Pimple Quotes

Miracles are like pimples, because once you start looking for them you find more than you ever dreamed you'd see.

Old lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings. Then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines.

What you and I might rate as an absolute disaster, God may rate as a pimple-level problem that will pass. He views your life the way you view a movie after you've read the book. When something bad happens, you feel the air sucked out of the theater. Everyone else gasps at the crisis on the screen. Not you. Why? You've read the book. You know how the good guy gets out of the tight spot. God views your life with the same confidence. He's not only read your story...he wrote it.

I will eviscerate you in fiction. Every pimple, every character flaw. I was naked for a day; you will be naked for eternity.

I'm a giant pimple on the face of humanity.

The holiday season is a time for storytelling, and whether you are hearing the story of a candelabra staying lit for more than a week, or a baby born in a barn without proper medical supervision, these stories often feature miracles. Miracles are like pimples, because once you start looking for them you find more than you ever dreamed you'd see, and this holiday story features any number of miracles, depending on your point of view.

Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience... and pimples.

Porthos: He thinks he can challenge the mighty Porthos with a sword... D'Artagnan: The mighty who? Porthos: Don't tell me you've never heard of me. D'Artagnan: The world's biggest windbag? Porthos: Little pimple... meet me behind the Luxembourg at 1 o'clock and bring a long wooden box. D'Artagnan: Bring your own... Porthos: [laughs]

All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.” At the time Switters had disputed her assertion. Even at seventeen, he was aware that depression could have chemical causes. “The key word here is roots,” Maestra had countered. “The roots of depression. For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It's about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can be, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesn't give a rat's ass. Even an old tomato like me can recall how painful, scary, and disillusioning that realization was. So, there's a tendency, then, to slip into rage and self-pity, which if indulged, can fester into bouts of depression.” “Yeah but Maestra—” “Don't interrupt. Now, unless someone stronger and wiser—a friend, a parent, a novelist, filmmaker, teacher, or musician—can josh us out of it, can elevate us and show us how petty and pompous and monumentally useless it is to take ourselves so seriously, then depression can become a habit, which, in tern, can produce a neurological imprint. Are you with me? Gradually, our brain chemistry becomes conditioned to react to negative stimuli in a particular, predictable way. One thing'll go wrong and it'll automatically switch on its blender and mix us that black cocktail, the ol’ doomsday daiquiri, and before we know it, we’re soused to the gills from the inside out. Once depression has become electrochemically integrated, it can be extremely difficult to philosophically or psychologically override it; by then it's playing by physical rules, a whole different ball game. That's why, Switters my dearest, every time you've shown signs of feeling sorry for yourself, I've played my blues records really loud or read to you from The Horse’s Mouth. And that’s why when you’ve exhibited the slightest tendency toward self-importance, I’ve reminded you that you and me— you and I: excuse me—may be every bit as important as the President or the pope or the biggest prime-time icon in Hollywood, but none of us is much more than a pimple on the ass-end of creation, so let’s not get carried away with ourselves. Preventive medicine, boy. It’s preventive medicine.” “But what about self-esteem?” “Heh! Self-esteem is for sissies. Accept that you’re a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace—and maybe even glory.

Self-esteem can be so exhausting. I want to cut my hair, change my clothes, erase the pimple from the near-tip of my nose, and strengthen my upper-arm definition, all in the next hour.

It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple

Self-esteem is for sissies. Accept that you're a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace - and maybe even glory.

I don't know if it's a good idea to give a woman a box of bullets when she's got a pimple.

I like one hair, tuna fish, the smell of rain and things that are pink. I hate pimples, baked potatoes, when my mother's mad, and religious holidays.

I sit down on the bed, cradling her little head against my shoulder, inhaling her sweet baby scent. Someday she'll get older, and the world will start having its way with her. She'll throw temper tantrums, she'll need speech therapy, she'll grow breasts and have pimples, she'll fight with her parents, she'll worry about her weight, she'll put out, she'll have her heart broken, she'll be happy, she'll be lonely, she'll be complicated, she'll be confused, she'll be depressed, she'll fall in love and get married, and she'll have a baby of her own. But right now she is pure and undiminished and beautiful.

It begins to rain softly, raising goose-pimples on the pond’s skin.

If you were upset about an ugly pimple on the end of your nose, you might try to feel better by keeping your pimple in perspective. You might compare your pimple situation to that of someone who was being eaten by a bear, and when you looked in the mirror at your ugly pimple, you could say to yourself, 'Well, at least I'm not being eaten by a bear.

Some people you want to get to know and some people you want to know you....For whatever reason, there are people that you want to tell your weird, secret thoughts to. You want to show them your pimples and tell them about your braces. You want them to love you because of those things, not in spite of them. 'Some people make you want to be known,'" (p. 302)

Your pimples are the Lord's way of chastising you. Now eat your pie.

Is man a savage at heart, skinned o'er with fragile Manners? Or is savagery but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility, which erupts now and again like pimples on an angel's arse?

I fast every Sunday. I don’t eat anything. Just juices. […] It flushes out the system, cleans out the colon. I think that’s great. To really make it work, you have to do it properly. That’s the sewer valve of the system. You have to keep that clean like you clean the outside of your body. All these impurities come out of your system because you’re not clean inside. It comes out in pimples or disease or through big pores. Toxins trying to get out of your system. People should try to keep themselves clean.

Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all. I'm cold,' Snowden said. 'I'm cold.

The work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples. [on James Joyce's Ulysses]

Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there were many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, and it did now, too.

Self-publishing a shitty book doesn't make you an author any more than singing in the shower makes you a rockstar or squeezing your pimple makes you a dermatologist.

[...] certain it is that minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort, and like them, are often successfully cured by remedies in themselves very nauseous and unpalatable.

Adolescence is just one big walking pimple.

There is no better people-watching than at the airport: the whole world packed into such a tight space, moving fast with all their essentials in their rolling bags. And what caught my attention, as I took a few breaths and lay my eyes on the crowds, were all the imperfections. Everybody had them. Every single person that walked past me had some kind of flaw. Bushy eyebrows, moles, flared nostrils, crooked teeth, crows'-feet, hunched backs, dowagers' humps, double chins, floppy earlobes, nose hairs, potbellies, scars, nicotine stains, upper arm fat, trick knees, saddlebags, collapsed arches, bruises, warts, puffy eyes, pimples. Nobody was perfect. Not even close. And everybody had wrinkles from smiling and squinting and craning their necks. Everybody had marks on their bodies from years of living - a trail of life left on them, evidence of all the adventures and sleepless nights and practical jokes and heartbreaks that had made them who they were. In that moment, I suddenly loved us all the more for our flaws, for being broken and human, for being embarrassed and lonely, for being hopeful or tired or disappointed or sick or brave or angry. For being who we were, for making the world interesting. It was a good reminder that the human condition is imperfection. And that's how it's supposed to be.

When people are kids their parents teach them all sorts of stuff, some of it true and useful, some of it absurd hogwash (example of former: don't crap your pants; example of latter: Columbus discovered America). This is why puberty happens. The purpose of puberty is to shoot an innocent and gullible child full of nasty glandular secretions that manifest in the mind as confusion, in the innards as horniness, upon the skin as pimples, and on the tongue as cocksure venomous disbelief in every piece of information, true or false, gleaned from one's parents since infancy. The net result is a few years of familial hell culminating in the child's exodus from the parental nest, sooner or later followed by a peace treaty and the emergence of the postpubescent as an autonomous, free-thinking human being who knows that Columbus only trespassed on an island inhabited by our lost and distant Indian relatives, but who also knows not to crap his pants.

Rowdy, hopped-up college kids pass us in an endless, noisy blur like they're being mass produced or squeezed out of a tube - guys skulking in their T-shirts and cargo shorts, girls in low-slung jeans and flip-flops, pimples and breasts and tattoos and lipstick and legs and bra straps, and cigarettes; a colorful, sexy melange. I feel old and tired and I just want to be them again, want to be young and stupid, filled with angst and attitude and unbridled lust. Can I have a do-over, please? I swear to God I'll make a real go of it this time.

When you want genuine music -- music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth's pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose, -- when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!

It's not a good idea to mess with a woman who has a pimple

He is a pimple on the cock of humanity

Ah. Alicia, see? Didn't I tell you that's what she needed to begin with? Maybe a little schtupping and it would make the cancer go away. It works with pimples.' 'Nana!

Pimple young. Giggling young. Silly young and stupid as me.

When I did my self-portrait, I left all the pimples out because you always should. Pimples are a temporary condition and they don't have anything to do with what you really look like. Always omit the blemishes—they're not part of the good picture you want.

I began to weep with loneliness. What was I, who was I? I felt pretty again, my pimples were gone, the sun and the sea had made me slimmer, and yet the person I liked and whom I wished to be liked by showed no interest in me.

Ray doesn’t go into lengthy descriptions. Yet, you can see—even feel—it all happening. That’s enough to bring out the goose pimples!’ Clearly, here the filmmaker in Ray gave him an edge over other writers. His words were brief, simple, lucid. But the impression that emerged was extraordinarily rich in detail.

