“In tourism college they were taught that American notions of what constitutes a personal question are quite different from their own. Tư has learned this the hard way, through responses to questions like: And what do they pay you to be a pharmaceutical representative with GlaxoSmithKline, Mr. Clark? Is this lady your wife or your daughter? Do they have the death penalty in your state of Texas? Why are the insides of your ears so hairy?”
“It is the same with anything - you have to learn through your own experience, paying your own way. You can't learn it from a book.”
“‘You and your creepy research, Mr. Clark.’‘It's what I do, Ms. Summers.’”
“Once a response becomes a habit, you stop learning. Theoretically, you could act differently, but in practice you do not. Habits are extremely useful, they streamline the parts of our lives we do not want to think about...But there is an art to deciding what parts of your life you want to turn over to habit, and what parts of your life you want to continue to learn from and have choice about. This is a key question of balance.”
“Witchcraft isn't about picking up a book, and asking forgiveness.. or learning about spirituality through the words of others. What you learn from those books are the opinions of other people, and not your own. If this is what you believe then you are not an individual. Witchcraft is about accepting that YOU are responsible for the choices that YOU have made, and YOU teaching YOURSELF to make the right choices. Its about learning through YOUR OWN opinions, YOUR OWN life lessons, YOUR OWN inner self, and by doing so.. BECOME an individual.”
“Answer me two more questions,’ said the King. ‘The first is, Why did the earth bear such grain then and has ceased to do so now? And the second is, Why your grandson walks with two crutches, your son with one, and you yourself with none? Your eyes are bright, your teeth sound, and your speech clear and pleasant to the ear. How have these things come about?’And the old man answered:‘These things are so, because men have ceased to live by their own labour, and have taken to depending on the labour of others. In the old time, men lived according to God’s law. They had what was their own, and coveted not what others had produced.”