Things were rough all over, but it was better that way. That way you could tell the other guy was human, too.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:29 — GabrielleWho Said It?:S.E. HintonSource:The Outsiders
Link to full quote: Quote #988 from The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.
Alienated individuals are condemned to lives spent effectively watching themselves.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Sadie Plant
Link to full quote: Quote #1675 by Sadie Plant.
Why do we care about singers? Wherein lies the power of songs? Maybe it derives from the sheer strangeness of there being singing in the world. The note, the scale, the chord; melodies, harmonies, arrangements; symphonies, ragas, Chinese operas, jazz, the blues: that such things should exist, that we should have discovered the magical intervals and distances that yield the poor cluster of notes, all within the span of a human hand, from which we can build our cathedrals of sounds, is as alchemical a mystery as mathematics, or wine, or love. Maybe the birds taught us. Maybe not. Maybe we are just creatures in search of exaltation. We don't have much of it. Out lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many pitiful ways deficient. Song turns them into something else. Song shows us a world that is worthy of our yearning, it shows us our selves as they might be, if we were worthy of the world.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Salman RushdieSource:The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Link to full quote: Quote #1649 from The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie.
How does a newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made? How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? What compromises, what deals, what betrayals of its secret nature must it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminating angel, the guillotine? Is birth always a fall? Do angels have wings?
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Salman RushdieSource:The Satanic Verses
Link to full quote: Quote #1628 from The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.
Certain illnesses sweep across large communities, and then we learn that no such illnesses ever existed. Men and women recover memories of having been sexually abused as children. Whoosh, no they don't, their parents are reinstated as the most loving and laudable people you could imagine. Genocide occurs; no it doesn't. Nuclear waste contaminates large swathes of entire continents, and we all learn words like 'half-life.' But in a flash all the contamination has gone, the sheep aren't ticking, you can happily eat your lamb chops.
The maps are wrong. Frontiers snake across disputed territory, bending and cracking. A road no longer goes where it went yesterday. A lake vanishes. Mountains rise and fall. Well-known books acquire different endings. Color bursts out of black-and-white movies. Art is a hoax. Style is substance. The dead are embarrassing. There are no dead.
You're a sports fan but the rules are different every time you watch. You've got a job! No you don't! That woman powdered the President's Johnson! In her dreams--she's a celebrated fantasist! You're a sex god! You're a sex pest! She's to die for! She's a slut! [not necessarily irreconcilable truths; merely different views of a single circumstance] You don't have cancer! April Fool, yes you do! That good man in Nigeria is a murderer! That murderer in Algeria is a good man! That psycho killer is an American patriot! That American psycho is a patriot killer! And is that Pol Pot dying in the Angkoran...
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:29 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Salman RushdieSource:The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Link to full quote: Quote #1346 from The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie.
Suppose that it's only when you dare to let go that your real life begins? When you're whirling free of the mother ship, when you cut your ropes, slip your chain, step off the map, go absent without leave, scram, vamoose, whatever: suppose that it's then, and only then, that you're actually free to act! To lead the life nobody tells you how to live, or when, or why. In which nobody orders you go forth and die for them, or for god, or comes to get you because you broke one of the rules, or because you're one of those people who are, for reasons which unfortunately you can't be given, simply not allowed. Suppose you've got to go through the feeling of being lost, into the chaos and beyond; you've got to accept the loneliness, the wild panic of losing your moorings, the vertiginous terror of the horizon spinning round and round like the edge of a coin tossed in the air.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:28 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Salman RushdieSource:The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Link to full quote: Quote #549 from The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie.
We all leave childhood with wounds. In time we may transform our liabilities into gifts. The faults that pockmark the psyche may become the source of a man's or woman's beauty. The injuries we have suffered invite us to assume the most human of all vocations - to heal ourselves and others.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Sam Keen
Link to full quote: Quote #2088 by Sam Keen.
I cannot tell if this is a breakthrough
or a breakdown.
I'm too close to tell.Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Samantha SchutzSource:I Don't Want To Be Crazy
Link to full quote: Quote #1844 from I Don't Want To Be Crazy by Samantha Schutz.
I crave broken men.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Samantha SchutzSource:I Don't Want To Be Crazy
Link to full quote: Quote #1845 from I Don't Want To Be Crazy by Samantha Schutz.
One day you'll be blind, like me. You'll be sitting there, a speck in the void, in the dark, for ever, like me.
(Pause)
One day you'll say to yourself, I'm tired, I'll sit down, and you'll go and sit down. Then you'll say, I'm hungry, I'll get up and get something to eat. But you won't get up. You'll say, I shouldn't have sat down, but since I have I'll sit on a little longer, then I'll get up and get something to eat. But you won't get up and you won't get anything to eat.
(Pause)
You'll look at the wall a while, then you'll say, I'll close my eyes, perhaps have a little sleep, after that I'll feel better, and you'll close them. And when you open them again there'll be no wall any more.
(Pause)
Infinite emptiness will be all around you, all the resurrected dead of all the ages wouldn't fill it, and there you'll be like a little bit of grit in the middle of the steppe.
(Pause)
Yes, one day you'll know what it is, you'll be like me, except that you won't have anyone with you, because you won't have had pity on anyone and because there won't be anyone left to have pity on.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Samuel BeckettSource:Endgame
Link to full quote: Quote #1987 from Endgame by Samuel Beckett.
Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Samuel BeckettSource:Krapp's Last Tape
Link to full quote: Quote #1658 from Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett.
Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Samuel BeckettSource:Waiting for Godot
Link to full quote: Quote #1612 from Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.
I don't know, perhaps it's a dream, all a dream, that would surprise me, I'll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again, it will be I, or dream, dream again, dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs, I don't know, that's all words, never wake, all words, there's nothing else, you must go on, that's all I know, they're going to stop, I know that well, I can feel it, they're going to abandon me, it will be the silence, for a moment, a good few moments, or it will be mine, the lasting one, that didn't last, that still lasts, it will be I, you must go on, I can't go on, you must go on, I'll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:28 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Samuel BeckettSource:The Unnamable
Link to full quote: Quote #649 from The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett.
Humanity is a well with two buckets [...] one going down to be filled, the other coming up to be emptied.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:28 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Samuel BeckettSource:Murphy
Link to full quote: Quote #91 from Murphy by Samuel Beckett.
Pain is less subject than pleasure to careless expression.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:Samuel Johnson
Link to full quote: Quote #1558 by Samuel Johnson.