I keep thinking about all the kids who got wiped out by seventeen years of war movies before coming to Vietnam to get wiped out for good. You don’t know what a media freak is until you’ve seen the way a few of those grunts would run around during a fight when they knew that there was a television crew nearby; they were actually making war movies in their heads, doing little guts-and-glory Leatherneck tap dances under fire, getting their pimples shot off for the networks. They were insane, but the war hadn’t done that to them. Most combat troops stopped thinking of the war as an adventure after their first few firefights, but there were always the ones who couldn’t let that go, these few who were up there doing numbers for the cameras… We’d all seen too many movies, stayed too long in Television City, years of media glut had made certain connections difficult.

Chastity always takes its toll. In some it produces pimples; in others, sex laws.

With time we will all stop fighting pimples and start fighting wrinkles.

The Ticket-wallah, whose pimples bubbled as I watched, was as intractably dense as his counterpart in King's Cross. The Corporation breeds them from the same stem cell.

For making Adron human again. It’s been a long time. (Tiernan) Screw you, Tier. (Adron) Yeah, bro, since when was Adron ever human? More like a festering subspecies of some kind. You know. Like a pimple on the ass of a warthog. (Taryn)

You know, it’s interesting. Children learn much more, far more quickly than adults. Do you know why that is?” Elizabeth assumed there was some scientific explanation for it, but shook her head. “Because they’re open-minded. Because they want to know and they want to learn. Adults”—he shook his head sadly—“think they know it all. They grow up and forget so easily instead of opening their minds, they choose what to believe and what not to believe. You can’t make a choice on things like that, you either believe or you don’t. That’s why their learning is slower. They are more cynical, they lose faith, and they only demand to know things that will help them get by day by day. They’ve no interest in the extras. But, Elizabeth,” he said, his voice a loud whisper, eyes wide and sparkling, and Elizabeth shivered as goose pimples rose on her arms. She felt as if he were sharing the world’s greatest secret with her. “It’s the extras that make life.” “That make life what?” she whispered. He smiled. “That make life.” Elizabeth swallowed the lump in her throat. “That’s it?” Ivan smiled. “What do you mean, that’s it? How much more can you get than life, how much more can you ask for than life? That’s the gift. Life is everything, and you haven’t lived it properly until you believe.

There was no way she'd allow him to see her do 97 percent of her normal activities. She was a monster. A monster who was flat as a board with no ass. In fact, the only thing she had going on in the curves department was an enormous cystic pimple on her chin that hurt when she touched it. Yeah, no.

What if something were to happen? What if something suddenly started throbbing? Then they would notice it was there and they'd think their hearts were going to burst. Then what good would their dykes, bulwarks, power houses, furnaces and pile drivers be to them? It can happen any time, perhaps right now: the omens are present. For example, the father of a family might go out for a walk, and, across the street, he'll see something like a red rag, blown towards him by the wind. And when the rag has gotten close to him he'll see that it is a side of rotten meat, grimy with dust, dragging itself along by crawling, skipping, a piece of writhing flesh rolling in the gutter, spasmodically shooting out spurts of blood. Or a mother might look at her child's cheek and ask him: "What's that, a pimple?" and see the flesh puff out a little, split, open, and at the bottom of the split an eye, a laughing eye might appear. Or they might feel things gently brushing against their bodies, like the caresses of reeds to swimmers in a river. And they will realize that their clothing has become living things. And someone else might feel something scratching in his mouth. He goes to the mirror, opens his mouth: and his tongue is an enormous, live centipede, rubbing its legs together and scraping his palate. He'd like to spit it out, but the centipede is a part of him and he will have to tear it out with his own hands. And a crowd of things will appear for which people will have to find new names, stone eye, great three cornered arm, toe crutch, spider jaw. And someone might be sleeping in his comfortable bed, in his quiet, warm room, and wake up naked on a bluish earth, in a forest of rustling birch trees, rising red and white towards the sky like the smokestacks of Jouxtebouville, with big bumps half way out of the ground, hairy and bulbous like onions. And birds will fly around these birch trees and pick at them with their beaks and make them bleed. Sperm will flow slowly, gently, from these wounds, sperm mixed with blood, warm and glassy with little bubbles.

The Missing Tile syndrome is ubiquitous. If you are overweight, all you see are flat stomachs and perfect physical specimens. If you have pimples, all you see is flawless skin. Women who have difficulty getting pregnant walk around seeing only pregnant women and babies. Nor do you need to be overweight, have pimples, be balding, or want a child to believe that you have a missing tile. You can allow any real—or merely perceived—flaw to diminish your happiness.

