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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 6ed8eca | One thing in our favor: some of this "becoming kinder" happens naturally, with age. It might be a simple matter of attrition: as we get older, we come to see how useless it is to be selfish -- how illogical, really. We come to love other people and are thereby counter-instructed in our own centrality. We get our butts kicked by real life, and people come to our defense, and help us, and we learn that we're not separate, and don't want to be.. | George Saunders | ||
| db3f64e | At Sea Oak there's no sea and no oak, just a hundred subsidized apartments and a rear view of FedEx. Min and Jade are feeding their babies while watching How My Child Died Violently. Min's my sister. Jade's our cousin. How My Child Died Violently is hosted by Matt Merton, a six-foot-five blond who's always giving the parents shoulder rubs and telling them they've been sainted by pain. Today's show features a ten-year-old who killed a five-y.. | George Saunders | ||
| 57a7cc4 | So why grieve? The worst of it, for him, is over.) Because I loved him so and am in the habit of loving him and that love must take the form of fussing and worry and doing. Only there is nothing left to do. Free | George Saunders | ||
| 71360fa | Why was it, she sometimes wondered, that in dreams we can't do the simplest things? Like a crying puppy is standing on some broken glass and you want to pick it up and brush the shards off its pads but you can't because you're balancing a ball on your head. Or you're driving and there's this old guy on crutches and you go, to Mr. Feder, your Driver's Ed teacher, Should I swerve? And he's like, Uh, probably. But then you hear this big clunk .. | humor | George Saunders | |
| 7ee2c4a | which made me feel the kind of shame you know you're not going to cure by saying sorry, and where the only thing to do is: go out, get more shame. | George Saunders | ||
| 4fdc367 | A fortunate birth, in other words, is a shock absorber." -The Thought Experiment" | George Saunders | ||
| 3fa9a54 | I say it must have been great to grow up when men were men. He says men have always been what the are now, namely incapable of coping with life without the intervention of God the Almighty. Then in the oven behind him my pizza starts smoking and he says case in point. | men pizza | George Saunders | |
| 588b8d3 | He was not perfect; he was, remember, a little boy. Could be wild, naughty, overwrought. He was a boy. However - it must be said - he was quite a good boy. | George Saunders | ||
| 595634b | Because, as someone who does feng shui for a living, there's no way I could do my feng shui if I was whacked out on crack, because my business is about discerning energy fields, and if you're cracked up, or on pot, or even if you've had too much coffee, the energy field gets all wonky, believe me, I know used to smoke! | George Saunders | ||
| be29ee7 | and finally, having lost what was to be lost, my torn and black heart rebels saying enough already, enough, this is as low as I go | George Saunders | ||
| 153b55f | Thomas: Wow, that treehouse is like twice the size of our actual house. Pam (whispering): Don't say 'like.' Me: Oh, ha ha, let him say what he wants, let's not be-- Thomas: That treehouse is twice the size of our actual house. | George Saunders | ||
| 5750917 | Our country is big, let us be big. | George Saunders | ||
| 311fb54 | Did he still want it? Did he still want to live? Yes, yes, oh, God, yes, please. Because, O.K., the thing was--he saw it now, was starting to see it--if some guy, at the end, fell apart, and said or did bad things, or had to be helped, helped to quite a considerable extent? So what? What of it? Why should he not do or say weird things or look strange or disgusting? Why should the shit not run down his legs? Why should those he loved not lif.. | illness | George Saunders | |
| 480b68d | I'm bleeding at the knees and choking from smoke and have no idea who these people are or where I'm going, but at least I'm off the hook in terms of the hand jobs. | George Saunders | ||
| 69c30bb | Sometimes with all the teasing his days were subtenable. | George Saunders | ||
| da1f5c6 | What a degraded cosmos. What a case of something starting out nice and going bad. | George Saunders | ||
| 50f0a29 | when that small Siberian bird fell out of the sky over Gray's River, not once but twice, he brought with him the sweetness of chance in any place, the certainty of wonder in all places. And if that's not grace, I don't know what it. | wonder | Robert Michael Pyle | |
| 37293ab | Families were bunk, temporary and uneasy alliances of strangers who would hate each other less without the coercion of blood, the spiraling bonds of genetic ivy holding its victims fast to a blasted tree. | Stephen Wright | ||
| 851899a | An engaging discussion upon the nature of the soul, its defining qualities, the possibility it manifests a specific shape, the likelihood of its integrity beyond formaldehyde and flowers, speculation on its absence from an unfortunate sum of mortal beings since God, at the moment of creation, released into the universe a fixed number of souls to be recycled among a diminishing percentage of an exponentially expanding population, hence bodie.. | Stephen Wright | ||
| d8d21e4 | Aunque tarde mucho tiempo y tuve que recorrer gran parte del mundo para aprender lo que ahora se sobre el amor, el destino y las decisiones que tomamos, la esencia de ese conocimiento me llego en un solo instante, encadenado a una pared mientras me torturaban. De algun modo me di cuenta entonces, entre los gritos que llenaban mi cabeza, que incluso en aquella maniatada y sangrienta impotencia, seguia conservando mi libertad; la libertad de .. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| e730026 | The strength and wildness and will that I found in him were more and better than all the truth and goodness in the world. I pledged myself to him as brother and friend no matter what he'd done and no matter what he was. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| ab93ed2 | When we say that this definition of good and evil is objective, what we mean is that it is as objective as we can be at this time, and to the best of our knowledge about the universe. This definition is based on what we know about how the universe works. It is not based on the revealed wisdom of any one faith or political movement. It is common to the best principles of all of them, but it is based on what we know rather than what we believ.. | inspirational philosophy science | Gregory David Roberts | |
