Quotes about back
page 54

“I often see my lost lover in dreams.
I will ask a shaman to search in there
and bring her back to me.”

Tsangyang Gyatso, 6th Dalai Lama (1683–1706) sixth Dalai Lama of Tibet

Source: Attributed, Poems of Sadness: The Erotic Verse of the Sixth Dalai Lama Tsangyang Gyatso tr. Paul Williams 2004, p.52

Dreams, Search, Lovers

“A place in thy memory, dearest,
Is all that I claim;
To pause and look back when thou hearest
The sound of my name.”

Gerald Griffin (1803–1840) Irish novelist, poet and playwright

A Place in thy Memory, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Memory

“I'm coming back as a cat or a tree or a molecule in my next life.”

Frances Bean Cobain (1992) American artist

16 February 2015 https://twitter.com/alka_seltzer666/status/567542121033236483 Twitter https://twitter.com/alka_seltzer666 posts

Life, Cats, Tree

“Snow is a strange white word.
No ice or frost
Has asked of bud or bird
For Winter's cost.
Yet ice and frost and snow
From earth to sky
This Summer land doth know.
No man knows why.
In all men's hearts it is.
Some spirit old
Hath turned with malign kiss
Our lives to mould.
Red fangs have torn His face.
God's blood is shed.
He mourns from His lone place
His children dead.
O! ancient crimson curse
Corrode, consume.
Give back this universe
Its pristine bloom.”

Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918) English poet

On Receiving News of the War (1914)

Men, God, Children, Kiss

“When I was in high school, I ate the kind of stuff that the average, unhealthy American kid loves to eat. … The changes I've made are for future health as well as current physical performance and well-being. I'm no longer that kid who stuffed himself with whatever food came his way. With luck and a little education, I've made the necessary changes in time to avoid the health problems that a kid like that inevitably faces. Yes, deep down inside, that kid is still there, wanting to hang out with his pals at the nearest burger joint. But I can look forward as well as back. And what I'm looking forward to is the opportunity to take the road to wellness.”

Tony Gonzalez (1976) American football and basketball player

The All-Pro Diet: Lose Fat, Build Muscle, and Live Like a Champion (Rodale Books, 2009), Introduction https://books.google.it/books?id=wNrj-ITuL7gC&pg=PR11.

Love, Health, Education, School

“In his effort toward revivification of this sense [the sense for great art], the modern artist has not infrequently retired into himself; he has accepted isolation or even alienation. … Sometimes the good has to go underground. … The “revolutionary” artist … has had the aim of saving himself from the surrounding forces of sentimentality and vulgarity. … It is impossible to make a deal with these forces, and we should not be surprised if in striking back the artist has done so in ways even intended to be offensive. He has sometimes shown defiance and contempt toward those who would deny his level of seriousness.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“The Importance of Cultural Freedom,” pp. 30-31.
Life Without Prejudice (1965)

Art, Way, Sense, Effort

“Five days from now, the world will witness the vitality of American democracy. In a tradition dating back to our founding, the presidency will pass to a successor chosen by you, the American people. Standing on the steps of the Capitol will be a man whose story reflects the enduring promise of our land. This is a moment of hope and pride for our whole nation. And I join all Americans in offering best wishes to President-elect Obama, his wife Michelle, and their two beautiful girls.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2009, Farewell speech to the nation (January 2009)

People, World, Beauty, Hope

“I recollect after the war in '71 [in Paris, where he stayed then and was fighting against the German] there were some debts to pay of course: what had I to do? I said to Wisselingh [Dutch art-dealer] who was with Goupil, 'tell them that I'll take them back later on.' I've never been able to do so, for one Van Gogh [probably Vincent, then art-seller at Goupil], his partner, gave me 200 francs, someone bought it for 350, and sold it in America for 700 pounds. He had asked Wisselingh how long it had taken me to do [make] it; he said a week, so I was the chap for him; no wonder he was always talking making fortune, fancy 100 pounds per day, make some more or this sort: do it only for a year. So I had to commit suicides upon suicides [he means, making salable paintings]: what did it matter to him or anyone else? Someone said once to me: 'You must have somebody fool enough to say, here is money for you, and go your own way': that is the very thing one may not do. There is always someone telling you how to set about, and then come the schools telling you that it is not allowed to be one's self, but that one has to be a Roman or Greek, or imitate what they have performed..”

Matthijs Maris (1839–1917) Dutch painter

in a letter to David Croal Thomson (1907), as cited in: The Brothers Maris (James – Matthew – William), ed. Charles Holme; text: D.C. Thomson https://ia800204.us.archive.org/1/items/cu31924016812756/cu31924016812756.pdf; publishers, Offices of 'The Studio', London - Paris, 1907, p. BMxvii

Money, War, School, Fools

“Spade pulled his hand out of hers. He no longer either smiled or grimaced. His wet yellow face was set hard and deeply lined. His eyes burned madly. He said: "Listen. This isn't a damned bit of good. You'll never understand me, but I'll try once more and then we'll give it up. Listen. When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. It's bad all around – bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere. Third, I'm a detective and expecting me to run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes it is done, but it's not the natural thing. The only way I could have let you go was by letting Gutman and Cairo and the kid go. … Fourth, no matter what I wanted to do now it would be absolutely impossible for me to let you go without having myself dragged to the gallows with the others. Next, I've no reason in God's world to think I can trust you and if I did this and got away with it you'd have something on me that you could use whenever you happened to want to. That's five of them. The sixth would be that, since I've got something on you, I couldn't be sure you wouldn't decide to shoot a hole in *me* some day. Seventh, I don't even like the idea of thinking that there might be one chance in a hundred that you'd played me for a sucker. And eighth – but that's enough. All those on one side. Maybe some of them are unimportant. I won't argue about that. But look at the number of them. Now on the other side we've got what? All we've got is the fact that maybe you love me and maybe I love you." … "But suppose I do? What of it? Maybe next month I won't. I've been through it before – when it lasted that long. Then what? Then I'll think I played the sap. And if I did it and got sent over then I'd be sure I was the sap. Well, if I send you over I'll be sorry as hell – I'll have some rotten nights – but that'll pass. Listen." He took her by the shoulders and bent her back, leaning over her. "If that doesn't mean anything to you forget it and we'll make it this: I won't because all of me wants to – wants to say to hell with the consequences and do it -- and because – God damn you – you've counted on that with me the same as you counted on that with the others. … Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be. That kind of reputation might be good business – bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy. … Well, a lot of money would have been at least one more item on the other side of the scales."”

Dashiell Hammett book The Maltese Falcon

… Spade set the edges of his teeth together and said through them: "I won't play the sap for you."
Chap. 20, "If They Hang You"
spoken by the character "Sam Spade" to "Brigid O'Shaughnessy."
The Maltese Falcon (1930)

Love, Money, God, World

“Regardless of how Revenge of the Sith is received at the box office, it represents the conclusion to an unparalleled cinematic achievement. Finally, after 28 long years of waiting that were only occasionally punctuated by the appearance of new story fragments, Lucas has ended with an exclamation point. The tale of a galaxy long ago and far away is complete. Only now can we truly step back and admire the full tapestry that it has taken George Lucas and his ILM wizards nearly three decades to weave.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/s/sw2005.html of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005). Three-and-a-half star reviews

Revenge, Appearance, Waiting, Box

“O cool glad pasture; living tree, tall corn,
Great cliff, or languid sloping sand, cold sea,
Waves: river curving; you, eternal flowers,
Give me content, while I can think of you:
Give me your living breath!
Back to your rampart, Death!”

