitate toward ministry are commodities. I hire all I can. We see church differently than everybody else.

God, I’m pathetic for enjoying something as simple as her gravitating toward me.

I had a theory that we gravitate toward the stories we need in life.

I didn't intentionally gravitate towards stories of women. I was interested in human rights, which often boiled down to this question: who was winning and who was losing? And over and over again, country after country, story after story, it was the men who were winning and the women who were losing. Not always, not everywhere, but most often, and by a wide, wide margin.

Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate toward the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same thing, That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power that created us...Faith is universal....In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves...Science tells me that God must exist. My mind tells me I am not meant I will never understand God. And my heart tells me I am not meant to...All of us are cells with different purposes. And yet we are intertwined. Serving each other. Serving the whole.

And you, too, youthful reader, will realize the Vision (not the idle wish) of your heart, be it base or beautiful, or a mixture of both, for you will always gravitate toward that which you, secretly, most love. Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts; you will receive that which you earn; no more, no less. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts, your Vision, your Ideal. You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration: in the beautiful words of Stanton Kirkham Davis, "You may be keeping accounts, and presently you shall walk out of the door that for so long has seemed to you the barrier of your ideals, and shall find yourself before an audience—the pen still behind your ear, the ink stains on your fingers and then and there shall pour out the torrent of your inspiration. You may be driving sheep, and you shall wander to the city-bucolic and open-mouthed; shall wander under the intrepid guidance of the spirit into the studio of the master, and after a time he shall say, 'I have nothing more to teach you.' And now you have become the master, who did so recently dream of great things while driving sheep. You shall lay down the saw and the plane to take upon yourself the regeneration of the world.

Walking back across the St-Esprit bridge, to the ghetto I'd instinctively gravitated toward, I mentally erected a more appropriate statue on the square. It would depict an unknown Sephardic Jew, kneeling over a stone tripod covered with crushed cacao beans destined for a cup of chocolate for one of the gentiles of Bayonne. It would be a symbolic piece, executed in smooth, chocolate-hued marble, and dedicated to all the other forgotten heroes--coffee-drinking Sufi dervishes, peyote-eating Native Americans, Mexican hemp-smokers--who, throughout history, have faced the wrath of all the sultans, drug czars, and Vatican clerics who have resorted to any spurious pretext to squelch one of the most venerable and misunderstood of human drives: the desire to escape, however briefly, everyday consciousness.

When apple-picking season ended, I got a job in a packing plant and gravitated toward short stories, which I could read during my break and reflect upon for the remainder of my shift. A good one would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

I wanted to live with the hat-tossing independent-career-woman zest of Mary Tyler Moore, and at the same time I gravitated toward the stabilizing, self-sacrificing, seemingly bland normalcy of being a wife and mother. I wanted to have a work life and a home life, but with some promise that one would ever fully squelch the other.

Although I love all dogs—and especially mixed alien weirdo street mutts (honestly, the fewer legs, the better)—in the last five years or so, I’ve gravitated toward pit bulls because they remind me of, well, me. They have big teeth, their menacing look tends to belie their mushy insides, and they very frequently break valuable things by accident.

Shit, man, democracy failed before it started. Who thought it was a good idea to let the masses of fucktards decide anything? [Guess I've got more faith in people.] People? The election of 2044 -- Curls Bellberry, a boy band presidency on the platform that the Earth is flat and that he'd nuke New York to save Social Security. There's a good reason he was the last president. Problem with letting people pick a leader is they gravitate towards confident sociopaths no matter how stupid they are. It's the perception of qualification that fools people. At least by having corporate executives rule us we get folks who are good at business. Life hurts, the world is fucked, and that's not going to change. . .

At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical. The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the sufferings of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful. It made me want to drive coldly to the heart of every question and lay it open to the core of suffering I knew I would find there. It made me love burrowing into psychology, into realistic and naturalistic fiction and art, into those whirlpools of politics that had the power to claim the whole of men's souls. It directed my loyalties to the side of men in rebellion; it made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.

Now take off those fake sunglasses and look at me.’ ‘How did you know they were fake?’ she asks curiously, momentarily diverted. ‘They’re really good quality fakes! I couldn’t tell.’ ‘I know they’re fakes because you’re wearing them.’ ‘And I have a tendency to gravitate toward fakes,’ she replies, her voice shaking a little, glasses still firmly in place. ‘I realize that now.