| ecd5b33 | They make a religion of being greedy. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| 6cd3a10 | I don't like letters. Any dark past is a vampire, feeding on the blood of the living moment, and letters are the bats. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| fba1b48 | Manchmal lieben wir nur mit der Hoffnung. Manchmal weinen wir mit allem ausser Tranen. Und am Ende bleiben nur: Liebe und ihre Pflicht, Trauer und ihre Wahrheit. Am Ende haben wir nichts anderes - nichts anderes, woran wir uns festhalten konnen, bis der Morgen dammert. | love | Gregory David Roberts | |
| e105bbb | And the true heart of us, our human kind, is that we're connected, at our best, by purities of love found in no other creature. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| 4d03711 | almost everyone I've ever loved is dead. And the only way to live with the constant cull of what you love is to take a little of that cold grave into yourself, every time. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| 979277c | The simple and astonishing truth about India and Indian people is that when you go there, and deal with them, you heart always guides you more wisely than your head. There's nowhere else in the world where that's quite so true. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| 4383fbc | Then there were the people. Assamese, Jats, and Punjabis; people from Rajasthan, Bengal, and Tamil Nadu; from Pushkar, Cochin, and Konarak; warrior caste, Brahmin, and untouchable; Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Parsee, Jain, Animist; fair skin and dark, green eyes and golden brown and black; every different face and form of that extravagant variety, that incomparable beauty, India. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| 529392c | Love unlived is a sin against life, and mourning is one of the ways we love. I felt it then, and I let it happen, the longing for him to return. The power in his eyes, and the pride when I did something he admired, and the love in his laugh. The longing: the longing for the lost. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| 5b81232 | Heaped up on the blankets, our bodies bound by weariness and her deep slumber, surrounded by sickness and hope, death and defiance, I touched the soft surrendered curl of Karla's sleeping fingers to my lips, and I pledged my heart to her forever. | shantaram | Gregory David Roberts | |
| 077f192 | Vseki udar na choveshkoto s'rtse e tsiala vselena ot v'zmozhnosti" -- chesto povtariashe toi. Stori mi se, che nai- setne s'm razbral kakvo e iskal da kazhe s tova. Opitvashe se da mi obiasni, che vsiaka choveshka volia pritezhava silata da preobrazi s'dbata si. Vinagi s'm si mislel, che s'dbata e neshcho neizmenimo, otredeno za vseki ot nas oshche pri razhdaneto mu, i vechno kato p'tia na zvezdite. No vnezapno os'znakh, che zhivot't e mnog.. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| 47c8db0 | Probabilmente la nostra vita e iniziata nell'oceano. Circa quattro milioni di anni fa. Probabilmente vicino a fonti di calore come i vulcani sommersi. Poi, cinquecento milioni di anni fa, o forse poco piu, gli organismi hanno cominciato a vivere anche sulla terra. [...] Ma in un certo senso si puo dire che anche se abbiamo abbandonato il mare dopo milioni d'anni di vita nelle sue profondita, l'oceano e rimasto dentro di noi. Quando una donn.. | oceano vita | Gregory David Roberts | |
| 8b6d188 | The moon, our lonely sister, filters pain and harm from sunlight, and reflects it back to us safely, free of burn and blemish. We danced in moonlight on the balcony that night, Oleg and I, and we sang and shouted and laughed, hardening ourselves to what we'd done in life, and what we'd lost. And the moon graced two fallen fools, on a fallen day, with sunlight purified by a mirror in the sky, made of stone. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| 49e100a | The force is always with you, if you give up force, | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| 101d194 | If the hour comes, and there's no-one to beg or blame but yourself, you learn that what we have in the end is just a handful more than what was born in us. That unique handful, what we add to what we are, is the only story of us that isn't told by someone else. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| c5c0ca7 | But I couldn't respond. My culture had taught me all the wrong things well. So I lay completely still, and gave no reaction at all. But the soul has no culture. The soul has no nations. The soul has no colour or accent or way of life. The soul is forever. The soul is one. And when the heart has its moment of truth and sorrow, the soul can't be stilled. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| f8f34f6 | Karla says that depression only happens to people who don't know how to be sad.' 'Well she is wrong!' he declared...'There are many animals that can express their happiness, but only the human animal has the genius to express a magnificent sadness. And for me it is something special; a daily meditation. Sadness is my one and my only art.' - Didier | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| 742aa40 | You should let Jesus in your heart.' 'Jesus is in every heart, brother.' 'Are you serious?' 'Of course. I love that guy. Who doesn't?' 'A lot of people don't,' he laughed. 'Some people hate Jesus.' 'No. Brilliant mind, loving heart, significant penance: Jesus was the real deal. They might know Christians they don't like, but nobody hates Jesus. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| f093829 | In all the things that really matter, we are one. Love and faith, trust and empathy, family and friendship, sunsets and songs of awe: in every wish born in our humanity we are one. Our humankind, at this moment in our destiny, is a child blowing on a dandelion, without thought or understanding. But the wonder in the child is the wonder in us, and there's no limit to the good we can do when human hearts connect. It's the truth of us. It's th.. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| 183e2e6 | We know who we are and we define what we are by references to the people we love and our reasons for loving them. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| f1634da | Every day, when you're on the run, is the whole of your life. Every free minute is a short story with a happy ending. | life running-away | Gregory David Roberts | |
| 7e65480 | The past reflects eternally between two mirrors--the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say. | Gregory David Roberts | ||
| 19c9001 | Tomorrow,' she said, 'when you go to Prabaker's village, try to relax completely, and go with the experience. Just ... let yourself go. Sometimes, in India, you have to surrender before you win. | Gregory David Roberts |