When I look closely at dairy, I see the hurtful exploitation of specifically female bodies so that some people can enjoy sensual pleasures of consumption while others enjoy the psychological pleasure of collecting profits from the exertions of somebody else's body. Cows are forcibly impregnated, dispossessed of their children, and then painfully robbed of the milk produced by their bodies for those children. No wonder I didn't want to see my complicity! Most women don't consciously perceive the everyday violence against girls and women that permeates and structures our society. How much harder it is, then, to see the gendered violence against nonhuman animals behind the everyday items on the grocery store shelf. When we, as women, partake of that violence, we participate in sexism even as we enjoy the illusory benefits of speciesism. No wonder a glimpse of the sexist violence behind my breakfast cereal left me dizzy.
You do not want to live in a country ruled by people who never have any doubts. To have doubts is human. A horse has no doubts, a grasshopper has no doubts, an ant has no doubts. But a human being stops to think sometimes, and when he thinks, he hears a voice asking quietly, 'Are you certain that you are right? You must be certain before you pull that trigger. You must be certain before you put your knife to that man's throat.'Would God have given us the power to question if he wanted us to behave like grasshoppers and ants? I am sure God takes pleasure in all the creatures of the world, but I am also sure that his greatest pleasure is a human being who puts his knife away because he is not sure, because a doubt has come into his mind.
“Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait till the incomprehensible power ... that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more.”
Cocky little king. You assume you're the only one that gives me satisfaction?"His smile widens as he lifts one of my arms and kisses the sensitive skin of my wrist. "If there is something in this world that can please you more than me," he says, his warm breath caressing my skin, "then I'll be extra diligent in my duties tonight, my queen. Indulge me with every sensation that gives you pleasure, and I will match it and more."Whatever retort was on my tongue vanishes, his heated words stealing all reason from my mind. Only one lingers: queen. Hearing him refer to me as his intended opens my heart like the sea opens to the sky, and I am his.
“Again, a funny question. I said to you that Rubens is with us until the 31st of December, so does that mean I put Rubens with you in Istanbul not doing something and just for the pleasure of having him? No, he will drive and honestly he is doing a very good job. He's very motivated, very dedicated. We have been very fair to him and I'm expecting him to be very fair to Ferrari.”
Despite the rising popularity of the downloadable e-text, I still care about physical books, gravitate to handsome editions and pretty dust jackets, and enjoy seeing rows of hardcovers on my shelves. Many people simply read fiction for pleasure and nonfiction for information. I often do myself. But I also think of some books as my friends and I like to have them around. They brighten my life.
Again the ranch is on the market and they’ve shipped out the last of the horses, paid everybody off the day before, the owner saying, ‘Give them to the real estate shark, I’m out a here,” dropping the keys in Ennis’s hand. He might have to stay with his married daughter until he picks up another job, yet he is suffused with a sense of pleasure because Jack Twist was in his dream.
Because when you kiss your first boy or girl, you don't want to be so caught up in your lack of self-worth that you forget to enjoy the kiss, that you forget that you deserve the pleasure of that moment. You don't want to be so caught up in your lack of self-worth that you become an object of his or her desire, a grateful unworthy slave to his or her attention.
“This is not a game, ... Debt has become a part of who we are. It's become that spoiled child in the grocery store with their lip stuck out: 'I want it. I want it. I deserve it because I breathe air.' And, well, that's an uphill climb in our culture right now, to go against that and say, 'Hey, let's be grownups here. Let's be mature, learn to delay pleasure, save up and pay for things.'”
You never want one thing at any given moment of life. Your mind always comes up with at least two choices. If your limbic system wins, the choice you make seems to be pleasurable at first but in the long run ends up being the wrong one. And if your prefrontal cortex wins the choice you make may appear rough at first, but in the long run it turns out to be the right one.