We all have different paths. Sometimes we do not know why we gravitate towards one another, sometimes we do. As for myself, I put my everything into any relation and I love and give because that is who I am and am meant to do that, this is my path. In that, I am also human, and as humans, one cannot hold onto the divine, no matter how lovely, it cannot be owned, or kept and must be let go, all of it, people, love, attachment, expectations, no matter how we are received, treated, how we feel or how another feels or what they decide to do with their part of the bargain here because that is what every relation is, a bargain. All else leads to pain and suffering, On my end, I choose to learn and grow and can only hope the other person does too. I know when I am stepping into anything that it is not truly FOR me, yet I step, knowing there is a greater purpose. We all are learning tools, some of us know, some do not. Some relations are met only one way, some both ways, and in that, I do my best to let people and situations go, as they are meant, to be free, as we are all meant, in peace and I hope in my heart all of us live full beautiful lives. - Susan Marie

Lately, in order to win you over, I’ve been finding myself thinking, What would Mr. Braddock do in this situation? And it took me far too long to realize what that meant: I wanted to tell you that I would not be interfering anymore. I don’t pretend to understand why it is that you would want to be with him, but even someone without my superior detective skills would notice how you gravitate toward each other.

It’s not always hatred or disdain that makes your skin crawl. In fact, sometimes, it’s the exact opposite: Some people will easily love your Blackness. They will respond to it, gravitate toward it, see it before they even see the rest of you. And once they see it and classify it into their preferred category, they won’t bother to look any further. The rest of you is just a skeleton holding up that beautiful Black skin.

In India, it was Dalits who gravitated toward me like long-lost relatives, surrounding me and propping themselves on a sofa near me for an impromptu subordinate-caste tête-à-tête. I discovered that they wanted to hear from me, or, I should say, commune with someone they recognized as a kindred spirit who shared a common condition. “We read James Baldwin and Toni Morrison because they speak to our experiences,” a Dalit scholar said to me. “They help us in our plight.

I chose people who made me feel anxious and insecure and re-created my childhood circumstances of getting erratic attention. I gravitated toward people who were either physically or emotionally unavailable to subconsciously ensure I was getting a constant hit from my “internal drug cabinet.” Instead of heroin or cocaine, I used to be addicted to cortisol and adrenaline (which turns into dopamine! Yay!). That drove me to pick people who couldn’t give me safety or stability, which caused those chemicals to go buck wild on my brain. You live in London? Yes, please. You work until three A.M., and when you are available, you’re super tired, so every time we have the chance to connect, your eyes are half closed? Sure, let’s move in together. One day you tell me you’re in love with me, but then you disappear and go on a week-long bender on Long Island? Absolutely. You travel for four months at a time in places that have horrible cell service? Don’t mind if I do marry ya.

At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical. The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the sufferings of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful.

Most of us didn’t feel too enthusiastic about making a collapsar jump, either. We’d been assured that we wouldn’t even feel it happen, just free fall all the way. I wasn’t convinced. As a physics student, I’d had the usual courses in general relativity and theories of gravitation. We only had a little direct data at that time — Stargate was discovered when I was in grade school — but the mathematical model seemed clear enough. The collapsar Stargate was a perfect sphere about three kilometers in radius. It was suspended forever in a state of gravitational collapse that should have meant its surface was dropping toward its center at nearly the speed of light. Relativity propped it up, at least gave it the illusion of being there … the way all reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted. At any rate, there would be a theoretical point in space-time when one end of our ship was just above the surface of the collapsar, and the other end was a kilometer away (in our frame of reference). In any sane universe, this would set up tidal stresses and tear the ship apart, and we would be just another million kilograms of degenerate matter on the theoretical surface, rushing headlong to nowhere for the rest of eternity or dropping to the center in the next trillionth of a second. You pays your money and you takes your frame of reference. But they were right. We blasted away from Stargate 1, made a few course corrections and then just dropped, for about an hour.

