Quotes about crack
page 4

“What a bridge
Of glass I walk upon, over a river
Of certain ruin! Mine own weighty fears
Cracking what should support me: And those helps,
Which confidence yields to others, are from me
Ravish'd by doubts, and wilful jealousy.”

Philip Massinger The Bondman

The Bondman (1623), Act IV, scene iii.

Fear, Jealousy, Confidence, Support

“Yeah. ‘Environment’ was very big for a while. Ecology Now stickers on the windshields of cars belonging to hairy young men—cars which dripped oil wherever they parked and took off in clouds of smoke thicker than your pipe can produce…Before long, the fashionable cause was something else, I forget what. Anyhow, that whole phase—the wave after wave of causes—passed away. People completely stopped caring…
I feel a moral certainty that a large part of the disaster grew from this particular country, the world’s most powerful, the vanguard country for things both good and ill…never really trying to meet the responsibilities of power.
We’ll make halfhearted attempts to stop some enemies in Asia, and because the attempts are halfhearted we’ll piss away human lives—on both sides—and treasure—to no purpose. Hoping to placate the implacable, we’ll estrange our last few friends. Men elected to national office will solemnly identify inflation with rising prices, which is like identifying red spots with the measles virus, and slap on wage and price controls, which is like papering the cracks in a house whose foundations are sliding away. So economic collapse brings international impotence…As for our foolish little attempts to balance what we drain from the environment against what we put back—well, I mentioned that car carrying the ecology sticker.
At first Americans will go on an orgy of guilt. Later they’ll feel inadequate. Finally they’ll turn apathetic. After all, they’ll be able to buy any anodyne, any pseudo-existence they want.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 5 (pp. 53-54)

Men, People, World, Hope

“And as he lay there a far crack of lightning went bluely down the sky and bequeathed him in an embryonic bird's first fissured vision of the world and transpiring instant and outrageous from dark to dark a final view of the grotto and the shapeless white plasm struggling upon the rich and incunabular moss like a lank swamp hare.”

Cormac McCarthy book Outer Dark

Outer Dark (1968)

World, Bird

“Four men describe how their wives hit them in the lower back with a pole, cracked them over the head or in the neck with a frying pan… the audience renews its laughter after each story. The men are part of a “PMS Men’s Support Group.” Imagine an audience of men laughing as battered women describe how their husbands threatened them with brain or spinal cord injuries by battering them over their heads or in their necks with a frying pan.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Women, Men, Imagination, Support

“What navel-snipper [midwife] wiped and washed you as you squirmed about, you crack-brained creature?”

Hipponax

τίς ὸμφαλητόμος σε τὸν διοπλῆγα
ἔψησε κἀπέλουσεν ἀσκαρίζοντα
Attributed by Aelius Herodianus (fl. 2nd c. CE), 'On Inflections'; as cited by Douglas Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry, Loeb Classical Library (1999), page 367.

“We didn't starve. We spent wisely. Like I tell people in the ghetto, "If you can buy guns and bullets, why can't you buy food? You can buy heroin and crack cocaine, so why can't you buy bread and butter and milk? Why can't you pay your rent?" There's a lot of people in the ghetto who go out and get a fancy car and all that. The car costs more than their house. Meanwhile, your kids need shoes. That's not cool.”

Mr. T (1952) American actor and retired professional wrestler

The Onion A.V. Club, June 26th, 2002

People, Food, Cars, Shoe

“Yes I have smoked crack cocaine. But, no, do I? Am I an addict? No. Have I tried it? Um, probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably approximately about a year ago.”

Rob Ford (1969–2016) Canadian politician, 64th Mayor of Toronto

Remarks after admitting smoking crack cocaine at a press conference http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/05/toronto-mayor-rob-ford-admits-crack-use (5 November 2013) 2010s, 2013

“I quit smoking. It's very hard, but I'm glad I did. I'll tell you, this war against drugs in the US is the reason I quit because I got too fuckin' sick of being on the wrong side. The war against drugs, which actually is a war against civil rights, don't ever be fooled again. If they cared about us they'd get rid of the number one drug which is cigarettes; kills more people than crack, coke, and heroin combined, times 100. Legal.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Salvation (2005)

War, People, Fools, Time

“We will feel the draft blowing through the cracks in the structure of causality.”