Harold Monro (1879–1932) British poet

"Living", line 36, from Alida Monro (ed.) Collected Poems (London: Duckworth, [1933] 1970) p. 13.

Death, Flowers, Thinking, Tree

“As I think back on those years, I find it interesting that many people seemed to have trouble with their identities as black men. Having had to accept my blackness in the caldron of ridicule from some of my black schoolmates under segregation, then immediately thereafter remain secure in that identity during my years at all-white seminary, I had few racial identity problems. I knew who I was and needed no gimmicks to affirm my identity. Nor, might I add, do I need anyone telling me who I am today. This is especially true of the psycho-silliness about forgetting my roots or self-hatred. If anything, this shows that some people have too much time on their hands.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Men, People, Problem, Thinking

“Be in line and then see what’s going on!’ a fat lady shouted at me. ‘Hell yeah! you greasy piece of flesh.’ I cursed her in my mind. But ‘Yes I am going back in line!’ I shouted at her.”

Gaurav Sharma (author) (1992) Author and novelist

Gone are the Days (2016)

Hell

“I've argued time and again that the old trade unionists and CND lesbians didn't go away. They just morphed into environmentalists. The red's become green but the goals remain the same. And there's no better way of achieving those goals than turning the lights out and therefore winding the clock back to the Stone Age. Only when we're all eating leaves under a hammer and sickle will they be happy.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

How Hard Can It Be? The World According to Clarkson Volume 4 (2010)

Age, Way, Light, Time

“The tower of heaven turns darker blue; a starry sparkle now begins;
The mystery and magnificence, the myriad beauty and the sins
Come back to me.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Beauty

“The manuscript lay like a dust-rag on his desk, and Eitel found, as he had found before, that the difficulty of art was that it forced a man back on his life, and each time the task was more difficult and distasteful.”

Norman Mailer book Barbary Shore

Source: Barbary Shore (1951), Ch. 14

Life, Art, Time

“You hear people say that all the time: "You can't put the genie back in the bottle"; "you're asking people to forget." But that's just another attempt to rationalize craziness by calling it human nature. And it's a variant of the old racist intelligence theory: because the Hopi didn't invent backhoes, they must not be curious. Sure, people are naturally curious but about what? Would you or I aspire to create the neutron bomb? Of course not. But the fact that I don't want to create a neutron bomb doesn't mean I'm not curious. Curiosity is not value-free. Certain types of curiosity arise from certain mindsets, and our culture's curiosity follows the logic of alienation not simple wonder, or the desire to learn.”

John Zerzan (1943) American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author

Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization (2002)

People, Intelligence, Nature, Learning

“He sent me a letter from India, where I think he got a fellowship to spend a year or so. He sent me a letter that read, I've just met a wonderful guru who can read minds. "I want you to" — Allen had a way of saying "I want you to do this, I want you to do that" — "I want you to get him a position in the Philosophy Department." I wrote back, "Dear Allen, the members of the Philosophy Department want nothing so little as to have their minds read."”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

On Allen Ginsberg, in "The Man Who Knew Too Much: Jacques Barzun, Idea Man" http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=78886, interview with Roger Gathman, The Austin Chronicle (2000-10-13)

Way, Thinking, Reading

“Don't try to sell me on death, Odysseus.
I'd rather be a hired hand back up on earth,
Slaving away for some poor dirt farmer,
Than lord it over all these withered dead.”

Stanley Lombardo (1943) Philosopher, Classicist

Book XI, lines 510–513; spoken by the ghost of Achilles.
Translations, Odyssey (2000)

Death, Dead

“I heard Bush say, "You know, the truth is I honestly don't remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don't remember." I remember thinking to myself, How can that be? How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn't make a lot of sense.”

Scott McClellan book What Happened

Bush press secretary Scott McClellan, on the cocaine rumors that surfaced during the 2000 campaign, What Happened, pp. 48-49

Truth, Thinking, Sense

“I painted 'the Shelton with Sunspots' [New York], in 1926. I went out one morning to look at it before I started to work and there was the optical illusion of a bite out of one side of the tower made by the sun, with sunspots against the building and against the sky. I made that painting beginning at the upper left and went off at the lower right without going back.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

1970s, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

Sun, Painting

“The unknown mountain nests in the inhospitable interior of southern Calabria are usually connected only by a mule track with the railway that runs close to the coast: whoever wants to go there has to walk on foot if he has no donkey at his disposal. I think back to that warm afternoon in the month of May when we the four of us, after a long, tiring ride in the harsh sun, packed with the heavy burden of our backpacks, sweat-dripping and a little gasping, entered the city gate of Palizzi..”

M. C. Escher (1898–1972) Dutch graphic artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van M.C. Escher, in het Nederlands): De onbekende bergnesten in het onherbergzame binnenland van Zuid-Calabrië zijn meestal slechts door een muilezelpad met den spoorweg, die vlak langs de kust loopt, verbonden: wie er heen wil, dient te voet te gaan zoo hij geen ezel tot zijn beschikking heeft. Ik denk terug aan dien warmen namiddag in de maand Mei toen wij met ons vieren, na een lange, vermoeiende tocht in de barre zon, bepakt met de zware last onzer rugzakken, zweetdruppelend en een beetje hijgend de stadspoort van Palizzi binnentraden.. Quote from Escher's article about his Calabria trip, in the Dutch magazine 'De Groene Amsterdammer', 23 April, 1932, p 18 – No 2864 (translation of museum 'Escher in the Palais', the Hague) In the following Autumn and Winter Escher used the many sketches and photos from this trip to make series of woodcuts and lithography https://www.escherinhetpaleis.nl/story-of-escher/from-photo-to-fantasy/?lang=en 1940's

Mountain, Thinking, Sun

“I have not found this generation to be cynical or apathetic or selfish. They are as strong and as decent as any people that I have met. And I will say this, on my way down here I stopped at Bethesda Naval, and when you talk to the young kids that are there that have just been back from Iraq and Afghanistan, you don’t have the worry about the future that you hear from so many that are not a part of this generation but judging it from above.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

College of William & Mary Commencement Address (2004)

People, Way, Strong, Future

“Whenever I came to him (Fritz Sauter) with a pure physics idea, he would invariably say, with slight sarcasm: "But Mr. Kroemer, you ought to be able to formulate this mathematically! " If I came to him with a math formulation, I would get, in a similar tone: "But Mr. Kroemer, that is just math, what is the physics?" After a few encounters of this kind, you got the idea: You had to be able to go back and forth with ease. Yet, in the last analysis, concepts took priority over formalism, the latter was simply an (indispensable) means to an end.”

