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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 0d8bb1b | I have been so-many too-many persons; life, unlike syntax, allows one more than three. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| cb5bfa9 | Confusion to our enemies! | Salman Rushdie | ||
| 69cb84c | Life again refused to remain lifesized | Salman Rushdie | ||
| c74a27c | He did not wish to be divine. If there had never been a God, the emperor thought, it might have been easier to work out what goodness was. This business of worship, of the abnegation of self in the face of the Almighty, was a distraction, a false trail. Wherever goodness lay, it did not lie in ritual, unthinking obeisance before a deity but rather, perhaps, in the slow, clumsy, error-strewn working out of an individual or collective path. | religion salman-rushdie | Salman Rushdie | |
| 364235e | History is natural selection. Mutant versions of the past struggle for dominance; new species of fact arise,and old, saurian truths go to the wall, blindfolded and smoking last cigarettes. Only the mutations of the strong survive. The weak, the anonymous, the defeated leave few marks: field-patterns, axe-heads, folk-tales, broken pitchers, burial mounds, the fading memory of their youthful beauty. History loves only those who dominate her: .. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| c0be50c | The adult chops down his childhood to help his grown-up self. The unsentimentality is appealing, don't you think? | Salman Rushdie | ||
| 2160d89 | Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. 'Respect for religion' has become a.. | criticism free-speech freedom freedom-of-expression hebdo islam orthodoxy paris satire terrorism totalitarianism | Salman Rushdie | |
| d7bd143 | You will see, as time goes by," said Ibn Rushd, "that in the end it will be religion that will make men turn away from God. The godly are God's worst advocates. It may take a thousand and one years but in the end religion will shrivel away and only then will we begin to live in God's truth." | Salman Rushdie | ||
| 7aa3ddb | We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| db4512e | Tragedy happens - "tragic mistakes" happen - when men act according to their flawed natures, in fulfillment of their preordained destinies. The tragedy of the four killers of Amadou Diallo is that their deeds were made possible by their general preconceptions about black people and poor neighborhoods; by a theory of policing that encourages them to be rigid and punitive toward petty offenders; and by a social context in which the possession.. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| a9ba2ef | proving once again that there was no escape from recurrence. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| b6509da | Then a strange moment came, a moment of the kind that determines the fate of nations, because when a crowd loses its fear of an army the world changes. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| 61e17ea | this is our tragedy, she said in his words, our fictions are killing us, but if we didn't have those fictions, maybe that would kill us too. | Salman Rushdie | ||
| 24c74b5 | In these our cowardly times, we deny the grandeur of the Universal, and assert and glorify our local Bigotries, and so we cannot agree on much. In these our degenerate times, men bent on nothing but vainglory and personal gain- hollow, bombastic men for whom nothing is off-limits if it advances their petty cause- will claim to be great leaders and benefactors, acting in the common good, and calling all who oppose them liars, envious, little.. | resist | Salman Rushdie | |
| 4546874 | They were deeply in love, which beats earplugs. | love | Salman Rushdie | |
| 9a73e88 | She dreamed of him, his face, filling the dream. "Things are ending," he told her. "This civilization; things are closing in on it. It has been quite a culture, brilliant and foul, cannibal and Christian, the glory of the world. We should celebrate it while we can; until night falls." She didn't agree, not even in the dream, but she knew, as she dreamed, that there was no point telling him now." | Salman Rushdie | ||
| 7ab6e6a | Quoting Miss Harty:] "People come here from all over the country and fall in love with Savannah. Then they move here and pretty soon they're telling us how much more lively and prosperous Savannah could be if we only knew what we had and how to take advantage of it. I call these people 'Gucci carpetbaggers." | change fashions georgia individuality prosperity savannah separateness society | John Berendt | |
| 021da9e | There being no direct route to Savannah from Charleston, I followed a zigzagging course that took me through the tidal flatlands of the South Carolina low country. As I approached Savannah, the road narrowed to a two-lane blacktop shaded by tall trees. There was an occasional produce stand by the side of the road and a few cottages set into the foliage, but nothing resembling urban sprawl. The voice on the radio informed me that I had enter.. | John Berendt | ||
| 097bcee | We ate away, reminiscing about our victories over the enemies from different streets and villages and competing with each other in casting curses. A few golden butterflies and dragonflies were fluttering around us. The afternoon air was warm and clean, and the town below us seemed like a green harbor full of white sails. | departure great-feasting | Ha Jin | |
| c2cb14a | You said, 'Life is a tragedy, but its meaning lies in how we face the tragedy. | Ha Jin | ||
| 70257e3 | The charm of a city, now we come to it, is not unlike the charm of flowers. It partly depends on seeing time creep across it. Charm needs to be fleeting. Nothing could be less palatable than a museum-city propped up by prosthetic devices of concrete. Paris is not in danger of becoming a museum-city, thanks to the restlessness and greed of promoters. Yet their frenzy to demolish everything is less objectionable than their clumsy determinatio.. | urbanism | Robert Doisneau | |
| 4ef4a10 | We borrow. We steal. We purchase what we need and buy what we don't. We acquire things, people, places, all in the process of losing ourselves. Busyness is the religion of distraction. I cannot talk to you, because I have too much to do. | Terry Tempest Williams | ||
| cd48998 | We are not in the business of being original. We are in the business of reusing things that work. | Robert W. Bly | ||
| a6b3772 | Finding the Father My friend, this body offers to carry us for nothing- as the ocean carries logs. So on some days the body wails with its great energy; it smashes up the boulders, lifting small crabs, that flow around the sides. Someone knocks on the door. We do not have time to dress. He wants us to go with him through the blowing and rainy streets, to the dark house. We will go there, the body says, and there find the father whom we have.. | manhood masculinity | Robert Bly | |
| efdded4 | What is evolution if not creative adaptation and the progression of our own souls? | Terry Tempest Williams | ||
| c1e8d93 | It's good if you can accept your life--you'll notice Your face has become deranged trying to adjust To it. Your face thought your life would look Like your bedroom mirror when you were ten. That was a clear river touched by mountain wind. Even your parents can't believe how much you've changed. | changing coming-of-age life | Robert Bly | |
| bd200f0 | It's all right if people think we are idiots. It's all right if we lie face down on the earth. It's all right if we open the coffin and climb in. | earth idiots | Robert Bly | |
| 884879e | Zeus energy, which encompasses intelligence, robust health, compassionate decisiveness, good will, generous leadership. Zeus energy is male authority accepted for the sake of the community. | Robert Bly | ||
| c5d44f9 | The average man is either victorious or defeated and, depending on that, he becomes a persecutor or a victim. These two conditions are prevalent as long as one does not see. Seeing dispels the illusion of victory, or defeat, or suffering. | Carlos Castaneda | ||
| 6491d72 | The diagram in the ashes had two epicenters; one he called "reason," the other, "will." "Reason" was interconnected directly with a point he called "talking." Through "talking," "reason" was indirectly connected to three other points, "feeling," "dreaming," and "seeing." The other epicenter, "will," was directly connected to "feeling," "dreaming," and "seeing"; but only indirectly to "reason" and "talking." I remarked that the diagram was d.. | Carlos Castaneda | ||
| a639a2a | Everybody makes excuses for themselves they wouldn't be prepared to make for other people. | legalism rationalization | Rebecca Goldstein | |
| f57d904 | We must believe that he will come but never believe that he is come. There is no Messiah but an uncome Messiah. | Rebecca Goldstein | ||
| c09da91 | Children, who have so much to learn in so short a time, had involved the tendency to trust adults to instruct them in the collective knowledge of our species, and this trust confers survival value. But it also makes children vulnerable to being tricked and adults who exploit this vulnerability should be deeply ashamed. | manipulation parenting | Rebecca Goldstein | |
| c4f8341 | It was the smell that hit her first. It was a sterile, antiseptic and very distinctive medical smell, a smell with an underlying metallic reek of blood beneath it. Disturbing as this was, Selena wasn't necessarily shocked. It was a hospital, after all. Just like schools had a tendency to smell like chalk dust and sweat and cafeteria mystery meat, just like auto shops stank of gasoline and rust, hospitals had an odour reflecting their whole .. | blood hospital redundancy reek school smell stink | Rebecca McNutt | |
| 9c70d4d | Reasonable doubt trumps everything. | lawyer legal logic rationality reason reasonable-doubt trump | Rebecca McNutt | |
| be67ef2 | This is my home, Cape Breton is my home, and I don't know if I really want to leave it as much as I might think and I'm sort of scared to leave it all behind, everything I've lived with, I have so many memories of all the things I've done here and I'm afraid if I leave, I might lose all my memories... | cape-breton home leaving loss memory moving nostalgia nova-scotia remember scared scary travel | Rebecca McNutt | |
| 2e66850 | I can't look people in the eye and tell them that they're going to die anymore. | angel azrael dead death die dying empathy eye grim-reaper look morality pale-horseman sadness scythe sympathy tell | Rebecca McNutt | |
| 36db8ce | Yet everyone begins in the same place; how is it that most go along without difficulty but a few lose their way? | John Barth | ||
| e4dd7dc | No act is so private it does not seek applause. | egotism sex sexuality | John Updike | |
| d916d52 | It frightens him to think of her this way. It makes her seem, in terms of love, so vast. | John Updike | ||
| a63ed43 | I had worked for a newspaper of sorts, word got around, and I became editor of our local school newspaper, The Drum. I don't recall being given any choice in this matter; I think I was simply appointed. My second-in-command, Danny Emond, had even less interest in the paper than I did. Danny just liked the idea that Room 4, where we did our work, was near the girls' bathroom. "Someday I'll just go crazy and hack my way in there, Steve," he t.. | Stephen King | ||
| 85bb945 | it was somehow wonderful of her to be, in every detail, herself. | John Updike | ||
| d020a48 | Driving is boring," Rabbit pontificates, "but it's what we do. Most of American life is driving somewhere and then driving back wondering why the hell you went." | comedy driving | John Updike | |
| f3aa37a | He tries to picture how it will end, with an empty baseball field, a dark factory, and then over a brook in a dirt road, he doesn't know. He pictures a huge vacant field of cinders and his heart goes hollow. | John Updike |