At the age of twelve, before I had had one full year of formal schooling, I had a conception of life that no experience would ever erase, a predilection for what was real that no argument could ever gainsay, a sense of the world that was mine and mine alone, a notion as to what life meant that no education could ever alter, a conviction that the meaning of living came only when one was struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless suffering. At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical. The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the sufferings of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful. It made me want to drive coldly to the heart of every question and lay it open to the core of suffering I knew I would find there. It made me love burrowing into psychology, into realistic and naturalistic fiction and art, into those whirlpools of politics that had the power to claim the whole of men’s souls. It directed my loyalties to the side of men in rebellion; it made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.

So I just think that the reason why we're so susceptible to autocracy now is that we're no longer telling ourselves this positive story of the nation. And I think Trump was brilliant in this way. He told us very divisive, anxiety- and fear-riddled view of the nation-state. But what most Americans don't understand is that historically, they've really gravitated towards that view. Historically, we gravitate towards the anxiety and the fear more so than this progressive notion, what Reagan called us, a city on a hill.

I encountered an army of mothers at pick-up outside the school that I was sussing out for you the other day. They appeared from several directions at once—around corners, down streets, out of cars. Like zombies, was my first thought as I watched them gravitate towards the school gates. Some of them were pushing buggies, others wheeled scooters, one woman carried a teddy bear. It would be a mistake to assume that because of the soft toy the woman herself was soft. The women carrying teddy bears are the most dangerous of them all. They would kill to protect the owners of those bears. Sailor, I have been that soldier. I stepped back to allow them to pass. These women were not zombies: they were warriors. Nothing would have stopped them. Nothing would get in their way. Marching to the summons of the school bell, catching the children who ran into their arms. Standing over their young until their young were ready to stand alone. Only then would the warriors stand down. The reason this work is considered unchallenging is that women mainly do it.

He laughed quietly. 'A family is a strange thing,' he said. 'A family has to exist as its own premise, or else the system won't function. In that sense, my useless legs are kind of a banner that my family rallies around. My legs are the pivot around which things revolve.' He was tapping at the table top again. Not in irritation – merely moving his fingers and quietly contemplating things in his own time zone. One of the main characteristics of this system is that lack gravitates towards greater lack, excess towards greater excess. When Debussy was seeming to get nowhere with an opera he was composing, he put it this way: "I spend my days pursuing nothingness, –

Standing up from his recline on his Harley, he was already moving toward me, pulled to me as if by some gravitational force. The force of love, my romantic heart whispered. I didn’t care what name I gave to it: love, worship, obsession. It all boiled down to one thing, one feeling that struck me the moment he clutched me in a hard, possessive embrace right there on the Linley’s stoop. The feeling that with Priest, every piece of me, dark and light, sweet and bitter, saintly and sinful was glued together by his acceptance into a beautiful mosaic. That feeling that with him, I’d never been so beautiful and whole. We were two broken halves that locked together in a way that could never be undone.

When we shift from talking about the problems of community to talking about the breakdown of community, something changes. Naming the challenge as the “breakdown of community” opens the way for restoration.Holding on to the view that community is a set of problems to be solved holds us in the grip of retribution. At every level of society, we live in the landscape of retribution. The retributive community is sustained by several aspects of the modern community conversation, which I will expand on throughout the book: the marketing of fear and fault, gravitation toward more laws and oversight, an obsession with romanticized leadership, marginalizing hope and possibility, and devaluing associational life to the point of invisibility.

When I taught the meditation on sound to the participants at my weekend workshop and had people open to the ringing of their cell phones, I was trying to introduce them to his method. By listening meditatively, we were changing the way we listen, pulling ourselves out of our usual orientation to the world based on our likes and dislikes. Rather than trying to figure out what was going on around us, resisting the unpleasant noises and gravitating toward the mellifluous ones, we were listening in a simpler and more open manner. We had to find and establish another point of reference to listen in this way, one that was outside the ego’s usual territory of control. You might say we were simply listening, but it was actually more complex than that. While listening, we were also aware of ourselves listening, and at the same time we were conscious of what the listening evoked within. Unhooked from our usual preoccupations, we were listening from a neutral place.