Cees Nooteboom book The Following Story

The Following Story (1991)

Feeling

“The Idealization of deep flaws seeping through coiled cracks;
The reality we all want to avoid is a plagued sickness we choose to live with.”

Frances Bean Cobain (1992) American artist

2 January 2015 https://twitter.com/alka_seltzer666/status/551059369576521728 Twitter https://twitter.com/alka_seltzer666 posts

Reality

“I haven't had a wink of sleep since I left Wilhelmshohe. I'm gradually cracking up. The troops continue to retreat. I have lost all confidence in them.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Georg Alexander von Müller's diary entry (9 September 1918), quoted in Georg Alexander von Müller, The Kaiser and His Court (London: Macdonald, 1961), p. 343
1910s

Confidence, Sleep

“Mom, I have something to tell you. My thong, is so far up my crack right now.”

Kelly Osbourne (1984) English singer-songwriter, actress, television presenter and fashion designer

The Osbournes

Moms

“Grip your gun like a man, brother!
Let's have a crack at Holy Russia,
Mother
Russia
with her big, fat arse!
Freedom, freedom! Down with the cross!”

Alexander Blok The Twelve

The Twelve (1918); translation from Jon Stallworthy and Peter France (trans.) The Twelve, and Other Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) p. 146.

Freedom

“I’d sign him right here and now, and I’d go wherever it takes to land a player like that, he’s a "Crack" (a "match changing" player) player and I’m a fan of everything that he does, and what’s more now is the prefect time to sign him as he’s got a wealth of experience and has reached full maturity.”

Raúl González (1977) Spanish footballer

Ottmar Hitzfeld 2007 http://www.soccer.com/blog/2007/02/hitzfeld_its_the_perfect_time.blog About

Change, Time, Wealth

“Needless to say, if I knew my daughter would eventually develop a fondness for methamphetamine or crack cocaine, I might never sleep again. But if she does not try a psychedelic like psilocybin or LSD at least once in her adult life, I will worry that she may have missed one of the most important rites of passage a human being can experience.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, Drugs and the Meaning of Life http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-life/ (5 July 2011) 2010s

Life, Sleep, Daughters

“Typography cracked the voices of silence.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 283

Silence

“It struck me there might be a reason why Helena Justina whipped along at such a cracking pace: she did not want to be stuck in the wilderness with my corpse. I thanked Jove for her ruthless good sense. I did not want my corpse to be stuck with her in any case.”

Lindsey Davis book The Silver Pigs

The Silver Pigs

Sense

“On the last Sunday in September in smoggy Los Angeles, announcer Vin Scully riffed through some notes as Willie McCovey came to bat for the last time that season before the Chavez Ravine folks. "Let's see," said Scully, "no home runs since September 11…. Well, it's been a long season. McCovey's got to be tired. Big as he is, he's probably worn out." So Scully was looking down at his papers when he heard the familiar crack. Worn-out Willie had just driven the ball over the right field fence, over the bullpen, and into Glendale. Scully did not see the pitch McCovey hit. It had been a palm ball lobbed up by Pete Mikkelson, the kind of pitch that floats up like a dead flounder, and usually goes about as far as dead flounders fly when you hit one. If you hit one. This one traveled a couple of miles or more, and Willie McCovey had home run number 45, to break his tie with Hank Aaron and win for McCovey his second consecutive National League home-run title.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Willie McCovey: Now No. 1 Willie," in Baseball Stars of 1970 (March 1970), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 19
Sports-related