Herbert Kroemer (1928) Nobel laureate in physics

in his Autobiography http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2000/kroemer-autobio.html, Herbert Kroemer, The Nobel Prize in Physics 2000

Mathematics, Idea

“The sun has only ever shone for me in France (it certainly did that!). I have got used to beating the streets of Paris, happy beyond words dreaming of a life 125 years long - with the Louvre radiant in the distance. (Chagall couldn't go back to Paris because of the outbreak of the first World War in 1914). Having ended up in the Russian provinces, <>.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Quote from a letter to Sergei K. Markovsky, 1915; as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 149
1910's

Life, War, World, Dreams

“Colour, if I may say so, is biological. Colour is alive and colour alone makes things come alive... Without losing any part of myself, I need to get back to that instinct, so that these colours in the scattered fields signify an idea to me, just as to them they signify a crop. Confronted by a yellow, they spontaneously feel the harvesting activity required of them, just as I, when faced with the same ripening tint..”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 162, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'

Feeling, Idea, Parting

“The D. C. career crowd just keeps on doing the same old thing, And you know, the system works pretty well for them – they’re connected. But here in Missouri, we know too many people who can’t get a job. Or if they’ve got a job they can’t get a raise. Farmers are hurting and that means farm kids can’t come home. And as for healthcare and taxes – they just keep going up. Erin and I have decided we have to do something about it. And that’s why next year I’m going to run for the United States Senate. This isn’t something we were planning to do. But we believe we have to do all we can to win a better future for our country. Senator McCaskill – she’s been in D. C. forever. She’s turned her back on farmers. She’s ignored working families. She’s been wrong on every Supreme Court nominee for the last 11 years. She doesn’t represent us. It’s time to do something new. America is an exceptional place, and it’s still a young country. Its future is worth fighting for. So let’s get ready and do our part.”

Josh Hawley (1979) United States Senator from Missouri

Here in Missouri https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E1AWV3zXCk (October 9, 2017)

People, Family, Home, Time

“I think I'm going back
To the things I learned so well
In my youth.
I think I'm returning to
The days when I was young enough
To know the truth.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

Goin' Back (1966), Co-written with Gerry Goffin
Song lyrics, Singles

Truth, Youth, Thinking, Learning

“Katie Couric: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of your foreign-policy experience. What did you mean by that?Sarah Palin: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land — boundary that we have with — Canada. It, it's funny that a comment like that was — kind of made to — cari— I don't know. You know. Reporters —Couric: Mocked?Palin: Yeah, mocked, I guess that's the word, yeah.Couric: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.Palin: Well, it certainly does because our— our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia—Couric: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?Palin: We have trade missions back and forth. We— we do— it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where— where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is— from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to— to our state.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

Interview with Katie Couric http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/25/eveningnews/main4479062.shtml, CBS Evening News () [Christine Lagorio, New Sarah Palin Clip: Keeping An Eye On Putin, http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/09/25/couricandco/entry4478088.shtml, Couric & Co., CBS News, September 25, 2008, 2008-09-25] Referring to ABC News interview with Charlie Gibson (see above). 2008, 2008 interviews with Katie Couric

Parting, Country

“The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

The Court years, 1939-1975: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas‎ (1980), p. 8
Other speeches and writings

People

“The amount of things I have been through and the remarkable ways in which the body has reacted is just phenomenal. No wonder I became religious, because you don't know why something's happening to you and you don't know how you bounced back.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Way

“Some years back, all the best people came to bipartisan agreement that the most shameful thing a person could do with power was not to use it.
Since then everybody who wants to get ahead in Washington has made a great show of being a fierce fellow when left alone in the room with a little power. There seems to be a fear that if there is somebody around so low that it is all right to dump the garbage on him, and you hesitate, everybody will call you a sissy, and you will never be invited to lunch with Professor Kissinger.
Strange values result. Great killers are esteemed for good citizenship. "Not afraid to use power," people say of them.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Cultivated Killing" (p.33)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

People, Fear, Personality

“It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.”

Cary Grant (1904–1986) British-American film and stage actor

Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About (1964)

Life, Law, Feeling, Hurt

“Professor Bell, in his tortured efforts to sound fair and impersonal, arrives at an aesthetic principle too edifying for Art to bear. He says in effect that you can explore evil, drawing "on the tap roots of the demonic," but you may not approve it. But when you draw on those tap roots, who knows what you will find? Writers just back from their season in hell are likely to be covered in goat blood and tend to rave. The moralists can sort out the evidence later. But the writer with the correct attitude could not have entered hell in the first place.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"Honoring Ezra Pound" (1972), p. 59
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

Art, Hell, Effort, Evil

“People have said, "You've turned your back on pediatrics." I said, "No. It took me until I was in my 60s to realize that politics was a part of pediatrics."”

Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) American pediatrician and author of Baby and Child Care

Associated Press interview (1992)

People, Parting

“Now this nation that I love
Has fallen under attack
A mighty sucker punch came flying in
From somewhere in the back
Soon as we could see clearly
Through our big black eye
Man, we lit up your world
Like the 4th of July.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue (The Angry American).
Song lyrics, Unleashed (2002)

Love, World, Flying

“It is impossible to fall back in love with what one has stopped being in love with.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Il est impossible d'aimer une seconde fois ce qu'on a véritablement cessé d'aimer.
Maxim 286.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Love

“A mind of a certain size can feel only exasperation toward a city. Nothing can drive me more fully into despair. The walls first of all, and even then all the rest is only so many horrid images of selfishness, mistrust, stupidity, and narrow-mindedness. No need to memorize the Napoleonic code. Just look at a city and you have it. Each time I come back from the country, just as I am starting to congratulate myself on my calmness, there breaks out a furor, a rage… And I come upon my mark, homo sapiens, the acquisitive wolf. Cities, architectures, how I loathe you! Great surfaces of vaults, vaults cemented into the earth, vaults set out in compartments, forming vaults to eat in, vaults for sex, vaults on the watch, ready to open fire. How sad, sad…”

Henri Michaux (1899–1984) painter, poet, writer

Ecuador (1929)

Stupidity, Sadness, Sex, Feeling

“[Issam al-]Sartawi and I are sitting in a small restaurant on the Boulevard St. Germain. After the main course, he excuses himself. 'I have to go to the bathroom. Keep an eye on my briefcase.' His attaché case - the kind Israelis call James Bond cases - stands under the table. After a few minutes he comes back, takes his seat and bursts out laughing. 'If I told anyone of my friends that I left a briefcase full of PLO secrets in the care of a Zionist, they wouldn't believe me', he says. 'If I tell anyone of my friends that a PLO terrorist put an attaché case under my table and went away, and I remained there, they'd think that I was crazy', I reply. We laugh and order a dessert.”

