Quotes About Boundaries

simple point is that institutions are to humans what hives are to bees. They are the structures within which we organize ourselves as groups. You know when you are inside one, just as a bee knows when it is in the hive. Institutions have boundaries, often walls. And, crucially, they have rules.

I need everyone to like me and I just burn out bending over backward to make that happen. Having people be mad at me is my worst fear. I can't stand it. There is this crazy fear I have of being rejected by anyone - even people I don't really care about. It's always better to leave them first, cut all ties, and disappear. They can't hurt me that way - no one can.

I don't want you to be interested in my life. I want you to be interested in me.

Between the intellectual and behavioral guardrails set by our genetic code, the

I've learned that we're all entitled to have our secrets.

You can't live your life for other people. You've got to do what's right for you, even if it hurts some people you love.

You have to step away from other people's craziness at some point. I learnt that in therapy. You have to stop owning it on their behalf. Even when they're your parents.

The editor of a Danish newspaper wonders why comedians, who boast of their willingness to 'transgress boundaries' and 'speak truth to power', will mock Jesus but not Muhammad. He invites Danish cartoonists to satirise the Prophet. Most respond by satirising the editor. It makes no difference. They still have to spend the rest of their lives under police protection.

Intellectuals who had made it to the West were beyond the reach of oppressive forces. They had a place of sanctuary. The fatwa changed all that. It redrew the boundaries of the free world, shrinking its borders and erasing zones of disputation from the map of the liberal mind.

If I chose Kick, she would accept us without reservation and never remind me of this conversation by word or deed; she would close over it like the ocean over a swimmer's head.

She liked time at the edge of things-the edge of the crowd, the edge of the pool, the edge of the wood-where all must pass but none quite belonged.

You musn't let her treat you as badly as she treats herself.

This is your body. Yours. No one but you has the responsibility to keep it, to keep yourself, whole. If someone pins you to the ground, what will you do?

Bed games were one thing, keys another.

I'm not a vampire. If you invite me in, you can always get rid of me later.

To tolerate does not mean to forget that what we tolerate does not deserve anything more

Wisdom consists in being moderate not out of horror of excess, but out of love for the limit.

Let us beware of discourse where the adjective "natural" without quotation marks abounds: somebody is deceiving himself, or wants to deceive us. From natural borders to natural religion.

Nothing makes clearer the limits of science than the scientist's opinions about any topic that is not strictly related to his profession.

Man tends to exercise all his powers. The impossible seems to him the only legitimate limit. A civilized man, however, is one who for various reasons refuses to do everything he can.

Between animal and man there is no barrier but a palisade of taboos.

He who cannot limit himself will never know how to write.

No one who cannot limit himself has ever been able to write.

Every day I add to the list of things I refuse to discuss. The wiser the man, the longer the list.