Angels, Travel, Home, Time

“We know, for instance, that there is a direct, inverse relationship between frequency of family meals and social problems. Bluntly stated, members of families who eat together regularly are statistically less likely to stick up liquor stores, blow up meth labs, give birth to crack babies, commit suicide, or make donkey porn. If Little Timmy had just had more meatloaf, he might not have grown up to fill chest freezers with Cub Scout parts.”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

Medium Raw (2010)

Family, Birth, Problem, Suicide

“Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail,
The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder,
That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze
Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder
Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind,
Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind,
An’ the poet and the painter far behind his rightful time
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), Chimes of Freedom

Freedom, Time, Madness

“The number of stands I invented for these telescopes it would not be easy to assign. …In 1781 I began to construct a thirty foot aërial reflector, and having made a stand for it, I cast the mirror thirty-six inches in diameter. This was cracked in cooling. I cast it a second time, and the furnace I had built in my house broke.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works".

Time, Housing

“When you try to generate ideas, think of yourself as a sales person knocking on a whole subdivision of doors. Some won't open at all, some will open a suspicious crack, and some will slam in your face. But the more doors you knock on, the greater your chances of being invited in.”

Tim Hurson (1946) Creativity theorist, author and speaker

Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking

Idea, Thinking, Chance, Personality

“I was your luxury. For nineteen years I have been put in your man’s world and was forbidden to touch anything and you made me think that all was going very well and that I did not have to worry about anything but putting flowers in vases. Why did you lie to me? Why did you keep me ignorant, if it was to admit to me one day that this world is cracking and that you are all powerless and to make me choose between a suicide and a murder?”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Jessica to Hugo, Act 5, sc. 2
Dirty Hands (1948)

Lie, World, Flowers, Thinking

“(mimicking a fish's gills wither side of his neck) "Hey…" (cracks) You paid to see it… "hey… Ever eaten a worm?" (2nd fish) "What? When did you ever eat a worm?" "Oh, one day, me and my buddy were laying on the bank… trying to catch our breath…"”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

thank you, for those of you who got that...
15° Off Cool (2007)

Fish

“The border cracks open facing Asia and the East.
With the West and Europe behind me,
I, the guard, protect it.”

Uuno Kailas (1901–1933) Finnish poet and writer

Uuno Kailas, cited in: Mikael af Malmborg, ‎Bo Stråth (2002), The Meaning of Europe, p. 157

“I know that Lindsay (Lohan) has lost a lot of weight recently, due to diet, Pilates and crack. Without the diet and Pilates.”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Strong Black Woman (2006)

“The little guy's face was a bloody mess. Between the puffballs of blue-black flesh that used to be eyelids, the dull gleam of shock-deadened pupils watched Dilwick uncomprehendingly. His lips were swollen things of lacerated skin, with slow trickles of blood making crooked paths from the corners of his mouth through the stubble of a beard to his chin, dripping onto a stained shirt.
Dilwick stood just outside the glare of the lamp, dangling like the Sword of Damocles over the guy's head. He was sweating too. His shirt clung to the meaty expanse of his huge neck. He pushed his beefy hand further into the leather glove and swung. The solid smack of his open hand on the little guy's jaw was nasty. His chair went over backward and his head cracked against the concrete floor of the room like a ripe melon. Dilwick put his hands on his hips and glared down at the caricature that once was human.”

Mickey Spillane book The Twisted Thing

The Twisted Thing (1966)

Guy

“How shall I tell what I saw? The towers are not all broken — here and there one still stands, like a great tree in a forest, and the birds nest high. But the towers themselves look blind, for the gods are gone. I saw a fishhawk, catching fish in the river. I saw a little dance of white butterflies over a great heap of broken stones and columns. I went there and looked about me — there was a carved stone with cut — letters, broken in half. I can read letters but I could not understand these. They said UBTREAS. There was also the shattered image of a man or a god. It had been made of white stone and he wore his hair tied back like a woman's. His name was ASHING, as I read on the cracked half of a stone. I thought it wise to pray to ASHING, though I do not know that god.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book By the Waters of Babylon