It's no good moaning about what evil bastards they were. Men like that would see that as a compliment. Far better to regard them as an insignificant pimple on the arse of your success, don't you think?' A pause. 'The arse of success?' I shrugged. 'It's been a long day. Best I could come up with, but you know what I mean.

Every time I get a pimple I worry that it’s the beginning of a new nipple.

We all start out thinking that there is such a thing as perfection and that there's something wrong with us if we settle for less. First we won't eat the food with the brown spots. Then we hate ourselves because we have our own brown spots—pimples or ears that are too big or legs that are too skinny.

At nineteen, I certainly didn't know the answer, although I already knew more about death than most of the other pimple-ridden pudding heads in my sophomore class at the University of Miami.

We were so awkward, morning pimples in the mirror, hair where we never wanted it, and we thought of the lung cancer X-ray that was the album art for Surfin' Safari, considered the ways a body betrays its soul, and wondered if growing up was its own kind of pathology. We fell in and out of love with fevered frequency. We constantly became people we would later regret having been.

There had never been a funeral in our town before, at least not during our lifetimes. The majority of dying had happened during the Second World War when we didn't exist and our fathers were impossibly skinny young men in black-and-white photographs—dads on jungle airstrips, dads with pimples and tattoos, dads with pinups, dads who wrote love letters to the girls who would become our mothers, dads inspired by K rations, loneliness and glandular riot in malarial air into poetic reveries that ceased entirely once they got back home.

Did you know that your mouth, your skin, is so soft? All week, every time I’ve thought about it, my hands feel like they’re buzzing. I love your hair. I love that it’s short and so when I put my fingers through it, I can feel your whole nape bust out in goose pimples.

It seems like suffering's the only time we can see what's essential. If peace ever comes back I'm making a vow: I'll design myself special glasses. They'll block out whether people are fat or thin or beautiful or weird-looking, whether they have pimples or birthmarks or different coloured skin. They'll do everything suffering's done for us, but without the pain. I'm going to wear those glasses for the rest of my life.

I remember a relative of mine who used to pick on me all the time, constantly ridiculing my every move and making me feel inferior. One day she had a pimple on her face and was devastated. I told her "Why would you let a little thing like that bother you in such a way? It's just a pimple!" And she cried and said "You can say that, because you're perfect and even if you have ten pimples on your face, it wouldn't even matter!" And I never forgot how I felt in that moment, that moment taught me some important things! First, I realized that the whole time she was picking on me, she actually was feeling that I was perfect! And secondly, I realized that when people think you're perfect, they try to make you feel bad about yourself! I was so taken aback in those few minutes— I couldn't even say anything! I just looked at her while all my realizations flooded my mind and I decided that just because you think someone is perfect, doesn't give you the ticket to make them feel bad about themselves.

He stuck around till around dinnertime, talking about all the guys at Pencey that he hated their guts, and squeezing this big pimple on his chin. He didn't even use a handkerchief. I don't even think the bastard had a handkerchief, if you want to know the truth. I never saw him use one, anyway.

Not about mean old nasty Mars, I tell you, mister! It’s your type that is going to boil for years, and suffer and break out in black pimples and be tortured——” “I must admit Earth isn’t very nice. You’ve described it beautifully.

Not about mean old nasty Mars, I tell you, mister! It’s your type that is going to boil for years, and suffer and break out in black pimples and be tortured——” “I must admit Earth isn’t very nice. You’ve described it beautifully.

Night after night she listens to the howling in the pipes. It gains a bloodcurdling cadence. She hums along. She can almost sing the words. She scratches the pimples dotting her body. They swell to boils. They burst, revealing new eyes. The eyes show her unutterable truths. Soon, she sticks thumb tacks into her tongue so she can better explain these truths to the weeping children whose beds she hides under.

INEZ: There...you know the way the catch larks - with a mirror? I'm your lark-mirror,my dear, and you can't escape me...There isn't any pimple, not a trace of one. So what about it? Suppose the mirror started telling lies? Or suppose I covered my eyes - as he is doing - and refused to look at you, all that loveliness of yours would be wasted on the desert air. No, don't be afraid, I can't help looking at you. I shan't turn my eyes away. AndI'll be nice to you, ever so nice. Only you must be nice to me too.

She could feel the heat from his body behind her. It radiated from his chest to her shoulder blades. The silk of his bow tie brushed against her hair, penetrating it, until it grazed across the surface of her neck, causing it to explode into goose-pimples.

