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14cbaa3
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For weeks Tyrone thought he was going to die any minute, and there were also times when he was afraid he wasnt going to die.
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suicide
desperation
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Hubert Selby Jr. |
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625b856
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I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.
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racism
poverty
greed
criminal-justice-system
cycle-of-violence
imprisonment
retribution
homelessness
unemployment
jail
incarceration
punishment
justice
prison
desperation
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Howard Zinn |
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09f3490
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But when they made love he was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone else. Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in a hat. He was exasperated because he didn't know what that look . He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn't know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening. So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. He climbed into people's eyes and became an exasperating expression.
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war
exasperation
smallness
public
personal
indifference
nationality
peace
desperation
despair
eyes
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Arundhati Roy |
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0bcd119
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Cries for help are frequently inaudible.
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inaudible
help
desperation
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Tom Robbins |
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1c76e6b
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The thing about living alone is that it gives you a lot of time to think. You don't necessarily reach any conclusions, because wisdom is largely a function of intelligence and self-awareness, not time on your hands. But you do become very good at thinking yourself into endless loops of desperation in half the time it would take a normal person.
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thoughts
wisdom
thinking
desperation
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Jonathan Tropper |
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0315b95
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Your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay.
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light
depression
desperation
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Mark Z. Danielewski |
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6666b5a
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There he must, despite the anguish devouring his brain, present a face approximating the one that is associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk, and be responsive to questions, and knowingly nod and frown and, God help him, even smile. But it is a fierce trial attempting to speak a few simple words.
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desperation
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William Styron |
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2c42f9e
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On either side of a potentially violent conflict, an opportunity exists to exercise compassion and diminish fear based on recognition of each other's humanity. Without such recognition, fear fueled by uninformed assumptions, cultural prejudice, desperation to meet basic human needs, or the panicked uncertainty of the moment explodes into violence.
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prejudice
war
compassion
humanity
fear
trust
charter-for-compassion
compassion-action-network
cultural-differences
cultural-diversity
global-community
military-conflict
opportunity-quotes
polarization
slpendid-literarium
stop-killing-each-other
waging-peace
peacism
antiracism
terrorists
militarization
assumptions
compassion-heals-lives
nonviolent-conflict-resolution
police-reform
police-shootings
nonviolence
overcoming-fear
terrorism
xenophobia
uncertainty
political-philosophy
panic
desperation
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Aberjhani |
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9d9e94e
|
NOVIA. !Porque yo me fui con el otro, me fui! (Con angustia.) Tu tambien te hubieras ido. Yo era una mujer quemada, llena de llagas por dentro y por fuera,y tu hijo era un poquito de agua de la que yo esperaba hijos, tierra, salud; pero el otro era un rio oscuro, lleno de ramas, que acercaba a mi el rumor de sus juncos y su cantar entre dientes. Y yo corria con tu hijo que era como un ninito de agua, frio, y el otro me mandaba cientos de pajaros que me impedian el andar y que dejaban escarcha sobre mis heridas de pobre mujer marchita, de muchacha acariciada por el fuego. Yo no queria, !oyelo bien!, yo no queria. !Tu hijo era mi fin y yo no lo he enganado, pero el brazo del otro me arrastro como un golpe de mar, como la cabezada de un mulo, y me hubiera arrastrado siempre, siempre, siempre, aun que hubiera sido vieja y todos los hijos de tu hijo me hubiesen agarrado de los cabellos.
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desperation
unrequited-love
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Federico García Lorca |
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41f1649
|
You can't stay in the dark for too long. Something inside you starts to fade, and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light.
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light
desperation
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Amy Tan |
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2d019ed
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Bosch had never liked Las Vegas, though he came often on cases. It shared a kinship with Los Angeles; both were places desperate people ran to. Often, when they ran from Los Angeles, they came here. It was the only place left.
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escape
las-vegas
nevada
los-angeles
desperation
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Michael Connelly |
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2b664bd
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THIS IS WHY He will never be given to wonder much if he was the mouth for some cruel force that said it. But if he were (this will comfort her) less than one moment out of millions had he meant it. So many years and so many turns they had swerved around the subject. And he will swear for many more the kitchen and everything in it vanished -- the oak table, their guests, the refrigerator door he had been surely propped against-- all changed to rusted ironwork and ash except in the center in her linen caftan: she was not touched. He remembers the silence before he spoke and her nodding a little, as if in the meat of this gray waste here was the signal for him to speak what they had long agreed, what somewhere they had prepared together. And this one moment in the desert of ash stretches into forever. They had been having a dinner party. She had been lonely. A friend asked her almost joking if she had ever felt really crazy, and when she started to unwind her answer in long, lovely sentences like scarves within her he saw this was the way they could no longer talk together. And that is when he said it, in front of the guests, because he couldn't bear to hear her. And this is why the guests have left and she screams as he comes near her.
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poetry
desperation
crazy
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Michael Ryan |
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28fd847
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earn what you can since everything's for sale
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opportunity
vocation
profession
desperation
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Geoffrey Chaucer |
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e46c532
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"But what if I don't believe in God? It's like they've sat me in front of a mannequin and said, Fall in love with him. You can't will feeling. What Jack says issues from some still, true place that could not be extinguished by all the schizophrenia his genetic code could muster. It sounds something like this. Get on your knees and find some quiet space inside yourself, a little sunshine right about here. Jack holds his hands in a ball shape about midchest, saying, Let go. Surrender, Dorothy, the witch wrote in the sky. Surrender, Mary. I want to surrender but have no idea what that means. He goes on with a level gaze and a steady tone: Yield up what scares you. Yield up what makes you want to scream and cry. Enter into that quiet. It's a cathedral. It's an empty football stadium with all the lights on. And pray to be an instrument of peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is conflict, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair hope...
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prayer
prayers
alcoholics-anonymous
atheist
desperation
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Mary Karr |
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95a6d14
|
I was ambitious and desperate to direct my first film, so I capitulated and blew it. Never again. Never fucking again.
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directing
never-again
desperation
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Craig Ferguson |
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4995ece
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A month ago it would have been my dream just to be in his bedroom watching a movie, but now it's torture because I want so much more. It's like my entire conscious state has been reduced to this toxic blend of hope and uncertainty. I hate that I have to act cool and almost pretend I don't like him when in fact I do, because, God forbid, I come across as desperate for attention or a little clingy, which everyone should know are perfectly natural human behaviors, after all. Ugh!
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feelings
love
clinging
emotions
dating
lust
desperation
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Daria Snadowsky |
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47b80d0
|
To a life of quiet desperation... and not leading it.
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wealth
freedom
life
witty
quiet
desperation
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Rebecca McNutt |