We need to distinguish between activities that are spiritually fulfilling versus ones that leave us feeling hollow in the end. I used to play a lot of video games. Simply put, they were fun and exciting. I was good at them, and I liked getting better. During weekends I could spend more than twelve hours playing video games. I did so for years. I noticed that, as fun as the games were, at the end of the day, I often felt a lingering sense of regret or hollowness, as if I had wasted my time. My body seemed to be telling me that there was no meaning in that activity — which is not to say that everyone will feel just like I did, but pay attention to the feeling in the body during and after activities. Make note of the activities that are fulfilling. Spend more time doing those activities. Also, note those activities that result in hollowness or regret. Spend less time doing those things. We can wean ourselves from meaningless activities and gravitate more toward meaningful ones.

Sighing, I looked out the window and asked, “Does he ever talk about me? I mean, has he ever said anything?” “Don’t,” he snapped. “Don’t what?” I turned toward him, confused. “Don’t ask me that. Don’t ask me about him.” Jeremiah spoke in a harsh, low voice, a tone he’d never used with me and one I didn’t recall him using with anybody. A muscle in his jaw twitched furiously. I recoiled and sank back into my seat. I felt as though he had slapped me. “What’s the matter with you?” He started to say something, maybe an apology and maybe not, and then he stopped, he leaned over and pulled me toward him—like by gravitational force. He kissed me, hard, and his skin was stubbly and rough against my cheek. My first thought was, I guess he didn’t have time to shave this morning, and then—I was kissing him back, my fingers winding through his soft yellow hair and my eyes closed. He kissed like he was drowning and I was air. It was passionate, and desperate, and like nothing I had ever experienced before.

Ephesians 4:18 talks about “having the understanding darkened.” If you don’t renew your mind and use it to study and meditate God’s Word, it’ll automatically gravitate toward what you can see, taste, hear, smell, and feel. This darkens your understanding. Understanding is the application of knowledge. “Knowledge” puts food into your mouth and chews. “Understanding” actually swallows and digests it so that the beneficial nutrients can be released into your body. The knowledge of God is critical, but must be understood to be useful. Without understanding, you can’t release the life that’s in it. When a Christian walks like an unbeliever, they get the same results—death. Believers who don’t understand and apply the knowledge of God in their lives gravitate toward carnal mindedness. Without spiritual knowledge and understanding, your mind can’t be renewed, and the life of God in your spirit can’t be released. That’s why understanding this revelation of spirit, soul, and body is the first step toward walking in life and peace! When a believer’s understanding is darkened, they are “alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Eph. 4:18). In other words, the life of God is still there, but they are alienated from it due to ignorance, which refers to the mind. This is where most Christians live their lives—separated from the life of God within, due to their own ignorance of spiritual truth. In His Word, God declares that by His stripes, you were healed (1 Pet. 2:24). You look at yourself and ask, “Is that cancerous tumor gone?” Still feeling pain, emotionally drained, and fearful, you continue, “God says I’m healed, but I’m not. It’s still there, so I must not be healed.” By adopting that attitude, you’ve allowed your five senses to dominate you more than God’s Word. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is in you, but you didn’t believe it (Eph. 1:18-20). You let your mind be controlled by what it saw in the physical realm more than the spiritual realm. Therefore, even though you have the resurrection life of God in your spirit, it won’t manifest in the physical realm because you’re carnally minded, which equals death.

Questions and Topics for Discussion This book is written in an oral history format. Why do you think the author chose to structure the book this way? How does this approach affect your reading experience? At one point Daisy says, “I was just supposed to be the inspiration for some man’s great idea….I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else’s muse.” How does her experience of being used by others contribute to the decisions she makes when she joins The Six? Why do you think Billy has such a strong need to control the group, both early on when they are simply the Dunne Brothers and later when they become Daisy Jones & The Six? There are two sets of brothers in The Six: Eddie and Pete Loving, and Billy and Graham Dunne. How do these sibling relationships affect the band? Daisy, Camila, Simone, and Karen are each very different embodiments of female strength and creativity. Who are you most drawn to and why? Billy and Daisy become polarizing figures for the band. Who in the book gravitates more toward Billy’s leadership, and who is more inclined to follow Daisy’s way of doing things? How do these alliances change over time, and how does this dynamic upset the group’s balance? Why do you think Billy and Daisy clash so strongly? What misunderstandings between them are revealed through the “author’s” investigation? What do you think of Camila’s decision to stand by Billy, despite the ways that he has hurt her through his trouble with addiction and wavering faithfulness?

