Responsible

"Sometimes the best way to deal with shit, she says, is to not hold yourself as such a precious little prize.

"My point being," Brandy says, "is you can't escape the world, and you're not responsible for how you look, if you look beauticious or butt ugly. You're not responsible for how you feel or what you say or how you act or anything you do. it's all out of your hands," Brandy says. The same way a compact disk isn't responsible for what's recorded on it, that's how we are. You're about as free to act as a programmed computer. You're about as one-of-a-kind as a dollar bill. "There isn't any real you in you," she says. "Even your physical body, all your cells will be replaced within eight years."

"Relax," Brandy says, "whatever you're thinking, a million other folks are thinking. Whatever you do, they're doing, and none of you is responsible. All of you is a cooperative effort."

"You're a product of our language," Brandy says, "and how our laws are and how we believe our God wants us. Every bitty molecule about you has already been thought out by some million people before you," she says. "Anything you can do is boring and old and perfectly okay. You're safe because you're so trapped inside your culture. Anything you can conceive of is fine because you can conceive of it. You can't imagine any way to escape. There's no way you can get out," Brandy says.

"The world," Brandy says, "is your cradle and your trap."

"And if you can find any way out four culture, then that's a trap too. Just wanting to get out of the trap reinforces the trap.""