Uri Avnery (1923–2018) Israeli writer

My Friend, the Enemy (1986) - page 128

Secret, Thinking

“What is never discussed at all it is never considered is an offense committed by a non-Muslim in a non-Muslim country. That, according to the unanimous opinion of all of the doctors of the holy law is no concern of Islamic law, which brings us back to the case of Denmark. Does this mean that Denmark, along with the rest of Europe is now considered part of the Islamic lands, and that the Danes, like the rest, are therefore dhimmis, non-Muslim subjects of the Muslim state? I think this is an interesting question, which can lead to several possible lines of inquiry.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, Islam and the West: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis (2006)

Law, Question, Thinking, Parting

“I think being ‘alternative,’ which most people think holds me back, actually helps [in the music industry]. If I'd been an ordinary singer, I'd still be trying to get noticed in Canada. I'm an alternative in every way. I'm a country singer who's a vegetarian for health reasons and because of compassion for animals. I'm also alternative because of Canada — there's something romantic about being Canadian. I always push the fact that I'm Canadian. I'm not self-righteous enough to think I'm unique and I'm not being overly rebellious. But I've learned that to go your own way and be yourself, which is what I'm trying to do, is alternative to a lot of people.”

K.d. lang (1961) Canadian singer-songwriter

In 1988, upon becoming Miss Chatelaine (Chatelaine magazine's woman of the year); as quoted in Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance 1985-1995 by Michael Barclay, Ian A.D. Jack, Jason Schneider (Toronto: ECW Press, 2011 ebook edition), p. 539 https://books.google.it/books?id=xLIiOE_jCpAC&pg=PT539.

People, Health, Music, Way

“In the last three months I hadn’t lost one single game of chess. It was crazyloco, but sometimes I thought that I was so brilliant because I could see what other people couldn’t see or understand even after I’d explain it to them. Playing chess wasn’t about making single moves. It was about seeing patterns, then backing up inside your mind and seeing the last five and six moves of your opponent, then flashing forward real fast. And bingo, the whole chessboard became alive in living patterns.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

People, Game, Understanding

“Proceeding on the assumption that the reader of this preface is interested in the development of my musical talent, I will try to explain, as concisely as I can, how, in this respect, my personal wheels go round. To begin with, I have only had two music lessons in my life. These were the first steps of what was to have been a full course at the Guildhall School of Music, and they faltered and stopped when I was told by my instructor that I could not use consecutive fifths. He went on to explain that a gentleman called Ebenezer Prout had announced many years ago that consecutive fifths were wrong and must in no circumstances be employed. At that time Ebenezer Prout was merely a name to me (as a matter of fact he still is, and a very funny one at that) and I was unimpressed by his Victorian dicta. I argued back that Debussy and Ravel had used consecutive fifths like mad. My instructor waved aside this triviality with a pudgy hand, and I left his presence forever with the parting shot that what was good enough for Debussy and Ravel was good enough for me. This outburst of rugged individualism deprived me of much valuable knowledge, and I have never deeply regretted it for a moment.”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Preface, The Noël Coward Song Book, pp. 12–13.

Life, School, Music, Knowledge

“Four a. m., having just returned from an evening at the Golden Spheres, which despite the inconveniences of heat, noise and overcrowding was not without its pleasures. Thankfully, there were no dogs and no children. The gowns were middling. There was a good deal of shouting and behavior verging on the profligate, however, people were very free with their compliments and I made several new acquaintances. There was Lindsay Doran of Mirage, wherever that might be, who is largely responsible for my presence here, an enchanting companion about whom too much good cannot be said. Mr. Ang Lee, of foreign extraction, who most unexpectedly appeared to understand me better than I understand myself. Mr. James Shamis, a most copiously erudite person and Miss Kate Winslet, beautiful in both countenance and spirit. Mr. Pat Doyle, a composer and a Scot, who displayed the kind of wild behaviour one has learned to expect from that race. Mr. Mark Kenton, an energetic person with a ready smile who, as I understand it, owes me a great deal of money. [Breaks character, smiles. ] TRUE!! [Back in character. ] Miss Lisa Henson of Columbia, a lovely girl and Mr. Garrett Wiggin, a lovely boy. I attempted to converse with Mr. Sydney Pollack, but his charms and wisdom are so generally pleasing, that it proved impossible to get within ten feet of him. The room was full of interesting activity until 11 p. m. when it emptied rather suddenly. The lateness of the hour is due, therefore, not to the dance, but to the waiting in a long line for a horseless carriage of unconscionable size. The modern world has clearly done nothing for transport.”

Emma Thompson (1959) British actress and writer

Golden Globe Award Speech

Love, Wisdom, Money, Children

“I was interested in achieving a creative freedom, a style that I could express with Seurat's.... color technique [color-divisionism], but shaped to my own needs. Proof that I found it is in my paintings of that period, among which is the famous 'Pan-Pan a Monico' [Severini painted in 1912]. My preference for Neo-Impressionism dates from those works. At times I tried to suppress it, but it always worked its way back to the surface.”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

Source: The Life of a Painter - autobiography', 1946, p. 53; as quoted in: Shannon N. Pritchard, Gino Severini and the symbolist aesthetics of his futurist dance imagery, 1910-1915 https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/pritchard_shannon_n_200305_ma.pdf Diss. uga, 2003.

Color, Way, Freedom, Time

“Others may doubt us. They may criticize us. They may try to deny us what is rightfully ours. But they will fail. And I promise you, as long as I am mayor, I will never back away from fighting any opponent -- or confronting any obstacle -- that would prevent our people from achieving all of their dreams in Our New York.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://www.gothamgazette.com/searchlight/2004.state.of.city.bloomberg.shtml
Why He Was Elected Mayor

People, Dreams, Fight

“On the other hand, many Muslim historians of medieval India have left for posterity some very detailed, many a time day-to-day, accounts of what happened during the endless encounters between Hindus and Muslims. The dominant theme in these accounts is of mu’mins (Muslims) martyred; of kãfirs (Hindus infidels) despatched to hell; of cities and citadels sacked; of citizens massacred; of Brahmins killed or forced to eat beef; of temples razed to the ground and mosques raised on their sites; of idols broken and their pieces taken to imperial headquarters for being trodden underfoot by the faithful on the steps of the main mosque; of booty captured and carried away on elephants, camels, horses, bullock carts, on the backs of sheep and goats, and even on the heads of Hindu prisoners of war; of beautiful Hindu maidens presented to the sultans and distributed among Muslim generals and nobles; of Hindu men, women and children sold into slavery in markets all over the Islamic world; and of kãfirs converted to the true faith at the point of the sword. The Muslim historians treat every war waged against the Hindus as a jihãd as enjoined by the Prophet and the Pious Caliphs.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Women, Men, War, Children

“The theory of population genetics and experiments on other organisms show that substantial changes can occur in the span of less than 100 generations, which for man reaches back to the time of the Roman Empire.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

Change, Time

“She twirls herself, turns round, twirls once more,
posing, smiling, laughing, beckoning airily,
drifts off, only to turn back beckoning, offering,
repulsing, coolly firm, and then turns away,
so that you think, well, it’s hopeless, when she glances back
lightly, sidelong, her eyes opening, pupils wide,
and wider yet, and she’s laughing at you, at you alone,
laughing gaily, and you freeze, astonished,
your throat constricting, as she hovers lovely
and out of reach, out of reach and lovely,
smiling at you, her head inclined aside,
her hair brushing one cheek, there she is and yet not,
unbelievable and simply gorgeous, and your heart tightens
as she stands there so lovely, and out of reach.”