At the age of twelve, before I had had one full year of formal schooling, I had a conception of life that no experience would ever erase, a predilection for what was real that no argument could ever gainsay, a sense of the world that was mine and mine alone, a notion as to what life meant that no education could ever alter, a conviction that the meaning of living came only when one was struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless suffering. At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical. The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the sufferings of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful. It made me want to drive coldly to the heart of every question and lay it open to the core of suffering I knew I would find there. It made me love burrowing into psychology, into realistic and naturalistic fiction and art, into those whirlpools of politics that had the power to claim the whole of men’s souls. It directed my loyalties to the side of men in rebellion; it made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.

At the age of twelve, before I had had one full year of formal schooling, I had a conception of life that no experience would ever erase, a predilection for what was real that no argument could ever gainsay, a sense of the world that was mine and mine alone, a notion as to what life meant that no education could ever alter, a conviction that the meaning of living came only when one was struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless suffering. At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical. The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the sufferings of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful. It made me want to drive coldly to the heart of every question and lay it open to the core of suffering I knew I would find there. It made me love burrowing into psychology, into realistic and naturalistic fiction and art, into those whirlpools of politics that had the power to claim the whole of men's souls. It directed my loyalties to the side of men in rebellion; it made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.

Japan is obsessed with French pastry. Yes, I know everyone who has access to French pastry is obsessed with it, but in Tokyo they've taken it another level. When a patissier becomes sufficiently famous in Paris, they open a shop in Tokyo; the department store food halls feature Pierre Herme, Henri Charpentier, and Sadaharu Aoki, who was born in Tokyo but became famous for his Japanese-influenced pastries in Paris before opening shops in his hometown. And don't forget the famous Mister Donut, which I just made up. Our favorite French pastry shop is run by a Japanese chef, Terai Norihiko, who studied in France and Belgium and opened a small shop called Aigre-Douce, in the Mejiro neighborhood. Aigre-Douce is a pastry museum, the kind of place where everything looks too beautiful to eat. On her first couple of visits, Iris chose a gooey caramel brownie concoction, but she and Laurie soon sparred over the affections of Wallace, a round two-layer cake with lime cream atop chocolate, separated by a paper-thin square chocolate wafer. "Wallace is a one-woman man," said Laurie. Iris giggled in the way eight-year-olds do at anything that smacks of romance. We never figured out why they named a cake Wallace. I blame IKEA. I've always been more interested in chocolate than fruit desserts, but for some reason, perhaps because it was summer and the fruit desserts looked so good and I was not quite myself the whole month, I gravitated toward the blackberry and raspberry items, like a cup of raspberry puree with chantilly cream and a layer of sponge cake.

the ten thousand things To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things. – Eihei Dogen If one is very fortunate indeed, one comes upon – or is found by – the teachings that match one’s disposition and the teachers or mentors whose expression strikes to the heart while teasing the knots from the mind. The Miriam Louisa character came with a tendency towards contrariness and scepticism, which is probably why she gravitated to teachers who displayed like qualities. It was always evident to me that the ‘blink’ required in order to meet life in its naked suchness was not something to be gained in time. Rather, it was clear that it was something to do with understanding what sabotages this direct engagement. So my teachers were those who deconstructed the spiritual search – and with it the seeker – inviting one to “see for oneself.” I realised early on that I wouldn’t find any help within traditional spiritual institutions since their version of awakening is usually a project in time. Anyway, I’m not a joiner by nature. I set out on my via negativa at an early age, trying on all kinds of philosophies and practices with enthusiasm and casting them aside –neti neti – equally enthusiastically. Chögyam Trungpa wised me up to “spiritual materialism” in the 70s; Alan Watts followed on, pointing out that whatever is being experienced is none other than ‘IT’ – the unarguable aliveness that one IS. By then I was perfectly primed for the questions put by Jiddu Krishnamurti – “Is there a thinker separate from thought?” “Is there an observer separate from the observed?” “Can consciousness be separated from its content?” It was while teaching at Brockwood Park that I also had the good fortune to engage with David Bohm in formal dialogues as well as private conversations. (About which I have written elsewhere.) Krishnamurti and Bohm were seminal teachers for me; I also loved the unique style of deconstruction offered by Nisargadatta Maharaj. As it happened though, it took just one tiny paragraph from Wei Wu Wei to land in my brain at exactly the right time for the irreversible ‘blink’ to occur. I mention this rather august lineage because it explains why the writing of Robert Saltzman strikes not just a chord but an entire symphonic movement for me. We are peers; we were probably reading the same books by Watts and Krishnamurti at the same time during the 70s and 80s. Reading his book, The Ten Thousand Things, is, for me, like feeling my way across a tapestry exquisitely woven from the threads of my own life. I’m not sure that I can adequately express my wonderment and appreciation… The candor, lucidity and lack of jargon in Robert’s writing are deeply refreshing. I also relish his way with words. He knows how to write. He also knows how to take astonishingly fine photographs, and these are featured throughout the book. It’s been said that this book will become a classic, which is a pretty good achievement for someone who isn’t claiming to be a teacher and has nothing to gain by its sale. (The book sells for the production price.) He is not peddling enlightenment. He is simply sharing how it feels to be free from all the spiritual fantasies that obscure our seamless engagement with this miraculous thing called life, right now.