I require of all my students… that they are downy and pubescent, pimpled with sullen mistrust, and boiling away with private fury and ardor and uncertainty and gloom. I require that they wait in the corridor for ten minutes at least before each lesson, tenderly nursing their injustices, picking miserably at their own unworthiness as one might finger a scab or caress a scar. If I am to teach your daughter, you darling hopeless and inadequate mother, she must be moody and bewildered and awkward and dissatisfied and wrong. When she realizes that he body is a secret, a dark and yawning secret of which she becomes more and more ashamed, come back to me. You must understand me on this point. I cannot teach children.

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different

...had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples.

He was back. Of course he was, she thought scornfully. He'd returned after all that time, just when she looked her very worst and had a pimple.

It wasn’t even one of those stoic pimples that goes quietly when you pop it; this one was cystic and painful and had roots that seemed to extend into my brain.

Hello?” I ask. No one is there. Not a word. Not a whisper. Not a single sound resonating from the other side of the receiver. “Hello? Anyone there?” I ask again. Repeating myself. I am beginning to feel rather anxious now. Scared, would be a better word to use. Shivers have begun to creep up my spinal cord, and I can feel the urgency of goose pimples begin to line up on by frightened pale skin.

I was born the 26th of December. . . Arrive by dint of perseverance, but step by step. . . Tenancy to exaggerate the importance of earthly life. Avaricious of self. Constant in their affections and their hatreds. . . Yes, the Capricorn is a beast of solitude. Slow, steady, and persevering. Lives on several levels at once. Thinks in circles. Fascinated by death. Ever climbing, climbing. In search of the edelweiss, presumably. Or could it be immortelle? Knows no mother. Only "the mothers". Laughs little and usually on the wrong side of the face. . . Speaks truthfully instead of kindly. Metaphysics, abstractions, electromagnetic displays. Dives to the depths. Sees stars, comets, and asteroids where others see only moles, warts, and pimples. Feeds on himself when tired of playing the man-eating shark. A paranoiac. An ambulatory paranoiac. But constant in his affections - and his hatreds. Ouais!

All I want is some man to take delight in me. 5:30? 6:30 A.M. as usual, no cigs. Better a maudlin drunk than a sterile one. My pimples are more like small boils; I have the plague. My lip is split. My tits are swollen and I can't ever sleep. I now breathe with my heart, which skips rope. Back to sex?

Someday she'll get older, and the world will start having its way with her. She'll throw temper tantrums, she'll need therapy, she'll grow breasts and have pimples, she'll fight with her parents, she'll worry about her weight, she'll put out, she'll have her heart broken, she'll be happy, she'll be lonely, she'll be complicated, she'll be confused, she'll be depressed, she'll fall in love and get married, and she'll have a baby of her own. But right now, she is pure and undiminished and beautiful.

She sings on and on, while the house is discreetly dusted all around her and, in the concealed and subterranean kitchen, a naked duck, limp and faintly steaming, spreads its pimpled legs on a draining board.

Any function of the body that one hid behind closed doors titillated me. I recall one of my early relationships—not a heavy love affair, just a light one—was with a Russian man with a wonderful sense of humor who permitted me to squeeze the pus from his pimples on his back and shoulders. To me, this was the greatest intimacy.

It popped up on my Outlook calendar, flagged in red like an inflamed pimple full of infected bureaucratic pus... I've been trying desperately to get it shifted, but no, it is stuck like a king-sized dildo in a guinea pig.

Es más fácil ocultar una espinilla en la punta de la nariz, que el amor.

Go stand in the corner until you learn to be more positive in your thinking. You need an attitude adjustment, Mr Daeve!" Nick "My attitude is fine. What I need is an environmental change where I'm not locked in a hovel with an ass" Glares at Jaden the Nick---- "and a pimple."Caleb "Why are you laughing?" Nick "I'm reveling in the fact he left me off his hate list." Xev

Now, take a breath, lay back, close the book, brush your eyebrows, go check that pimple on your face in the mirror, or better get yourself a cup of coffee. Let this part sink in for a while because the ride will get bumpier when you continue reading.

Pepper woke up thinking of butts. And nothing else. Ladies' butts. Skinny butts, big butts, saddlebag butts, flabby and firm butts, the kind that sit so high they seem like part of the woman's back, the kind that ride low and form a UU just above the thighs like in the old television commercials for Hanes Underalls, butts that wiggle and butts that jiggle, sagging butts and robust butts, butts that hardly make an impression under a pair of jeans; sidewinder butts and trumpet butts -- the ones so meaty they actually spread out until they appear to be a woman's thighs (ass so fat you can see it from the front), butts as knotty as acorns, butts as smooth as a slice of Gouda, butts with pimples and butts with cellulite, the kind that have pockmarks or red splotches, butts with tattoos and butts with bullet scars. Butts you can cup in your warm hands. Butts and butts and butts. In other words, Pepper woke up horny.

