The belly is a demon. It doesn't remember how well you treated it yesterday; it'll cry out for more tomorrow.

Stuff it into you, his belly counselled him.

There is but one just use of power, and it is to serve people.

I just lost a buttonhole.

When we are in control of everything and we have great panels of push buttons whereby the slightest touch fulfills every wish, what will we want then? We will eventually want to arrange to have a special, red button marked “surprise” built into the panel. Touch that button and what happens? We will suddenly disappear from our normal consciousness and find ourselves in a situation very much like the one we are now in, where we feel ourselves to be a little bit out of control, subject to surprises, and subject to the whims of an unpredictable universe.

Never set your stomach for a jelly-bread sandwich until you're sure there's some jelly!

Humans cover themselves, and protect themselves, and when someone says, “You are pushing my buttons,” it is not exactly true. What is true is that you are touching a wound in his mind, and he reacts because it hurts.

Sitting in the lotus position or lying down on your back, begin breathing into your belly. Keep your mind entirely on the belly as it rises with every in-breath and falls with each out-breath. Breathe deeply, maintaining full attention on your abdomen. Don’t think. Stop all your ruminating, and just focus on the breathing.

What the eye does not see, the stomach does not get upset over

The belly’s a shameless dog, there’s nothing worse. Always insisting, pressing, it never lets us forget — destroyed as I am, my heart racked with sadness, sick with anguish, still it keeps demanding, ‘Eat, drink!’ It blots out all the memory of my pain, commanding, ‘Fill me up!

I Starve my Belly for a Sublime Purpose

Three days
I starve my belly
so that it learns
to eat the sun.

I say to it: Belly,
I am ashamed of you. You must
spiritualize yourself. You must
eat the sun.

The belly keeps silent
for three days. It’s not easy
to waken in it higher aspirations.

Yet I hope for the best.
This morning, tanning myself on the beach,
I noticed that, little by little,
it begins to shine.

He ate his supper without bread. A double helping <i>and</i> bread — that was going too far. The bread would do for tomorrow. The belly is a demon. It doesn't remember how well you treated it yesterday; it'll cry out for more tomorrow.

I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It took the entire willpower, the accumulated strength of my entire existence, to press one damned OFF button.

The one whose concern is with that
which enters the belly will discover that his value is found in that
which goes out of it.