When people transcend the myth that proximity means conflict and invasion of privacy, they gravitate toward finding ways to integrate the talents and skills of their community members.

I wanted to live with the hat-tossing, independent-career-woman zest of Mary Tyler Moore, and at the same time, I gravitated toward the stabilizing, self-sacrificing, seemingly bland normalcy of being a wife and mother. I wanted to have a work life and a home life, but with some promise that one would never fully squelch the other.

My husband is everything I’m not when it comes to social skills. He’s naturally compassionate, outgoing, empathetic, and confident. He can walk into a room full of strangers and strike up a conversation with anyone. People gravitate toward him. When it comes to our daughter’s social skills, I give him 100 percent of the credit. He modeled behaviors for her that don’t come naturally to me and that I’ve never learned to fake well. As parents, we haven’t always seen eye to eye. There were times when he thought I was being too cold-hearted and there were times when I thought he was being too sentimental. We’ve had to compromise on some issues and agree to disagree on others. We’ve both made mistakes. But we’ve also come to realize that we have our own strengths. When Jess needs sympathy or relationship advice, she usually talks to her dad. When she needs help filling out forms for a new job or fixing her computer, she calls me. She intuitively worked out what we can each give her as parents long before any of us knew what Asperger’s was.

I like to photograph people who have strength and dignity in their faces; whatever life has done to them, it hasn’t destroyed them. I gravitate towards people like that.

I feel like unstable people gravitate toward you (myself included). I want nothing more than for you to make a connection with a normal, boring person who still has good taste in music.

Prosperity,” Steve said, “is a combination of health, wealth, happiness, and love. And I gravitate towards people like that, because I want that in my own life, and I want to share that with other people as well.

40. From Those To Whom Much Is Given, Much Is Expected When I left school, I worked for six months running a series of self-defence classes around London to earn some money so I could go backpacking. Finally, I saved enough to travel to India, where I had always wanted to go and see the mighty Himalayas with my own eyes. I knew it would take my breath away. But it was the other things I witnessed in India that really blew my mind. In the back streets of Calcutta I saw sights that just should not happen: legless, blind, ragged bodies, lying in filth-strewn gutters, holding out their blistered arms to beg for a few rupees. I felt overwhelmed, inadequate and powerless - all at once. I sought out the mission run by Mother Teresa and saw there how simple things - cleanliness, calm, care and love - made a difference to those in need. These are not costly things to give, and the lesson I learnt was simple: that we all have it within our power to offer something to change a life, even if our pockets are empty. We’ve come to think of charity as being about big telethons or rock stars setting up foundations, but at its heart, charity is about small acts of kindness. No matter the circumstances in which you were brought up, no matter what your job or how much you earn, we all have the capacity to give something - whether it’s time, love or a listening ear to someone in need. And the thing to remember is this: don’t wait until you have more time, money or energy. Mother Teresa said: ‘Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.’ It is a great lesson, and the more we try to do this with whatever little we have, the more real success will gravitate toward us. People will love you back, your own sense of purpose and achievement will grow, and your life will have influence beyond the material. That is a great way to be known and to live your life. For the record: I am definitely still a work in progress on this one, but we all benefit from trying to aspire to this more. So look around you for those in need - you won’t have to look far - and your own life will grow in meaning. Success is not success unless you live this one.

