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scrapofpaper"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake."
--Jeanette Rankin
"If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it."
--Albert Einstein
"I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens."
--Woody Allen
"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.
"And the crucifix went up on the wall of Billy Pilgrim."
--Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
"What disturbs our peace is what the West calls 'development.' "
--Jose Mencio Molintas
"Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to 'die before you die'--and find that there is no death."
--Eckhart Tolle
"To know that one life has breathed easier because I have lived. This is to have succeeded."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The boy shrugs. 'A poet's work,' he answers. 'To name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it from going to sleep. And if rivers of blood flow from the cuts his verses inflict, then they will nourish him. He is the satirist.' "
--Salman Rushdie
"No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of the scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots."
--Barbara Ehrenreich
"Man's inhumanity to man will continue as long as man loves God more than he loves his fellow man."
--Joseph Lewis
"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
--Howard Aiken
"The Earth is the cradle of the mind. But we cannot live forever in a cradle."
--Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
"In this world
we walk on the roof of Hell
gazing at flowers"
--Kobayashi Issa
"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
--Arundhati Roy
"Monotheism"
All this time, the scriptures have endured
in the songs. We are made human this way,
by insisting so, the words rising into the music.
I imagine God tone-deaf but still listening,
unaffected by peripheral noises. Like if I walk
into a garden somewhere with no one
in attendance but the dead rocks, grass stirring
wordlessly, that dull humming of stones,
that I am really there, poisoned and aware
of the new music, the wind working with notes
that sway this way and that, splitting the body
and pushing everything away: out of that garden,
far from His vision, God left behind still
listening to some lonely tune, waving his fingers
as if keeping a beat, hearing everything.
--Joel Toledo
"Pastel Dresses"
Like a dream, when one
becomes conscious of it
becomes a confusion, so her name
slipped between the vacancies.
As little more than a child
I hurried among a phalanx
of rowdy boys across a dance floor--
such a cluttering of black shoes.
Before us sat a row of girls
in pastel dresses waiting.
One sat to the right. I uttered
some clumsy grouping of sounds.
She glanced up to where I stood
and the brightness of her eyes
made small explosions within me.
That's all that's left.
I imagine music, an evening,
a complete story, but truly
there is only her smile and my response--
warm fingerprints crowding my chest.
A single look like an inch of canvas
cut from a painting: the shy complicity,
the expectation of pleasure, the eager
pushing forward into the mystery.
Maybe I was fourteen. Pressed
to the windows, night blossomed
in the alleyways and our futures
rushed off like shafts of light.
My hand against the small of a back,
the feel of a dress, that touch
of the starched fabric, its damp warmth--
was that her or some other girl?
Scattered fragments, scattered faces--
the way a breeze at morning
disperses mist across a pond,
so the letters of her name
return to the alphabet. Her eyes,
were they gray? How can we not love
this world for what it gives us? How
can we not hate it for what it takes away?
--Stephen Dobyns
"If you want to create, you have to sacrifice superficiality, some security, and often your desire to be liked, to draw up your most intense insights, your most far-reaching visions."
--Clarissa Pinkola Estés
"Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist."
--Rene Magritte
"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
--Albert Camus
"One Need Not Be a Chamber to be Haunted"
One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
Far safer, of a midnight meeting
External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.
Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
The stones achase,
Than, moonless, one's own self encounter
In lonesome place.
Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
Should startle most;
Assassin, hid in our apartments,
Be horror's least.
The prudent carries a revolver,
He bolts the door,
O'erlooking a superior spectre
More near.
--Emily Dickinson
--Jeanette Rankin
"If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it."
--Albert Einstein
"I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens."
--Woody Allen
"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.
"And the crucifix went up on the wall of Billy Pilgrim."
--Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
"What disturbs our peace is what the West calls 'development.' "
--Jose Mencio Molintas
"Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to 'die before you die'--and find that there is no death."
--Eckhart Tolle
"To know that one life has breathed easier because I have lived. This is to have succeeded."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The boy shrugs. 'A poet's work,' he answers. 'To name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it from going to sleep. And if rivers of blood flow from the cuts his verses inflict, then they will nourish him. He is the satirist.' "
--Salman Rushdie
"No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of the scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots."
--Barbara Ehrenreich
"Man's inhumanity to man will continue as long as man loves God more than he loves his fellow man."
--Joseph Lewis
"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
--Howard Aiken
"The Earth is the cradle of the mind. But we cannot live forever in a cradle."
--Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
"In this world
we walk on the roof of Hell
gazing at flowers"
--Kobayashi Issa
"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
--Arundhati Roy
"Monotheism"
All this time, the scriptures have endured
in the songs. We are made human this way,
by insisting so, the words rising into the music.
I imagine God tone-deaf but still listening,
unaffected by peripheral noises. Like if I walk
into a garden somewhere with no one
in attendance but the dead rocks, grass stirring
wordlessly, that dull humming of stones,
that I am really there, poisoned and aware
of the new music, the wind working with notes
that sway this way and that, splitting the body
and pushing everything away: out of that garden,
far from His vision, God left behind still
listening to some lonely tune, waving his fingers
as if keeping a beat, hearing everything.
--Joel Toledo
"Pastel Dresses"
Like a dream, when one
becomes conscious of it
becomes a confusion, so her name
slipped between the vacancies.
As little more than a child
I hurried among a phalanx
of rowdy boys across a dance floor--
such a cluttering of black shoes.
Before us sat a row of girls
in pastel dresses waiting.
One sat to the right. I uttered
some clumsy grouping of sounds.
She glanced up to where I stood
and the brightness of her eyes
made small explosions within me.
That's all that's left.
I imagine music, an evening,
a complete story, but truly
there is only her smile and my response--
warm fingerprints crowding my chest.
A single look like an inch of canvas
cut from a painting: the shy complicity,
the expectation of pleasure, the eager
pushing forward into the mystery.
Maybe I was fourteen. Pressed
to the windows, night blossomed
in the alleyways and our futures
rushed off like shafts of light.
My hand against the small of a back,
the feel of a dress, that touch
of the starched fabric, its damp warmth--
was that her or some other girl?
Scattered fragments, scattered faces--
the way a breeze at morning
disperses mist across a pond,
so the letters of her name
return to the alphabet. Her eyes,
were they gray? How can we not love
this world for what it gives us? How
can we not hate it for what it takes away?
--Stephen Dobyns
"If you want to create, you have to sacrifice superficiality, some security, and often your desire to be liked, to draw up your most intense insights, your most far-reaching visions."
--Clarissa Pinkola Estés
"Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist."
--Rene Magritte
"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
--Albert Camus
"One Need Not Be a Chamber to be Haunted"
One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
Far safer, of a midnight meeting
External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.
Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
The stones achase,
Than, moonless, one's own self encounter
In lonesome place.
Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
Should startle most;
Assassin, hid in our apartments,
Be horror's least.
The prudent carries a revolver,
He bolts the door,
O'erlooking a superior spectre
More near.
--Emily Dickinson
Tags:
- albert camus,
- albert einstein,
- arundhati roy,
- barbara ehrenreich,
- clarissa pinkola estés,
- eckhart tolle,
- emily dickinson,
- howard aiken,
- jeanette rankin,
- joel toledo,
- jose mencio molintas,
- joseph lewis,
- kobayashi issa,
- konstantin tsiolkovsky,
- kurt vonnegut,
- ralph waldo emerson,
- rene magritte,
- salman rushdie,
- stephen dobyns,
- woody allen
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