Quotes About Boundaries

Nothing worse than reading a love scene written by your father.

OK, the rule is, you can [make love to] an elephant if you want to, but if you do you can't cover the circus.

Love your Neighbour; yet don't pull down your Hedge.

I love John Waters. There's stuff in it that's beyond the boundaries of my taste, but his movies have always been like that.

I think of 'crazy' as what happens when we love the other person more than we love ourselves.

Watch out for love (unless it is true, and every part of you says yes including the toes), it will wrap you up like a mummy, and your scream won't be heard and none of your running will run.

If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.

If it hurts, it isn't love.

What reality is is an emergent consequence of the interaction between something that is painfully limited-- like us-- and whatever the absolute is, which is something that is completely without borders.

there are catastrophes lurking at the extremes of every moral continuum.

Don't cast pearls before swine, as the old saying goes. And you might think that's harsh. But training your child not to sleep, and rewarding him with the antics of a creepy puppet? That's harsh too. You pick your poison, and I'll pick mine.

Being of any reasonable sort appears to require limitation.

It is for this reason that we voluntarily and happily place limitations on ourselves. Every time we play a game, for example, we accept a set of arbitrary restrictions. We narrow and limit ourselves, and explore the possibilities thereby revealed. That is what makes the game.

The verbal framework that helps us delimit the world is a consequence of the landscape of value that is constructed socially—but also bounded by the brute necessity of reality itself.

Si dices «no» a tu jefe, a tu mujer o a tu madre cuando hay que decírselo, entonces te transformas en alguien que puede decir «no» cuando hay que decirlo. Por el contrario, si dices «sí» cuando tienes que decir «no», te transformas en alguien que solo puede decir «sí», incluso cuando manifiestamente toca decir lo contrario.

Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.

you say no, early in the cycle of oppression, and you mean what you say (which means you state your refusal in no uncertain terms and stand behind it), then the scope for oppression on the part of the oppressor will remain properly bounded and limited.

Chaos is the domain of ignorance itself. It's unexplored territory. Chaos is what extends, eternally and without limit, beyond the boundaries of all states, all ideas, and all disciplines. It's the foreigner, the stranger, the member of another gang, the rustle in the bushes in the night-time, the monster under the bed, the hidden anger of your mother, and the sickness of your child. Chaos is the despair and horror you feel when you have been profoundly betrayed.

The only time /no/ ever means /no/ in the absence of violence is when it is uttered by one civilized person to another.

If you say no, early in the cycle of oppression, and you mean what you say (which means you state your refusal in no uncertain terms and stand behind it), then the scope for oppression on the part of the oppressor will remain properly bounded and limited. The forces of tyranny expand inexorably to fill the space made available for their existence.

have learned not to steal my clients' problems from them. I don't want to be the redeeming hero or the deus ex machina—not in someone else's story. I don't want their lives.

If you say no, early in the cycle of oppression, and you mean what you say (which means you state your refusal in no uncertain terms and stand behind it), then the scope for oppression on the part of the oppressor will remain properly bounded and limited.

Set aside some time to talk and to think about the illness or other crisis and how it should be managed every day. Do not talk or think about it otherwise. If you do not limit its effect, you will become exhausted,

hands above waist level, where she can see them.