András Petőcz (1959) Hungarian writer

EUROPE, METAPHORICALLY http://www.c3.hu/~mediumar/PETVERS1.HTM (1990). András Petőcz: In Praise of the Sea (1999, ISBN 963 9101 51 6). Poems

Love, Smile, Thinking, Heart

“So strong is the belief in life, in what is most fragile in life — real life, I mean — that in the end this belief is lost. Man, that inveterate dreamer, daily more discontent with his destiny, has trouble assessing the objects he has been led to use, objects that his nonchalance has brought his way, or that he has earned through his own efforts, almost always through his own efforts, for he has agreed to work, at least he has not refused to try his luck (or what he calls his luck!). At this point he feels extremely modest: he knows what women he has had, what silly affairs he has been involved in; he is unimpressed by his wealth or his poverty, in this respect he is still a new-born babe and, as for the approval of his conscience, I confess that he does very nicely without it. If he still retains a certain lucidity, all he can do is turn back toward his childhood which, however his guides and mentors may have botched it, still strikes him as somehow charming. There, the absence of any known restrictions allows him the perspective of several lives lived at once; this illusion becomes firmly rooted within him; now he is only interested in the fleeting, the extreme facility of everything.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

the first lines in 'Manifesto du Surréalisme', Andre Breton, 1924
Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

Life, Women, Way, Feeling

“I was honestly very nervous of Constance Wheatcroft. And I wasn't the only one. Her entire family was afraid of her. Dogs were afraid of her. Bindweed in the hedge would wither as she passed; birds would forget their nesting instincts and fly back to north Africa at the sound of her hideous cries.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Family, Dogs, Bird, Flying

“But we can go back further still, for the thing did not start with Princess Anne, either; before her there was Princess Margaret. She, too, was attacked for going on holiday, and indeed for putting on weight, but the main charges, which seem almost incredible today, concerned her choice of men friends - and after, not before, her divorce.”

Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (1930–2002) younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother

Bernard Levin, "Uneasy Lies the Head", The Times, 23 January 1989.

Men, Holiday, Princess

“Some say we need to be more patient. What we cannot, must not do is sit back and hope for the best.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

We nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership. Now we regret it (6 May 2016)

Hope

“Yamanaka: "The first thing I want you to know is about dodo's. 'Dodo' is the name of an extinct bird which is big but cannot fly. I made the song likening the 'bird' to bands I like, such as 'a great musician who passed away' or 'the split-up band'. Life is mortal, all things die. The last day will psychically also come to a band. However, I sing this song lightly to oppose these themes, something like "even if I die, I'll be back!" or "Only the pillows won't break up, right!?" It's not a very serious song, more a positive one. This song has an alternative sound, which I really like lately."”

Sawao Yamanaka (1968) Japanese singer-songwriter

Source: http://www.jame-world.com/us/articles-2700-wake-up-the-pillows-interview.html

Life, Bird, Singing, Flying

“Now and then it occurs to one to reflect upon what slender threads of accident depend the most important circumstances of his life; to look back and shudder, realizing how close to the edge of nothingness his being has come.”

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) American novelist, writer, journalist, political activist

Section 1
100%: the Story of a Patriot (1920)

Life, Dependency

“Last week we made a bike ride along cornfields with the harvest ready to be brought in. Here and there it was already brought in. Heavily loaded cars rolled back home, and it sounds so nice when the car comes after you.... and what a fruit tree loaded with ripening fruit. It is all full of promises and full of mild softness. As you say, it is the late-summer melancholy.... moreover one can weep for this dying everywhere on the fields, without any mercy.”

Hendrik Werkman (1882–1945) Dutch artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands): Vorige week maakten we een fietstocht langs korenvelden met de oogst gereed om binnen gehaald te worden. Hier en daar werd ze al binnen gehaald. Zwaar beladen wagens rolden huiswaarts en wat klinkt dat gezellig wanneer zo'n wagen achter je aanrijdt. . . En wat een vruchtboomen vol beladen met het rijpende fruit. Het is alles vol beloften en vol milde zachtheid. Zooals je zegt, het is de nazomersche melancholie.. ..ook kan men wenen om dit sterven overal op de velden, zonder genade.
Quote in a letter (nr. 344) 30 August 1943, to August Henkels; as cited in H. N. Werkman - Leven & Werk - 1882-1945, ed. A. de Vries, J. van der Spek, D. Sijens, M. Jansen; WBooks, Groninger Museum / Stichting Werkman, 2015 (transl: Fons Heijnsbroek), p. 187
1940's

Cars, Home, Tree, Summer

“damn my intuition here it goes
wish i didn’t know the things I know
you're backing off from me
i saw it happening
the moment she came back to you”

Alicia Witt (1975) American actress

Fighting For Crumbs https://aliciawitt.bandcamp.com/track/fighting-for-crumbs Lyrics, Live at Rockwood (2012)

“They screwed with democracy. I’m not going to lose much sleep when democracy screws them back.”

Alastair Reynolds book The Prefect

Source: The Prefect (2007), Chapter 1 (p. 6)

Democracy, Sleep

“A group that was somewhat connected with general systems theory is usually associated with the term, the systems approach. They were located originally at the University of Pennsylvania. They later went to Case Western Reserve University and then back to the University of Pennsylvania. Their founding philosopher was E. A. Singer, Jr. One of Singer's students was C. West Churchman, and Churchman's first student was Russell Ackoff.”

Stuart A. Umpleby (1944) American scientist

Source: "The origins and purposes of several traditions in systems theory and cybernetics," 1999, p. 82: About the Systems Approach

Universe

“You know, the media and the politicians would have us believe that there's something inherently immoral about terrorism. That is, they would have us believe that it's not immoral for us to destroy a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan with cruise missiles, but it is immoral for someone like Bin Laden to blow up a government building in Washington with a truck bomb. It's okay for us to take out an air-raid shelter full of women and children in Baghdad with a smart bomb, but it's cowardly and immoral for an Iraqi or Iranian agent to pop a vial of sarin in a New York subway tunnel. Really, what should we expect? They don't have aircraft carriers and cruise missiles and stealth bombers. So should we expect them to just sit there and take their punishment when we wage war on them? I think that it is the most reasonable thing in the world for them to hit back at us in the only way they can. It actually takes more courage to be a terrorist behind enemy lines than it does to push the firing button for a cruise missile a hundred miles away from your target. And yet we certainly will see Bill Clinton and every other Jew-serving politician in our government on television denouncing as a "cowardly act" the first terrorist bomb which goes off in the United States as a result of a war against Iraq. And don't be surprised when the FBI and the CIA announce that they have studied the evidence carefully and have determined that it was Iranian terrorists who built the bomb, so that the Jews will have an excuse for expanding the war to take out Iran as well as Iraq.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Why War? (November 21, 1998) http://web.archive.org/web/20070324011124/http://www.natvan.com/pub/1998/112198.txt, American Dissident Voices Broadcast of November 21, 1998 http://archive.org/details/DrWilliamPierceAudioArchive308RadioBroadcasts 1990s, 1990

Women, War, Children, World

“When it began to grow dark, the Rat, with an air of excitement and mystery, summoned them back into the parlour, stood each of them up alongside of his little heap, and proceeded to dress them up for the coming expedition.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 12, "The Return Of Ulysses"

“It's been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home — only the millions of last moments… nothing more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments.”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

Home, History

“As a type for study, or a standard for education, Lodge was the more interesting of the two. Roosevelts are born and never can be taught; but Lodge was a creature of teaching — Boston incarnate — the child of his local parentage; and while his ambition led him to be more, the intent, though virtuous, was — as Adams admitted in his own case — restless. An excellent talker, a voracious reader, a ready wit, an accomplished orator, with a clear mind and a powerful memory, he could never feel perfectly at ease whatever leg he stood on, but shifted, sometimes with painful strain of temper, from one sensitive muscle to another, uncertain whether to pose as an uncompromising Yankee; or a pure American; or a patriot in the still purer atmosphere of Irish, Germans, or Jews; or a scholar and historian of Harvard College. English to the last fibre of his thought — saturated with English literature, English tradition, English taste — revolted by every vice and by most virtues of Frenchmen and Germans, or any other Continental standards, but at home and happy among the vices and extravagances of Shakespeare — standing first on the social, then on the political foot; now worshipping, now banning; shocked by the wanton display of immorality, but practicing the license of political usage; sometimes bitter, often genial, always intelligent — Lodge had the singular merit of interesting. The usual statesmen flocked in swarms like crows, black and monotonous. Lodge's plumage was varied, and, like his flight, harked back to race. He betrayed the consciousness that he and his people had a past, if they dared but avow it, and might have a future, if they could but divine it.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Pain, People, Education, Feeling

“Looking back to data, we can see if the consequences are plausible; looking forward to theory, we can see if general principles are suggested.”

John H. Holland (1929–2015) US university professor

Source: Hidden Order - How Adaptation Builds Complexity (1995), Ch 3. Echoing Emergence, p. 97

“New discord has arisen in Europe of late years from the fact that Germany is not satisfied with the result of the late War. I have indicated several times that Germany got off lightly after the Great War. I know that that is not always a fashionable opinion, but the facts repudiate the idea that a Carthaginian peace was in fact imposed upon Germany. No division was made of the great masses of the German people. No portion of Germany inhabited by Germans was detached, except where there was the difficulty of disentangling the population of the Silesian border. No attempt was made to divide Germany as between the northern and southern portions which might well have tempted the conquerors at that time. No State was carved out of Germany. She underwent no serious territorial loss, except the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, which she herself had seized only 50 years before. The great mass of the Germans remained united after all that Europe had passed through, and they are more vehemently united to-day than ever before. You may talk of the War indemnity; what has happened there? I suppose that the Germans paid, in round terms, £1,000,000,000. But they had borrowed £2,000,000,000 at the same time, and there are no signs of their paying back.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1933/apr/13/adjournment-easter-1#column_2790 in the House of Commons (13 April 1933) The 1930s

War, People, Peace, Idea

“We have to put pressure on countries that are misusing our policies. Taking a strong stand, looking back to, I think it was Roosevelt who said, ‘walk softly, and carry a big stick.’ Well, you’ve got to do that economically as well. You’ve got to stand up for your rights. You can’t cave to foreign countries and say, ‘we’ll take all our missiles down if you take your missiles down,’ and turn around and let them develop their missiles. In other words, you got to trust and verify—but I think verify first.”

Roy Moore (1947) American former judge

Breitbart News Interview (2017)

Thinking, Strong, Country

“Emily looked at him for a long time. There were so many things she wanted to know—but she wanted not to know them even more. She didn’t want any more answers. He had been the one thing she could trust, the one person she could rely on. She wanted to beg him to be that way again. But it wasn’t him who had changed. It was her. It was her own credulity she really wanted back. And credulity, like virtue, could be lost only once.”

M. K. Hobson book The Native Star

Source: The Native Star (2010), Chapter 17, “The Cockatrice” (p. 237)

Way, Change, Time, Personality

“ Such complicated and apparently unnecessary behavior leads philosophers, both amateur and professional, to ask over and over again, "Why can't human beings live simply and naturally?" Often the complexity of human life makes us look enviously at the relative simplicity of such lives as dogs and cats lead. But the symbolic process, which makes possible the absurdities of human conduct, also makes possible language and therefore all the human achievements dependent upon language. The fact that more things can go wrong with motorcars than with wheelbarrows is no reason for going back to wheelbarrows. Similarly, the fact that the symbolic process makes complicated follies possible is no reason for wanting to return to a cat-and-dog existence. A better solution is to understand the symbolic process so that instead of being its victims we become, to some degree at least, its masters. ”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), The Symbolic Process, p. 26

Life, Dogs, Behavior, Cats

“There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Defendant

Source: The Defendant (1901), "A Defence of Baby-Worship"

Truth, Religion, Star, Understanding

“My own life in India, since I came to it in 1893 to make it my home, has been devoted to one purpose, to give back to India her ancient freedom.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Indian critiques of Gandhi http://books.google.co.in/books?id=inhDAAAAYAAJ, p. 82

Life, Home, Freedom

“In dreams you sometimes fall from a height, or are stabbed, or beaten, but you never feel pain unless, perhaps, you really bruise yourself against the bedstead, then you feel pain and almost always wake up from it. It was the same in my dream. I did not feel any pain, but it seemed as though with my shot everything within me was shaken and everything was suddenly dimmed, and it grew horribly black around me. I seemed to be blinded, and it benumbed, and I was lying on something hard, stretched on my back; I saw nothing, and could not make the slightest movement.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), III

Pain, Dreams, Feeling, Lying

“The various structures of sentences in any given language, comprising for example at least two nominal pieces and a verbal piece must be collated, and such categories as voice, mood, affirmative, negative, tense, aspect, gender, number, person and case, if found applicable and valid in descriptive statement, are to be abstracted from, and referred back to the sentence as a whole.”

John Rupert Firth (1890–1960) English linguist

Source: "A synopsis of linguistic theory 1930-1955." 1957, p. 20

Mood, Personality

“When I came back to Ottawa I found myself faced with a very difficult parliamentary situation… I think it is fair to say that Mr St Laurent, on the basis of private discussions with the Opposition leaders, did not expect any serious division in the House of Commons over our policies on Suez. However, bitter division there was, and we were condemned strongly for deserting our two mother countries. The Conservative attack was led by Howard Green (who in June 1959 was to become Secretary of State for External Affairs). Green accused us of being the "chore boy" of the United States, of being a better friend to Nasser than to Britain and France, and claimed that our government "by its actions in the Suez crisis, has made this month of November 1956, the most disgraceful period for Canada in the history of this nation," and that it was "high time Canada had a government which will not knife Canada's best friends in the back." Any feeling of exaltation and conceit or euphoria at our success in avoiding a general war in the Middle East (if in fact we had avoided it by our actions) was dissipated for me by the vigour of the assaults on my conduct, my wisdom, my rectitude, my integrity, and my everything else by an embattled Conservative Opposition. It was a very vigorous debate reflected in the general election of the next year. But I have always believed, and I think the great weight of Canadian opinion strongly approved what we had done. Further, I am absolutely certain and will remain certain in my own mind that the New Commonwealth would have soon shattered over the issue had the British not backed down.”

Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972) 14th Prime Minister of Canada

Memoirs, Volume Two

Wisdom, War, Feeling, History

“Mainstream films have occupied Hollywood but you can get bored very easily. It can be very repetitive and I think now we want something fresh and something inspiring and different, daring. The mainstream film is very expensive to make and it scares people. It's made for the worldwide audience, you have to please so many people, and the business men start running the movies rather than artists. This is back to the oldest way of Hollywood filmmaking, creating a fantasy, but it has been lost. It seems to take a foreign language film to recoup that ultimate movie viewing experience.”

Ang Lee (1954) Taiwanese-born American film director, screenwriter and film producer

On Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon http://www.imdb.com/news/wenn/2001-03-12#celeb4, quoted at IMDb Movie/TV News (12 March 2001).

Men, People, Way, Business

“A change had indeed been brought by the emancipation of the serfs, but there was little outward sign of it. The muzhik remained, to all appearance, what he was before: in fact, as our train drew into St. Petersburg, the peasants, with their sheepskin caftans, cropped hair, and stupid faces, brought back the old impressions so vividly that I seemed not to have been absent a week. The old atmosphere of repression was evident everywhere. I had begun my experience of it under Nicholas I, had seen a more liberal policy under Alexander II, but now found a recurrence of reaction, and everywhere a pressure which deadened all efforts at initiating a better condition of things.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Vol. 2 (1922), p. 7

Stupidity, Effort, Appearance, Change

“The cover for Volume 9 seems to be very well liked. I received many letters discussing their opinions regarding it. “Follow me! That’s what it is trying to convey!!” or “Men speak with their backs!!” or “It’s like saying everybody’s fate is resting upon my back, what a great cover!!” and stuff like that…. Can’t bear to say “It’s because drawing the colonel’s face is really troublesome”… Can’t say it… -->”

Hiromu Arakawa (1973) award winning Japanese manga artist

Interview with mobuta.com (2004)

Men, Fate, Drawing

“… my mother will settle on the rug and unclip the bellows, pulling and pushing them with a mild aquatic motion with her left hand, the fingers of the right hand flowering upon the keys, the wedding-bangle suspended around her wrist. Each time the bellows are pushed, the round holes on the back open and close like eyes. Without the body music is not possible; it provides the hollow space for resonance as does the curved wooden box of the violin or the round urn of the sitar. At the moment of singing, breath tips in the swelling diaphragm as water does in a pitcher. The voice-box itself is a microscopic harp, its cords tautening and relaxing with each inflection.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Afternoon Raag (1993)

Music, Flowers, Wedding, Water

“Well let the poets cry themselves to sleep
And all their tearful words will turn back into steam”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

Tear, Sleep, Cry

“a Masonic plot backed by the Jews”

Hutton Gibson (1918) American writer

About the Vatican Council, 3 August 2003 article mentions this was published 4 months ago http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/movies/mel-gibson-s-martyrdom-complex.html

“After Charlie [Charlie Monroe, Bill's brother] and me broke up, I was searching for a name for my group. And I wanted a name from the state of Kentucky. Before I come to WSM in Nashville - I started on WWNC, Asheville - why, I'd already decided on using the name "bluegrass," because that's what they'd call Kentucky, the Blue Grass State. So I just used "Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys," and that let people throughout the country know I was from Kentucky, saved a lot of people from having to ask me where I was from. Governor Ford, he claims I've done more than any one man for Kentucky - every time I use the word "bluegrass" it leads back to the state.”

Bill Monroe (1911–1996) American bluegrass musician

People, Search, Boy, Grass

“One of the most amazing and perplexing features of mainstream Christianity is that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them to be pastors. They are taught critical approaches to Scripture, they learn about the discrepancies and contradictions, they discover all sorts of historical errors and mistakes, they come to realize that it is difficult to know whether Moses existed or what Jesus actually said and did, they find that there are other books that were at one time considered canonical but that ultimately did not become part of Scripture (for example, other Gospels and Apocalypses), they come to recognize that a good number of the books of the Bible are pseudonymous (for example, written in the name of an apostle by someone else), that in fact we don't have the original copies of any of the biblical books but only copies made centuries later, all of which have been altered. They learn all this, and yet when they enter church ministry they appear to put it back on the shelf.”

Bart D. Ehrman book Jesus, Interrupted

Source: Jesus, Interrupted (2009), Ch. 1: 'A Historical Assault on Faith'

Books, Error, Learning, Appearance

“If u magically had 0 emails, in 10 days you'd be back to what you had. Issue is not volume, but tolerance of backlog.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

20 July 2011 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/93804918770638848 Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

“God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there's no turning back.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Part 6 : Doing Sixty, p. 270
Moving Beyond Words (1994)

God, Question

“I don't believe in coincidences. I believe that if you're doing the right thing, you are handed back pieces of yourself. It's like something goes right for you and this will keep you going for six weeks, and then your next test is going to be designed for you.”

Liza Tarbuck (1964) English actress and television and radio presenter

Asked whether things are meant, while been interviewed by The Independent on Sunday, May 25, 2003 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20030525/ai_n12738402

“Going back years, I am absolutely certain that I have taken far more extreme positions on people who deny the Holocaust than you have…Even to enter into the arena of debate on whether the Nazis carried out such atrocities is already to lose one's humanity.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, 1992

People

“I don't think it's a good attitude in your life to feel that you have to be rich to have self-esteem. You know, I saw a billboard in New York I wish I had photographed. It was for the TNN network. It said three words against a patriotic background of red, white and blue — BIGGER, YOUNGER, RICHER. Now, I find that fascinating: 'Bigger, younger, richer.' This whole idea of being wealthy has gone too far. I never ride in a limousine, you know. I feel gross if I get in a limousine. One good thing about the sixties was it sort of was the opposite back then. You looked silly trying to appear rich.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Rolling Stone interview (2002)

Life, Feeling, Idea, Thinking

“I know that something dies when i give up my books, and that my memory keeps going back to them with mournful nostalgia.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Stealing Books, p. 238.
A History of Reading (1996)

Books, Nostalgia, Memory

“Ascending modern rationalism, in its speculative as well as empirical form, shows a striking contrast between extreme critical radicalism in scientific and philosophic method on the one hand, and an uncritical quietism in the attitude toward established and functioning social institutions. Thus Descartes' ego cogitans was to leave the “great public bodies” untouched, and Hobbes held that “the present ought always to be preferred, maintained, and accounted best.” Kant agreed with Locke in justifying revolution if and when it has succeeded in organizing the whole and in preventing subversion. However, these accommodating concepts of Reason were always contradicted by the evident misery and injustice of the “great public bodies” and the effective, more or less conscious rebellion against them. Societal conditions existed which provoked and permitted real dissociation. from the established state of affairs; a private as well as political dimension was present in which dissociation could develop into effective opposition, testing its strength and the validity of its objectives. With the gradual closing of this dimension by the society, the self-limitation of thought assumes a larger significance. The interrelation between scientific-philosophical and societal processes, between theoretical and practical Reason, asserts itself "behind the back” of the scientists and philosophers. The society bars a whole type of oppositional operations and behavior; consequently, the concepts pertaining to them are rendered illusory or meaningless. Historical transcendence appears as metaphysical transcendence, not acceptable to science and scientific thought. The operational and behavioral point of view, practiced as a “habit of thought” at large, becomes the view of the established universe of discourse and action, needs and aspirations. The “cunning of Reason” works, as it so often did, in the interest of the powers that be. The insistence on operational and behavioral concepts turns against the efforts to free thought and behavior from the given reality and for the suppressed alternatives.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 15-16