Source: By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

God, Understanding, Bird, Fish

“[Crack] used to be called freebase when white rich people did it. Then it got sold in batches, and white rich people were still doing it, and it was still called freebase. And then all of a sudden this guy named Ricky Freeway Ross started making it and he happened to be black, and— everything is political— and, then it turned into "crack."”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

Explaining the racist politics of the history of cocaine; The Howard Stern Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXZ7Wwv1og0 (2005) 1996–2005

People, Guy

“We don't have that kind of a club. We've been a relaxed team all season and I expect us to be the same in the Series. Pressure didn't get us down during the National League race. We fought off Milwaukee, St. Louis and Los Angeles without cracking. Now that we have come this far, we aren't going to look back now. As a team I would have to rate the Braves over the Yankees. If the Braves had won the pennant, I believe they would have been good enough to beat the Yankees, too. We have a better field club and better pitching than they do. We'll get our share of runs, too.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "World Series Prediction: 'Pirates in Six Games,' Says Clemente" by Bill Nunn, Jr. in The New Pittsburgh Courier (October 8, 1960), p. 25
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1960</big>
Context: "The Yankees aren't going to frighten this club. Except for power, we are a better all-round club than the Yankees and this is going to pay off in a world championship for Pittsburgh in six games." Clemente [... ] isn't worried about the Pirates being affected by Series jitters. "We don't have that kind of a club. We've been a relaxed team all season and I expect us to be the same in the Series. Pressure didn't get us down during the National League race. We fought off Milwaukee, St. Louis and Los Angeles without cracking. Now that we have come this far, we aren't going to look back now. As a team I would have to rate the Braves over the Yankees. If the Braves had won the pennant, I believe they would have been good enough to beat the Yankees, too. We have a better field club and better pitching than they do. We'll get our share of runs, too." Clemente, who played in Yankee Stadium during the All-Star Game, admitted the late afternoon shadows in the New York park could be a disadvantage to the Pirates outfielders. "The ball is hard to follow and it may give us some trouble. I really don't think it will make a difference in the outcome of the Series though."

Angels, Season

“We need a new Mario game where you rescue the princess in the first ten minutes, and for the rest of the game you try to push down that sick feeling in your stomach telling you she's "damaged goods," a concept detailed again and again in the profoundly sex-negative instruction booklet, and when Luigi makes a crack about her and Bowser, you break his nose and immediately regret it. Peach asks you, in the quiet of her mushroom castle bedroom, "Do you still love me?"”

Joey Comeau book Overqualified

and you pretend to be asleep. You press A button rhythmically, to control your breath, to keep even.
Letter to Nintendo, pg 40.
Overqualified

Love, Sex, Feeling, Game

“I studied that first Karpov-Kasparov match for a year and a half before I cracked it, what they were doing, and discovered that it was all prearranged move-by-move. There's no doubt of it in my mind.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Radio Interview, June 27 1999 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_08_3.MP3 1990s

Study

“Here [in Slough], soon after my arrival, I began to lay the foundation upon which by degrees the whole structure was raised as it now stands, and the speculum being highly polished and put into the tube, I had the first view through it on February 19, 1787. …the first speculum, by a mismanagement of the person who cast it, came out thinner on the centre of the back than was intended, and on account of its weakness would not permit a good figure to be given to it. …A second mirror was cast January 26, 1788, but it cracked in cooling. February 16 we recast it, and it proved to be of a proper degree of strength. October 24 it was brought to a pretty good figure and polish, and I observed the planet Saturn with it. But not being satisfied, I continued to work upon it till August 27, 1789, when it was tried upon the fixed stars, and I found it to give a pretty sharp image. Large stars were a little affected with scattered light, owing to many remaining scratches on the mirror. August the 28th, 1789, having brought the telescope to the parallel of Saturn, I discovered a sixth satellite of that planet, and also saw the spots upon Saturn better than I had ever seen them before, so that I may date the finishing of the forty-foot telescope from that time.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works".

