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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| a4cdc91 | Someone was high or brilliant or both. | Colum McCann | ||
| b1546a1 | Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrapy your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief. | Colum McCann | ||
| 121d86b | What monstrous things, our pasts, especially when they have been lovely. | Colum McCann | ||
| dc707d3 | They entered the wild country. Broken fences. Ruined castles. Stretches of bogland. Wooded headlands. Turfsmoke rose from cabins, thin and mean. On the muddy paths, they glimpsed moving rags. The rags seemed more animate than the bodies within. As they passed, the families regarded them. The children appeared marooned with hunger. | potato-famine | Colum McCann | |
| c84df6c | Watching them together slipped a knife between my ribs and hit my heart exactly. | Colum McCann | ||
| 6df9bc2 | How very odd it is to be abandoned by language, how the future demands what should have been asked in the past, how words can escape us with such ease, and we are left, then, only with the pursuit. | Colum McCann | ||
| 53221ab | If you are wise you step through the darkness only one foot at a time. | Colum McCann | ||
| fca4c8e | there was always hunger in Ireland. She was a country that liked to be hurt. The Irish heaped coals of fire upon their own heads. They were unable to extinguish the fire. They were dependent,as always, on others. They had no notions of self-reliance. They burned and then poured empty buckets down upon themselves. It had always been so. | Colum McCann | ||
| d6e34fa | If you think you know all the secrets, you think you know all the cures. | Colum McCann | ||
| 409b193 | Once upon a time and long ago, in fact so long ago that I couldn't have been there, and I wasn't there, but I'll tell you anyways: once upon a time and long ago... | Colum McCann | ||
| e3fdb4c | There would always be an expletive in a New York sentence. Even from a judge. Soderberg was not fond of bad language, but he knew its value at the right time. A man on a tightrope, a hundred and ten stories in the air, can you possibly fucking believe it? | Colum McCann | ||
| 587f5d0 | What happened then was that, for an instant, almost nothing happened. He wasn't even there. Failure didn't even cross his mind. It felt like a sort of floating. He could have been in the meadow. His body loosened and took on the shape of the wind. The play of the shoulder could instruct the ankle. His throat could soothe his heel and moisten the ligaments at his ankle. A touch of the tongue against the teeth could relax the thigh. His elbow.. | Colum McCann | ||
| d4778c1 | That the reason life is so strange is that we have simply no idea what is around the next corner, and it was an obvious idea but one most of us had learned to forget. | Colum McCann | ||
| ab8c921 | The smallest moments: they return, dwell, endure. | Colum McCann | ||
| c56ffbf | It's the sort of hum that makes you feel that you're the actual ground lying under the sky, a blue hum that's all above and around you, but if you think about it too hard it will get too loud or big, and make you feel no more than just a speck. | Colum McCann | ||
| 0cfafb8 | I recalled the myth that I had once heard as a university student - thirty-six hidden saints in the world, all of them doing the work of humble men, carpenters, cobblers, shepherds. They bore the sorrows of the earth and they had a line of communication with God, all except one, the hidden saint, who was forgotten. The forgotten one was left to struggle on his own, with no line of communication to that which he so hugely needed. Corrigan ha.. | Colum McCann | ||
| 846e1f6 | Many suburban legislators representing affluent school districts use terms such as "sinkhole" when opposing funding for Chicago's children. "We can't keep throwing money," said Governor Thompson in 1988, "into a black hole." The Chicago Tribune notes that, when this phrase is used, people hasten to explain that it is not intended as a slur against the race of many of Chicago's children. "But race," says the Tribune, "never is far from the s.. | race | Jonathan Kozol | |
| 54dda42 | If any lesson may be learned from the academic breakthroughs achieved by Pineapple and Jeremy, it is not that we should celebrate exceptionality of opportunity but that the public schools themselves in neighborhoods of widespread destitution ought to have the rich resources, small classes, and well-prepared and well-rewarded teachers that would enable us to give to every child the feast of learning that is now available to children of the p.. | inspirational | Jonathan Kozol | |
| 640a551 | This, then, is the dread that seems to lie beneath the fear of equalizing. Equity is seen as dispossession. Local autonomy is seen as liberty--even if the poverty of those in nearby cities robs them of all meaningful autonomy by narrowing their choices to the meanest and the shabbiest of options. In this way, defendants in these cases seem to polarize two of the principles that lie close to the origins of this republic. Liberty and equity a.. | politics | Jonathan Kozol | |
| 4fdb137 | When they pray, what do they say to God? | Jonathan Kozol | ||
| e22be50 | She stared at the building covered in dead vines and wildly gyrating roses. Amara stifled a laugh as she watched them dance. "Could you do me a favor?" Mollie pushed her sweaty bangs out of her eyes with a shaking hand. "Hmm?" "The roses have started doing the Macarena, and it's freaking me the fuck out. Could you make them stop?" | Dana Marie Bell | ||
| 9435563 | Sus ojos brillaron antes de cerrarlos y bajo la cabeza. --No. No te merezco tampoco. Necesitas a alguien que te aprecie, te proteja y te cuide. Una persona que se de cuenta de que nunca seria capaz de encontrar a otra como tu en el mundo, no importa lo mucho que busque. --Me miro de nuevo a los ojos y nos miramos el uno al otro. | Molly McAdams | ||
| cf82ddb | Harper, i love you more than I could ever explain. Meeting you changed my world. Even when I thought you would never be mine, I couldn't continue to live a life I knew you hated. The night you told me you loved me was the best night of my life, up until tonight. I never want to let you go again, I want to be with you for the rest of my life. I want to marry you someday, Harper. - Chase Austin Grayson | Molly McAdams | ||