At first, all I saw next was a broad smile in the dark, and then Jorek collided with Akos. Akos looked too confused to return the embrace--actually, he didn’t seem particularly affectionate, as a rule, I had noticed--but he managed to give Jorek a good-natured slap on the shoulder as he pulled away. “Took you long enough to get here,” Jorek said. “I was beginning to think you guys got kidnapped by the chancellor.” “No,” Akos said. “Actually, we abandoned her in an escape pod.” “Really?” Jorek’s eyebrows popped up. “That’s sort of a shame. I liked her.” “You liked her?” I said. “Miss Noavek,” Jorek said, bobbing his head to me. He turned back to Akos. “Yeah, she was a little scary, and apparently I gravitate toward that quality in friends.” My cheeks warmed as he looked from Akos to me and back again, pointedly. Jorek thought of me as a friend?

She was diagnosed with leukemia when Lily was six months old.... Diana and I had looked at each other, no clue, nowhere to begin, certainly no answers, other than the largest answer, that is, the answer that emerged in how, despite or maybe in lieu of the terror of the situation, our bodies had involuntarily gravitated toward each other, how our petty grudges and growing disagreements—all the fissures and loggerheads that had been emerging in our marriage—had given way.

Joanie’s treatment of me wore me down, so I started to gravitate toward her cousin Robin, who was alpha like Joanie but in an entirely different direction. Robin was a full-on flower child and lesbian, a beauty with cocoa-brown skin, hazel eyes, and natural hair down her back. In fitted Levi’s jean suits and boys’ shoes, she turned people’s heads with her braless breasts pointed out like little missiles.

I probably couldn’t help the way I gravitated towards his warmth when we were younger. Though I guess now, my interest in Lucas is less of a gravitational pull and more of a violent hurtling through space with nothing to hold on to and the desperate knowledge that nothing good is going to come from it in the end.

Whereas Eloise gravitated toward retro granny chic and was pulled together on a daily basis, I either looked like a high school student who had just rolled out of bed, thrown on leggings, and gone to class, or a full-blown escort. There was no in-between.

It’s when he turns to face me fully that I’m rewarded in whole. Jesus Christ. Timeless, intimidating, formidable, and a brilliant menace. The most incredible picture of unrest. The flames waltzing in his eyes slam into me. He’s the most alluring of men and the most lethal. The heat radiating between us is already too much. The fact that he is more than capable of burning when he touches has me gravitating toward him, all too ready to thrust myself into his inferno.

It had taken a lot of therapy for me to stop gravitating toward emotionally unavailable men, the kind who’d get a matching tattoo with you on week, and be dating your upstairs neighbor the next. I’d been so relieved when I finally fell in love with someone who actually wanted to love me back.

What if... what if I want a man to own me?" "Then give that privilege to a man who deserves it. If you want a man to own you, then let him. But that's not something he has a right to without your consent." "Do you want to own a woman?" "The only way I want to own a woman is by owning her pleasure. I want her body to sing for me—a tune that only I can hear. I want her body to gravitate towards mine like a moth to a flame. And I want her to grow to dislike the feeling of being so empty when my cock isn't inside of her.

I gravitated toward him like he was the sun. A beautiful pleasure conceived by nature that could very well kill you if you got too close. He looked at me like I was the moon. Pale and lonely and so far away.

Because for some reason, I’m struggling to walk away from him. I gravitate toward him, and it’s a dangerous slope.

I’m terrified of the way we gravitate toward each other. I know he’s bad news.

Broken relationships belonged in the past with the old Dominic, who had nothing to keep people around. No one had cared about me until I made something of myself. The more money I accumulated, the more people gravitated toward me. It was a law of human nature. I wasn’t supposed to lose the only person I cared about keeping now, when I was richer than I’d ever been.

My natural inclination was to gravitate toward swarthy and dangerous over demure and polite. I was drawn to intensity and an air of intrigue, even when I knew the combination was toxic.