are you dreaming, Frederick?

"Life is a river. Only in the most literal sense are we born on the day we leave our mother's womb. In the larger, truer sense, we are born of the past--connected to its fluidity, both genetically and experientially."
--Wally Lamb


"There was a moment during this time, when his face was on hers, cheek on cheek, brow on brow, heavy skull on skull, through soft skin and softer flesh. He thought: skulls separate people. In this one sense, I could say, they would say, I lose myself in her. But in that bone box, she thinks and thinks, as I think in mine, things the other won't hear, can't hear, though we go on like this for sixty years. What does she think I am? He had no idea. He had no idea what she was."
--A.S. Byatt, The Virgin in the Garden


"I am against using death as a punishment. I am also against using it as a reward."
--Stanislaw J. Lec


"You don't get to choose the heroes...The heroes choose themselves."
--Paul Levine


"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
--Voltaire


"Never explain--your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway."
--Elbert Hubbard


"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
--Charles de Gaulle


"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
--Marianne Williamson


"To defeat them, first we must understand them."
--Elie Wiesel


"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic."
--Oscar Wilde


"The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else."
--Umberto Eco


"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards."
--Søren Kierkegaard


"We invent what we love, and what we fear."
--John Irving


"I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds 'round my neck."
--Emma Goldman


"Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business."
--Tom Robbins


"You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by."
--James M. Barrie


"I've been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened."
--Mark Twain


"Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have."
--Truman Capote


"I sell souls at the side of the road. Would you like to take a number?"
--The Distillers, "Hall of Mirrors"


"Miniature"
The woman stood up in front of the table. Her sad hands
begin to cut thin slices of lemon for tea
like yellow wheels for a very small carriage
made for a child's fairytale. The young officer sitting opposite
is buried in the old armchair. He doesn't look at her.
He lights up his cigarette. His hand holding the match trembles,
throwing light on his tender chin and the teacup's handle. The clock
holds its heartbeat for a moment. Something has been postponed.
The moment has gone. It's too late now. Let's drink our tea.
Is it possible, then, for death to come in that kind of carriage?
To pass by and go away? And only this carriage to remain,
with its little yellow wheels of lemon
parked for so many years on a side street with unlit lamps,
and then a small song, a little mist, and then nothing?
--Yannis Ritsos


"I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear,
Or anything but that vain animal,
Who is so proud of being rational."
--John Wilmot, A Satyre against Mankind


"First He Looked Confused"
I could not lie anymore so I started to call my dog "God."

First he looked
confused,

then he started smiling, then he even
danced.

I kept at it: now he doesn't even
bite.

I am wondering if this
might work on
people?
--Tukarum, translated by Daniel Ladinsky


"Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment. Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace. I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet expect the beating of your heart."
--Jeanne Marie Laskas


"A caterpillar is letting itself down on a thread, twirling slowly like a rope artist, spiraling towards his chest. It's a luscious, unreal green, like a gumdrop, and covered with tiny bright hairs. Watching it, he feels a sudden, inexplicable surge of tenderness and joy. Unique, he thinks. There will never be another caterpillar just like this one. There will never be another such moment of time, another such conjunction.

"These things sneak up on him for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It's probably a vitamin deficiency."
--Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake