Never talk to strangers. If someone ever tries to take you, fight with everything you have. Scream as loud as you can. (He'd never told her what to do if the man was too strong and there was no one to hear her screaming.)

Every age, every generation has its built in assumptions, that the world is flat, that the world is round etc. There are hundreds of hidden assumptions, things we take for granted, that may or may not be true. Of-course in the vast majority of cases historically, these things aren__ true. So presumably, if history is any guide, much about what we take for granted about the world simply isn__ true. But we__e locked into these precepts without even knowing it. That__ a paradigm.

Many people believe that evil is the presence of something. I think it's the absence of something.

Enjoy writers and entertainers but don't substitute their synthesis of truth and reality for your own. Seek your own counsel as much as you can. Dependence on any one or anything else will eventually result in disappointment and this may be, as it always was.

I think most people are just trying to be happy, and that most of their actions, however misguided, are in line with that goal. Most people just want to feel they belong somewhere, want to be loved, and want to feel they're important to someone. If you really examine all the wrongheaded and messed-up things they do, they can most often be traced back to that basic desire. The abusers, the addicted, the cruel and unpleasant, the manipulators --these are just people who started this quest for happiness in the basement of their lives. Someone communicated to them through word or deed that they were undeserving, so they think they have to claw their way there over the backs of others, leaving scars and creating damage. Of course, they only create more misery for themselves and others.

Whatever begins will end, in time.