Vanity and superficiality, placed deliberately on display, can be a burden; take this nonsense overboard.

Now, 75 years [after To Kill a Mockingbird], in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.[Open Letter, O Magazine, July 2006]

real world”. Refuse normalcy. Beauty is everywhere, love is endless, and joy bleeds from our everyday existence. Embrace it. I love all of you, all my friends, family, and community. I am ceaselessly grateful from...

When everyone is famous, no one will be famous.

Elizabeth scowled, feeling like a nobody, a nothing. She felt like her entire self had been made worthless. She could change her interests, but she couldn’t change her looks. She’d never be six feet tall....

—,Yo? Tu eres la bestia estúpida que no vio su camino—respondí mirándolo fríamente.—Tal vez si fueras capaz de ver más allá de ti misma me hubieras visto.

I just can’t wait to get out of Sweet Valley,’ Jessica explained. ‘I feel like I’ve been dancing with the same ten cute guys my whole life.

…so now you know my eyes are green – because of my shirt? You never looked into my soul to know how much in me is green…

Songs, to me, were more important than just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality. Some different republic, some liberated republic… whatever the case, it wasn’t that I...

I wouldn’t say I’m superficial, just averagely ficial.

…it must be hard when you are a beautiful woman and no one will look at your soul…

When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest.

Please, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you – but: what did you learn?

…you must never partly love or stop half way – because then, you become superficial and cannot be deeply hurt or loved…

The only unique contribution you can offer the world is to be who you actually are and no one else.

Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise.

But it wasn’t the right season to lift off. Not yet. I sat in my apartment and looked out over the city, and I just didn’t feel any passion to write about the place. I...

I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.

I am aware that I am less than some people prefer me to be, but most people are unaware that I am so much more than what they see.

What was it about us, as humans, that drove us to make apologies for beautiful things?

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are...

You are too timid for me. You care too much about what other people think. But you know what? Because you are so desperate to win the approval of others, you’ll never get rid of...

Actors,” he says, “should only be superficial on the surface.

But Sir Alistair’s gaze was different. Those other men had looked at her with lust or speculation or crass curiosity, but they hadn’t been looking at her really. They’d been looking at what she represented...

Superficiality is the curse of the modern world.

If I must choose, I’d rather be tuned in than ‘turnt up’.

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one’s days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving...

God dwells only in the depths of your heart; he detested the superficial superficiality.

Once upon a time there were mass media, and they were wicked, of course, and there was a guilty party. Then there were the virtuous voices that accused the criminals. And Art (ah, what luck!)...

Christ delves far beyond the means of superficiality, not simply because of his immaculate love, but also because he considers the distinct cases of each individual rather than withholding a broadened perception by use of...