“The ashes of your existence will fertilize the soil for the universe to follow.”
Richard Kadrey (1957) San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer
Source: Sandman Slim
Source: Fingersmith
“The ashes of your existence will fertilize the soil for the universe to follow.”
Richard Kadrey (1957) San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer
Source: Sandman Slim
Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States
2010s, Farewell Speech (2017)
Context: !-- So the young people here and the young people out there: --> Do not ever let anyone make you feel like you don't matter, or like you don't have a place in our American story — because you do. And you have a right to be exactly who you are.
But I also want to be very clear: This right isn't just handed to you. No, this right has to be earned every single day. You cannot take your freedoms for granted. Just like generations who have come before you, you have to do your part to preserve and protect those freedoms. And that starts right now, when you're young.
Right now, you need to be preparing yourself to add your voice to our national conversation. You need to prepare yourself to be informed and engaged as a citizen, to serve and to lead, to stand up for our proud American values and to honor them in your daily lives. And that means getting the best education possible so you can think critically, so you can express yourself clearly, so you can get a good job and support yourself and your family, so you can be a positive force in your communities.
“Japan will not abandon the fight for the Philippines even if Tokyo should be reduced to ashes!”
Iwane Matsui (1878–1948) Japanese general
Quoted in "Nips to Keep Philippines Even if Tokyo Falls" - Los Angeles Times - February 4, 1945.
Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist
1961 and later
Source: his 'Foreword', Barcelona 1977; as quoted in Calder Miro, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner / Oliver Wick; Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2004, p. 309
“That's fame: just a cigar with the hot end and ash in your mouth.”
Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) French novelist
C'est ça la gloire. Un bon cigare dans la bouche par le côté du feu et de la cendre.
L'immortel: mœurs parisiennes (1888; repr. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1890) p. 56; Arthur Woollgar Verrall and Margaret de G. Verrall (trans.) One of the "Forty" (Chicago: Rand, McNally, 1920) p. 50.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat
The Ashes of Capitalism and the Ashes of Communism (1986)
“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”
Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter
“You have made
The cement of your churches out of tears
And ashes, and the fabric will not stand.”
Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935) American poet
Captain Craig (1902)