| f7896fe | Oh I'm sorry, but I don't have any STDs, I'm not your type. | Molly McAdams | ||
| a5b6de8 | No one was ever worth the chase. But you? You will be worth it every time. I will always chase you, Kennedy. | Molly McAdams | ||
| 263c602 | Nothing is ever guaranteed, but you can't write us off before you even give me a chance to prove that I can be good for you. | Molly McAdams | ||
| 8fdf7ab | This ring belongs to you, and the only place I want it is on your left hand . . . and hopefully someday if you'll still have me, I want it accompanied by another ring. Like before, I won't push you, but this is yours. If you decide to put it on again, Rachel, you better understand what I'm saying this time. I don't want you taking that ring off. | Molly McAdams | ||
| 7d8eb35 | If you think acting like you don't exist isn't the hardest thing I've ever done, you're wrong. I hate not talking to you, I hate not bickering like we're an old married couple, and I hate not spending every day right next to you. But this is how it has to be. Brandon hates me, and, Princess, trust me when I say he has every reason to. So if after everything I've done to you, you'll still even consider being my friend, then it has to be Sund.. | Molly McAdams | ||
| f116970 | The trade-off seems like a no-brainer. Would you rather be bribed during your hospital stay with made-to-order omelets or would you rather be, for example, not dead? | Alexandra Robbins | ||
| 3c7d3d6 | Some of the more industrious ones were washing the windshields of cars that had been trapped by the red light. I used to see them from inside cars and think they brought it on themselves, and they probably did but now it didn't make a difference. I went over to the fire and warmed my hands with the group. I looked at their faces: idiots, criminals, retards, schizophrenics, paranoids, rejects, fuck-ups, broken-down failures. Alone, once chil.. | Arthur Nersesian | ||
| 946cc9d | Social standing does not necessarily translate to social acceptance. | leadership popularity | Alexandra Robbins | |
| 5a19311 | Being an outsider doesn't necessarily indicate any sort of social failing. We do not view a tuba player as musically challenged if he cannot play the violin. | talent | Alexandra Robbins | |
| 94fbf48 | If schools celebrated student scientists the same way they celebrate student athletes, more students would be encouraged to pursue the subject. Instead, science is considered nerdy because schools help students to paint it that way. | Alexandra Robbins | ||
| f2de0e2 | If there is a single factor that spells out the difference between the cafeteria fringe headed for greatness and those doomed for low self-worth, even more than a caring teacher or a group of friends, it is supportive, accepting parents who not only love their children unconditionally, but also don't make them feel as if their idiosyncrasies qualify as "conditions" in the first place." | mentoring parenting | Alexandra Robbins | |
| 593c93e | Polarization is just one of many ways group membership can change an individual. Perhaps the most striking effect of group membership is that it can modify individuals' perceptions of themselves. Unable to separate their personal introspection from the ways they believe other people perceive them, teenagers may have what psychologists call an "imaginary audience," meaning they believe that other people are just as attuned to their appearanc.. | Alexandra Robbins | ||
| fc31e85 | What made Einstein special was his impertinence, his nonconformity, and his distaste for dogma. Einstein's genius reminds us that a society's competitive advantage comes not from teaching the multiplication or periodic tables but from nurturing rebels. Grinds have their place, but unruly geeks change the world. (Walter Issacson, Wired) | Alexandra Robbins | ||
| cb36239 | Anyway, I wasn't asleep; if I nap during the day I can never get to sleep at night. I was thinking about the pluralistic universe. | Kenzaburō Ōe | ||
| 755f268 | The sky was a ragged blaze of red and pink and orange, and its double trembled on the surface of the pond like color spilled from a paintbox. | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| 4454453 | What do I want to say? I myself do not quite understand. Only that today, when for the glory of God Mokichi and Ichizo moaned, suffered and died, I cannot bear the monotonous sound of the dark sea gnawing at the shore. Behind the depressing silence of this sea, the silence of God....the feeling that while men raise their voices in anguish God remains with folded arms, silent. | Shūsaku Endō | ||
| 5354c59 | People are linked together by enmity than by love. | love enmity | Shūsaku Endō | |
| e2b2cce | Winnie did not believe in fairy tales. She had never longed for a magic wand, did not expect to marry a prince, and was scornful--most of the time--of her grandmother's elves. So now she sat, mouth open, wide-eyed, not knowing what to make of this extraordinary story. It couldn't--not a bit of it--be true. And yet: | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| 727560b | No," said Tuck calmly. "Not now. Your time's not now. But dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can't pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that's the blessing. But it's passing us by, us Tucks. Living's heavy work, but off to one side, the way we are, it's useless, too. It don't make sense. If I knowed how to climb back on the wheel, I'd do it in a minute. You can't have li.. | Natalie Babbitt | ||
| a9f38ba | But if they realize that their true freedom consists in the acceptance of principles, of laws which are the own, a synthesis of universal and particular interests becomes possible. | Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel | ||
| a7bbb02 | When I was young, most teachers of philosophy in British and American universities were Hegelians, so that, until I read Hegel, I supposed there must be some truth to his system; I was cured, however, by discovering that everything he said on the philosophy of mathematics was plain nonsense. | philosophy-of-mathematics nonsense | Bertrand Russell |