There is no way to genuinely, powerfully, truly love yourself while crafting a mask of perfection. I know, you know, we all know—it's hard to let your pimples and your flaws be seen. It's hard to stumble and bumble. It's hard to not know the right things to do or say. It's hard to not look like TV. Sometimes, it's really hard for me to be the awkward mess that I am when I'm authentic, instead of having runway authenticity—all natural, but flawless. But every time I allow that to be okay, not just around myself but around others—I affirm something to myself. I affirm, to myself more than anyone else, that I am lovable and acceptable unconditionally. I affirm that it's okay to take on and take in all the flavours and hues of human experience, and not just the ones that are acceptable in this culture, in this time, in this place. And that kind of acceptance, that kind of love—that's the kind of love that creates miracles. That's the kind of love I really need. That's the kind of love that makes approval taste like cardboard.

love poem to a stripper 50 years ago I watched the girls shake it and strip at The Burbank and The Follies and it was very sad and very dramatic as the light turned from green to purple to pink and the music was loud and vibrant, now I sit here tonight smoking and listening to classical music but I still remember some of their names: Darlene, Candy, Jeanette and Rosalie. Rosalie was the best, she knew how, and we twisted in our seats and made sounds as Rosalie brought magic to the lonely so long ago. now Rosalie either so very old or so quiet under the earth, this is the pimple-faced kid who lied about his age just to watch you. you were good, Rosalie in 1935, good enough to remember now when the light is yellow and the nights are slow.

I never wanted to be Protestant. Jews do, plenty of them. Not me. To be assimilated, to be respectable, to be detached like the Wasps, I understand the desire, but I knew never to try. I see all those distinguished Wasps with the beautiful gray hair and the pinstripe suits who don't have pimples on their ass. They're my lawyers....These guys are quiet. I don't want to be that way. I couldn't begin to be that way. I'm the wild Jew of the pampas. I am the Golem of the U.S.A.

How can you not be concerned that I might have cancer?” I ask. “I found a lump on my breast.” Touch it, Ely. Touch it. “Lie. Not only are you biting your lip, which you always do when you lie, but your mom told me about the alleged lump in the elevator this morning. The doctor said it was an overgrown pimple.” Monkeys!

In college, educated women (I found out) were frigid; active women (I knew) were neurotic; women (we all knew) were timid, incapable, dependent, nurturing, passive, intuitive, emotional, unintelligent, obedient, and beautiful. You can always get dressed up and go to a party. Woman is the gateway to another world; Woman is the earth-mother; Woman is the eternal siren; Woman is purity; Woman is carnality; Woman has intuition; Woman is the life-force; Woman is selfless love. "I am the gateway to another world," (said I, looking in the mirror) "I am the earth-mother; I am the eternal siren; I am purity," (Jeez, new pimples) "I am carnality; I have intuition; I am the life-force; I am selfless love." (Somehow it sounds different in the first person, doesn't it?) Honey (said the mirror, scandalised) Are you out of your fucking mind? I AM HONEY I AM RASPBERRY JAM I AM A VERY GOOD LAY I AM A GOOD DATE I AM A GOOD WIFE I AM GOING CRAZY Everything was peaches and cream.

In the most extreme cases, I would pull a big pair of glasses out of my pocket and carefully slide them up my nose, almost past the bridge. Then I wasn't pretending anymore: everything was a blur, the other person's pimples disappeared. Behind my thick lenses, I could say anything, without worrying about possible consequences. I felt my body flow into this gelatinous mist effortlessly, gracefully as a drop of oil falling into a glass of water. Blindness set me free. No longer a slave to outward forms, I finally became myself.

After three hours, I come back to the waiting room. It is a cosmetic surgery office, so a little like a hotel lobby, underheated and expensively decorated, with candy in little dishes, emerald-green plush chairs, and upscale fashion magazines artfully displayed against the wall. A young woman comes in, frantic to get a pimple "zapped" before she sees her family over the holidays. An older woman comes in with her daughter for a follow-up visit to a face-lift. She is wearing a scarf and dark glasses. The nurse examines her bruises right out in the waiting room. And you are in the operating room having your body and your gender legally altered. I feel like laughing, but I know it makes me sound like a lunatic.