Behavior, Reality, Effort, Universe

“We used to pay too little attention to utopias, or even disregard them altogether, saying with regret they were impossible of realisation. Now indeed they seem to be able to be brought about far more easily than we supposed, and we are actually faced by an agonising problem of quite another kind: how can we prevent their final realisation? … Utopias are more realisable than those 'realist politics' that are only the carefully calculated policies of office-holders, and towards utopias we are moving. But it is possible that a new age is already beginning, in which cultured and intelligent people will dream of ways to avoid ideal states and to get back to a society that is less 'perfect' and more free.”

Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) Russian philosopher

Source: The End of Our Time (1919), pp. 187-188. Aldous Huxley used this passage (in French translation) as the epigraph to Brave New World.

People, Age, Dreams, Way

“Joy can come alive like that, when random pieces of history and rhythm, pause and expectation, melody and lyric, suddenly rearrange themselves into a pattern that leaps up, back against the wall, and catches your heart.”

Andrea Lewis (writer) Microsoft employee

"Forty Years" Slow Trains Vol.7, Issue 3 (2008)
2000-09

History, Heart, Joy

“Against a strong kicker there are two ways to fight. If you are experienced, just go into their center and hit. But if you aren't, then back up. Each time the opponent misses, he will lose one degree of confidence. After a while you have more chances.”

Wong Shun Leung (1935–1997) martial artist

Wong Shun Leung's Ways to Beat a Good Kicker Kicking and Kneeing Source: Comments From Wong Shun Leung and Tsui Shan Ting, by Ray Van Raamsdonk http://www.springtimesong.com/wcqanda.htm

Way, Confidence, Strong, Chance

“Once Italy is in, with an appreciated currency, the country will soon be back on the ropes, just as in 1992, when the currency came under attack.”

Rudiger Dornbusch (1942–2002) German economist

Euro fantasies, 1996

Country

“I doubt that Fidel will ever come back to power. I think he is slowly going to the great beyond. Too slowly... he could have gone a long time ago.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

Dutch television interview (March 1, 2007)
2007, 2008

Thinking, Time

“Walking back to happiness with you,
Said farewell to lonliness I knew,
Laid aside foolish pride,
Learnt the truth from tears I cried.”

Mike Hawker (1956) American politician

Song Walking Back to Happiness

Truth, Tear, Happiness

“Independent nationalism is unacceptable to the West, no matter where it is, and it has to be driven back into subordination. In the case of Grenada, you can do it in a weekend; in the case of the Soviet Union it may take 70 years. But these are matters of scale, the logic is essentially the same.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Forum with John Pilger and Harold Pinter in Islington, London, May 1994 https://web.archive.org/web/20000823015510/http://www.redpepper.org.uk/cularch/xalmeida.html. Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994

“I wish the world was flat like the old days
Then i could travel just by folding a map
No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways
There'd be no distance that could hold us back”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

The New Year
Transatlanticism (2003)

World, Travel, Speed, Training

“In Castleford, where I was born, there are what are called sand holes. They are caves where the sand has been excavated and they run into the side of certain hillsides, quite a long distance, and you can get lost in them. Now these had a fascination for me, and as boys we would take a reel of cotton many yards long and go into the caves. But one wouldn't go further than the cotton because it was dark. You wouldn't know your way back. In those days there weren't flash lamps, so one only had a match or something, and the matches were these brimstone matches. And the caves always had this fascination for me, these holes did. Digging into something always had this fascination for me. So I think it's not so much Archipenko, because the Archipenko hole is a decorative one. I mean he makes a hole in a breast instead of a fullness, but the hole acts the same.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

1970 and later
Source: The Donald Caroll interviews, Talmy Franklin, London 1973, p. 378

Way, Boy, Thinking

“And now, the American people, proud of our country, proud of our freedom, proud of ourselves, will reject the San Francisco Democrats and send Ronald Reagan back to the White House.”

Jeane Kirkpatrick (1926–2006) American diplomat and Presidential advisor

1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas. Full transcript http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/conventions/san.diego/facts/GOP.speeches.past/84.kirkpatrick.shtml

People, Freedom, Housing, Country

“Séances date back to the 1800s after three sisters by the name of Fox claimed to be able to contact the dead. They toured America with their demonstrations and attracted the rich and famous and by the end of the century séances had taken off all over the western world. Spirits were manifested, tambourines flew, ectoplasm impossibly erupted from entranced mediums. Then, after forty years of this, rather embarrassed by what they’d started, one of the sisters, Margaret Fox, confessed that they were frauds. The miracles which had started it all off had been a scam. But her confession made very little difference and spiritualism continues to appeal to many people today.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Derren Brown: Séance (2004)

People, World, Fraud, Sister

“A fellow with a great voice shouted, "Hearken now to the words of the President of the Confederate States of America, the honorable Woodrow Wilson." The president turned this way and that, surveying the great swarm of people all around him in the moment of silence the volley had brought. Then, swinging back to face the statue of George Washington- and, incidentally, Reginald Bartlett- he said, "The father of our country warned us against entangling alliances, a warning that served us well when we were yoked to the North, before its arrogance created in our Confederacy what had never existed before- a national consciousness. That was our salvation and our birth as a free and independent country." Silence broke then, with a thunderous outpouring of applause. Wilson raised a bony right hand. Slowly, silence, of a semblance of it, returned. The president went on, "But our birth of national consciousness made the United States jealous, and they tried to beat us down. We found loyal friends in England and France. Can we now stand aside when the German tyrant threatens to grind them under his iron heel?" "No!" Bartlett shouted himself hoarse, along with thousands of his countrymen. Stunned, deafened, he had trouble hearing what Wilson said next: "Jealous still, the United States in their turn also developed a national consciousness, a dark and bitter one, as any so opposed to ours must be." He spoke not like a politician inflaming a crowd but like a professor setting out arguments- he had taken one path before choosing the other. "The German spirit of arrogance and militarism has taken hold in the United States; they see only the gun as the proper arbiter between nations, and their president takes Wilhelm as his model. He struts and swaggers and acts the fool in all regards."”

Harry Turtledove book The Great War: American Front

Now he sounded like a politician; he despised Theodore Roosevelt, and took pleasure in Roosevelt's dislike for him.
Source: The Great War: American Front (1998), p. 32

People, Pleasure, Fools, Way

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Quotes about back
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