Star, Light, Time, Personality

“The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Pt. III, ch. 1, sec. 7.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

History, Universe

“I'd smile so much my face would crack in two
Then you could fix it with your kissing glue
I'd like that
Yes, I'd like that”

Andy Partridge (1953) British musician

"I'd Like That".
Apple Venus Volume 1 (1999)

Smile, Kiss

“The concrete shell of this stove would surely crack if its strength were not reinforced with steel rod, wire fabric, or barbed wire. The latter is our choice. We laid continuous strands of barbed wire between the rows of slip form masonry. The thermal expansion rate of concrete is the same as steel up to a temperature comparable to boiling water… Beyond that, steel expands at a faster rate than concrete. At a temperature of about 500 degrees F., the bond between the concrete and steel is destroyed… The type of aggregate in the mix is primarily responsible for this kind of failure.”

Ken Kern American writer

p, 125
Ken Kern's Masonry Stove (1983)

Failure, Water

“Back and forth the fantastic tableaux would spin, past his cruel plebe hazing, the self-discovery at the West Texas Military Academy, the patriarchal Judge MacArthur, all beard and cigar smoke, presiding over dynastic feats at Washington's 1201 N Street; the chimes of the drawing-room clock there telling off the quarters; the ceremonial changing of the guard at Leavenworth; his father's tales of Sherman's dauntless Boys in Blue; his mother's imperious commands to fight and fight and never lower his blade short of victory; the clean crack of Krag rifles and the warm prickling of desert sand as he played with his brother outside the fort stockade; the rumbling of the sunset gun and Pinky's face tilting downward, her lambent smile gilding the child's upturned features while he clutched at her cascading skirts; the yellow notes of the bugles as he stirred in his cradle; the chant of sergeants hawking cadence on the parade ground outside; and, snapping proudly in the overarching sky above him, the flag, and the flag, and the flag.”

William Manchester (1922–2004) (April 1, 1922 – June 1, 2004) American author, journalist and historian

Source: American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964 (1978), p. 709

Smile, Boy, Change, Past

“O ah hear her walkin',
Walkin' barefoot 'cross the floor-boards,
All thru this lonesome night,
And ah hear her crying too.
Hot-tears come splashin' down,
Leaking thru the cracks,
Down upon my face, ah catch'em in my mouth!”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), From Her to Eternity

Tear, Cry, Night

“I see kids who are complete cynics. They're not dreaming. They're out there with high-powered weapons, smoking crack behind the 7-Eleven. They've seen it all. These kids are going to take us into 2000 and beyond. That's scary, man. I wouldn't say I'm pessimistic or optimistic. I'm more realistic, I guess. But not cynical. I look. I watch.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Quoted in Anthony Decurtis, "Rolling Stone 30th Anniversary Special: Johnny Depp," http://www.johnnydeppfan.com/interviews/rollingstone.htm Rolling Stone (1998)

Dreams

“You get first crack at the chicken balls if you get there early.”

Kerry Jackson

Radio From Hell (January 10, 2007)

“I truly felt, ultimate objective aside, that the Marines had something beautiful about them. Fraternity, initiation, mentoring, honor, valor, duty—beautiful male attributes in a society in which masculinity is maligned. I can get a bit like that, a bit D. H. Lawrence, a bit jazzed on unexamined humanity. When I chatted on camera to a pair of perfectly assembled teen Marines who sat handsomely in their fatigues, rifles pristine and bolt upright at their sides, I was overwhelmed by the salvation that the military offers to boys that may otherwise have fallen through the cracks.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Beauty, Boy

“God.. crack. Only in America would a guy invent crack. Only in America would there be a guy that cocaine wasn't good enough for. You know? One guy walking around New York City back in 1985 going, "You know, that cocaine's pretty good, but I want something that makes my heart explode as soon as I smoke it, ok? I want to take one suck off that crack pipe and go *snort* *splat* Now I'm happy! I'm dead, the ultimate high!"”

