"Arriving half-drunk in a foreign place is hard on the nerves." -Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
"...here, everything that was worth nothing must be used sparingly." -Nadine Gordimer, July's People
"The vehicle passed huts where people were doing what they did where the passengers had come from. The same endless dragging of wood, chopping of wood, for the same fires; the same backsides bent at washing, squatting picking over maize; the same babies staggering towards mastery of their legs among the old slowly losing it. An acceptance that produced restless fear in anyone unused to living so close to the life cycle, accustomed to the powerful distractions of the intermediary or transcendent--the 'new life' of each personal achievement, of political change." -Nadine Gordimer, July's People
"Bam and Maureen had longed for cigarettes, for a drink of wine or spirits, their children had craved for sweet things; but in the days of rain, the small fire they never let die satisfied all wants." -Nadine Gordimer, July's People
“The World is pretty much divided between the Weak of Mind and the Strong—between those who can act and those who can not, and it is the bounden Duty of the Capable to let no opportunity of being useful escape them.” –Jane Austen, Sanditon
“…it is this delightful habit of journalizing which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are so generally celebrated.” –Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
“A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.” –Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
""Isn't wine prohibited here?" the boy asked. "It's not what enters men's mouths that's evil," said the alchemist. "It's what comes out of their mouths that is."" -Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
"Love does not go under the hammer, ever." -"Gavin Highly", The New Yorker, April 5, 2010
"There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure." -Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
"When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream." -Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“That’s right bitch, your babies are GONE!” –Me, to a momma wasp, after I knocked her mud incubators down off the wall above my bed, wormy pupae raining down. One of the nastiest ‘never thought I’d have to do this’ things I’ve done yet. But hell NO are those things going to grow in my house! …where me and Buddhist philosophy part ways…
"If you're planning for a year, plant rice.
If you're planning for a lifetime, educate people." -Something Jenelle shared with us trainees
"Go to the people:
live with them, learn from them
love them
start with what they know
build with what they have.
But of the best leaders,
when the job is done,
the task accomplished,
the people will say:
'We have done it ourselves.' " -Lao Tzu
“The world might end before we see each other again.” –my cousin Marc, re: the next time we will see each other again is in 2012
“To see a thousand objects for the first and for the last time, what can be deeper and more melancholy? To travel is to be born and to die at every instant.” –Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
"Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations." -Margaret Atwood, A Handmaid's Tale
"What I wanted was to try and get inside life, not stand in doorways, watching and judging from the peripheries, until one day I woke up old and realized that for all my stories, I didn't care that much about telling them."
"We don't want to be the boring girls that the boys in adventure stories get crushes on. We wanted to have our own adventure stories." -two choice jewels from Off the Map, anarchist literature ahoy!
"Mrs. Bennet rarely spoke in other than the exclamatory and always in repetition." -MDTAW p227...also applies to yours truly
"This is how it works
You're young until you're not
You love until you don't
You try until you can't
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath"
-Regina Spektor, On the Radio
"I don't care what a person's sexuality is as long as they don't scare the horses." -Uncle Lee
"My feeling is that if you're not self-obsessed you're probably boring." -Dave Eggers
"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future." -Chris McCandless (from Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild)
"The first step – especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money – the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art." – Chuck Palahniuk
"I miss you tons, but as long as you are still hungry and foolish, I only need to think of you and be inspired." -Stephanie Heinz, to me
"I just want to let you know that there is nothing you could do to make me act that way toward you or kick you out of my life." – Stephanie Heinz, to me. She’s a pretty quotable lady
"This meant a culture where the young no longer were taught to strive for "success" as a mask for greed." -Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States
"Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans." -John Lennon
"I’m nothing but a hungry, sexstarved son of a bitch." – JP Donleavy, The Ginger Man
"I was not proud of what I had learned but I never doubted it was worth knowing." -Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
"Then came noon, and morning withered like a lost dream. The sweat was torture and the rest of the day was littered with the dead remains of all those things that might have happened, but couldn't stand the heat. When the sun got hot enough it burned away all the illusions and I saw the place as it was-cheap, sullen, and garish-nothing good was going to happen here." -Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
"With the palms zipping past and the big sun burning down on the road ahead, I had a flash of something I hadn't felt since my first months in Europe-a mixture of ignorance and a loose, "what the hell" kind of confidence that comes on a man when the wind picks up and he begins to move in a hard straight line toward an unknown horizon." -Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
"Although he spoke perfect English there was still a language barrier, and I sensed immediately that no real meaning would ever pass between us." -Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
"'Happy,' I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception-especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony." -Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
"I had another cup of coffee and took the [New York] Times with me when I left, lugging it along the street like a precious bundle of wisdom, a weighty assurance that I was not yet cut off from that part of the world that was real." -Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