Polarization is just one of many ways group membership can change an individual. Perhaps the most striking effect of group membership is that it can modify individuals’ perceptions of themselves. Unable to separate their personal introspection from the ways they believe other people perceive them, teenagers may have what psychologists call an “imaginary audience,” meaning they believe that other people are just as attuned to their appearance and behavior as they are (cue any pimple cream commercial). These perceptions can affect various aspects of their lives. For example, psychologists found that when Asian girls were subtly reminded about their Asian identity, they performed better on math tests. When they were subtly reminded about their gender, however, they performed worse.

I'm cold,' Snowden whimpered. 'I'm cold.' 'There, there,' Yossarian mumbled mechanically in a voice too low to be heard. 'There, there.' Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.

Or a mother might look at her child's cheek and ask him: "What's that, a pimple?" and see the flesh puff out a little, split, open, and at the bottom of the split an eye, a laughing eye might appear. Or they might feel things gently brushing against their bodies, like the caresses of reeds to swimmers in a river. And they will realize that their clothing has become living things. And someone else might feel something scratching in his mouth. He goes to the mirror, opens his mouth: and his tongue is an enormous, live centipede, rubbing its legs together and scraping his palate. He'd like to spit it out, but the centipede is a part of him and he will have to tear it out with his own hands. And a crowd of things will appear for which people will have to find new names, stone eye, great three cornered arm, toe crutch, spider jaw.

We used to have a family game, invented by my sister and a friend of hers - it was called 'Agatha's Husbands'. The idea was that they picked out two or at the most three of the most repellent looking strangers in a room, and it was then put to me that i had to choose one of them as a husband, on pain of death or slow torture by the Chinese. 'now then, Agatha, which will you have - the fat young one with pimples, and the scurfy head, or that black one like a gorilla with the bulging eyes?' 'Oh I can't - they're so awful.' 'You must - it's got to be one of them. Or else red hot needles and water torture.' 'Oh dear, then the gorilla.

Something deep in my guts, below my heart, has made a shift to the left and settled in a more comfortable place. It’s not the Shift, but it’s a shift. I picture Nia with her gorgeous face and little body and black hair and pouty lips and Aaron’s hands all over her but also with her pot smoking and the pimples on her forehead and making fun of people all the time and the way she’s always so proud of how she’s dressed. And I picture her fading.

Have you ever thought for once that when you look in the mirror you are hyper aware of your flaws? When the rest of us may see something different. Like a teenager with a pimple. She doesn't focus on her beautiful eyes and cute lips, she zeros in on the one tiny flaw and goes nuts over it." He put his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling. "You need to stop obsessing over your scars. It's only a quarter of your face and I can't tell you the last time I noticed.

Children, awkward, isolate, their bodies crammed to bursting with caffein and sugar and pop music and cologne and perfume and hairgel and pimple cream and growth hormone-treated hamburger meat and premature sex drives and costly, fleeting, violent sublimations. It's all part of the conspiracy . . . all of it trying to convince them that they're here to be trained for lives of adventure and glamor and heroism, when in fact they're here only to be trained for more of the same, for lives of plunking in the quarters, paying a premium for the never-ending series of shabby fantasies to come, the whole lifelong laser light show of glamorous degradation and habitual novelty and fun-loving murder and global isolation.

This got me thinking of how animals define beauty versus us humans and how drastically different these opinions are. Animals don’t see beauty or judge us based on it. If a cat is comfortable with you and trusts you, it does not care what you look like. You could have a missing eye or two missing eyes or a freakish pimple on your face, and the horse you are riding or brushing will not care one bit. Animals teach us the meaning of beautiful every day. Do you take the time to listen?

It had a strange resemblance to Kafka's novel,The Trial- that dream-like allegory of a man who,having received a mysterious convocation to attend his 'trial",strives and struggles in vain to find out where the trial would be held and what it would be about; wherever he inquires he receives non - commital,elusive replies,as if everybody has joined in a secret conspiracy:the closer he gets to his aim,the farther it recedes,like the transparent walls of a dream:and the story ends abruptly,as it began,in tormenting suspense.The High Court which Kafka's hero is unable to find is his own conscience:but what was the symbolic meaning of all these nut-cracker-faced,nail-biting,pimpled,slimy features,spinning their spider webs of intrigue and sabotage in the bureaux of the French Administration?Perhaps I was really guilty,I and my like:perhaps our guilt was the past,the guilt of having forseen the catastrophe and yet failed to open the eyes of the blind.But if we were guilty-who were they to sit in judgement over us?

She’s twenty-one and just by her hairstyle you can tell she’s saving IT for the man she will marry. It’s short at the sides and high on top, with a sideburn-length curl in front each ear. Look around you next time you’re out strolling, there’s hordes of them like her. They all wore braces when they were kids, played a lot of sports, were considered tom-boys, spent endless hours worrying about pimples, black-heads and acne, and wanted only one thing out of life-- get married and be a loving motherto both their children and their husband. In the meantime, they work at meaningful jobs like teaching and nursing until the Right Man comes along. They’re the reason Canadian men are amongst the most neurotic, childish and apathetic males on the Western continent. They need the challenge of a mature woman in order to bring out their maturity, and instead they’re offered mamas. Yet it isn’t the girls’ fault. After all they’re only being what men want them to be, what they think men want them to be. And vice-versa. Both sexes being what they think the other wants them to be and neither one really knowing because they’ve never asked their opposite what they would like, and this total absence of communication being the root cause of this great void between modern man and woman

I no longer want to read about anything sad. Anything violent, anything disturbing, anything like that. No funerals at the end, though there can be some in the middle. If there must be deaths, let there be resurrections, or at least a Heaven so we know where we are. Depression and squalor are for those under twenty-five, they can take it, they even like it, they still have enough time left. But real life is bad for you, hold it in your hand long enough and you’ll get pimples and become feeble-minded. You’ll go blind.

As one might guess, I was easily roused by the grosser habits of the human body--toilet business not least of all. The very fact that other people moved their bowels filled me with awe. Any function of the body that one hid behind closed doors titillated me. I recall one of my early relationships--not a heavy love affair, just a light one--was with a Russian man with a wonderful sense of humor who permitted me to squeeze the pus from his pimples on his back and shoulders. To me, this was the greatest intimacy. Before that, still young and neurotic, just allowing a man to listen to me urinate was utter humiliation, torture, and therefore, I thought, proof of profound love and trust

McDonald’s almost hired me one time, and I only applied for the job to meet younger girls. Black girls, Hispanic, white, and Chinese girls, it says right on the job application how McDonald’s hires different races and ethnic backgrounds. It’s girls, girls, girls, buffet-style. Also on the application McDonald’s says if you have any of the following diseases: Hepatitis A, Salmonella, Shigella, Staphylococcus, Giardia, or Campylobacter, then you may not work there. This is more of a guarantee than you get meeting girls on the street. You can’t be too careful. Al least at McDonald’s she’s gone on the record saying she’s clean. Plus, there’s a very good chance she’s going to be young. Pimple young. Giggling young. Silly young and as stupid as me.

Bradshaw. That Dietz would pretend he existed, and got them all those sensational scoops when she knew— That instant, she knew. She felt the goose pimples grow on her arms, and her fingers clenched the steering wheel more tightly as her body went rigid. It was coming to her in a rush, the incredible answers to the questions that she had been asking herself in these last weeks. Like a streak of lightning throwing a bright, stark light on a dark area, illuminating all that had been hidden so long. In those stunning moments of revelation, Victoria could see the whole truth. It was too shocking, even horrifying, to believe, but it was the truth, there could be no other. It was coming to her—who Mark Bradshaw was; why she and Nick had always been sent to scenes where terrorism was about to happen, to file advance background stories where terrorism would occur; how the Record had obtained exclusive stories on the kidnapping of the Spanish king and abduction of the UN secretary-general and theft of the Dead Sea scrolls and murder of the Israeli prime minister and near kidnapping of the Pope in Lourdes; why Carlos was not being picked up and jailed; why she had abruptly been ordered to leave Paris and return to New York.

8 Ways to Shine a Positive Light on Others 1. Let the other person appear smart. The person who desperately tries to be the smartest person in the room inevitably comes off as the least. 2. Don’t bring attention to anything which may embarrass another person. Whether your conversation partner has poor grammar, a pimple on his chin, or lacks social grace, a discreet person does not say or do anything which would make another feel ashamed, embarrassed, or humiliated. Allow the other person to maintain his own grace and dignity. 3. Ask their opinions, seek their advice, ask them inquiring questions. By allowing them to reveal their opinions and knowledge, you will demonstrate respect and make them feel important. 4. Practice patience. Sometimes it takes a person a moment to gather her thoughts, process information, or respond appropriately. Your patience is respectful and appreciated. 5. Maintain your calm. Rather than react with anger or defensiveness, regulate your response and shift the energy into a more positive direction. 6. Put your ego aside. Allow another to triumph and enjoy the spotlight. 7. Be aware and concerned for the feelings of others. 8. Purposely seek ways to put others at ease and make them feel comfortable.