Denis Leary (1957) American actor and comedian

Standup routines, No Cure for Cancer (1993)

God, Happiness, Guy, Heart

“We had an inspection today of the brigade. The Twenty-third was pronounced the crack regiment in appearance, … [but] I could see only six to ten in a company of the old men. They all smiled as I rode by. But as I passed away I couldn’t help dropping a few natural tears. I felt as I did when I saw them mustered in at Camp Chase.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (17 December 1864)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Men, Smile, Nature, Tear

“"At 11:00 PM, the police came to my mother's house to eject her… they locked her up for being a loser." - My Mother Smokes Crack Rocks”

Wesley Willis (1963–2003) American singer-songwriter

Lyrics, Solo

Housing

“Margaret: Haven't you done as much as God can reasonably want?
More: Well… finally… it isn't a matter of reason; finally it's a matter of love.
Alice: You're content, then, to be shut up here with mice and rats when you might be home with us!
More: Content? If they'd open a crack that wide I'd be through it. Well, has Eve run out of apples?
Margaret: I've not yet told you what the house is like, without you.
More: Don't, Meg.
Margaret: What we do in the evenings, now that you're not there.
More: Meg, have done!
Margaret: We sit in the dark because we've no candles. And we've no talk because we're wondering what they're doing to you here.
More: The King's more merciful than you. He doesn't use the rack.”

Robert Bolt A Man for All Seasons

Act II
A Man for All Seasons (1960)

Love, God, Home, Housing

“It's just a television show, we have fun with it and try to make each other crack up.”

David Boreanaz (1969) American actor, famous for Angel and Buffy

BBC interview

“Wickham is not an upwardly mobile community. It's dingy and gray as only a mill town can be. The streets are the color of a shoe bottom, and the only way to tell the difference between the bars and the homes is to look for the neon signs in the windows. The roads and sidewalks are uneven, the tar cracked and pale. Many of the people, especially the workers as they trudge home from the mills in the dying light, have the look of those who've long ago gotten used to the fact that no one remembers them. It's a place where the people are grateful for the seasons, because at least they confirm that time is actually moving on.”

Dennis Lehane book A Drink Before the War

Source: A Drink Before the War (1994), Ch. 8.

People, Color, Shoe, Way

“Oh, yeah, she's that snippy little Brit girl who takes all the parts so no one else gets a crack at it.”

Tracey Ullman book Tracey Takes On...

Rayleen Gibson (Tracey Takes On... character) on Tracey Ullman in "Tracey Takes On... Fame"
Tracey Takes On... (1996–99)

Girl, Parting

“A gun cracked, quite close to the tent. Soldier's instinct pulled Lee's head up. Then he smiled and laughed to himself. One of his staff officers, most likely, shooting at a possum or squirrel. He hoped the young man had scored a hit. But no sooner had the smile appeared than it vanished. The report of the gun sounded- odd. It had been an abrupt bark, not a pistol shot or the deeper boom of an Enfield rifle musket. Maybe it was a captured Federal weapon. The gun cracked again and again and again. Each report came closer to the one than two heartbeats were to each other. A Federal weapon indeed, Lee thought: one of those fancy repeaters their cavalry like so well. The fusillade went on and on. He frowned at the waste of precious cartridges- no Southern armory could easily duplicate them. He frowned once more, this time in puzzlement, when silence fell. He had automatically kept track of the number of rounds fired. No Northern rifle he knew was a thirty-shooter. He turned his mind back to the letter to President Davis. -Valley, he wrote. Then gunfire rang out again, an unbelievably rapid stutter of shots, altogether too quick to count and altogether unlike anything he had ever heard. He took off his glasses and set down the pen. Then he put on a hat and got up to see what was going on.”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 4

Smile, Hope, Silence, Appearance

“Oh yeah
In France a skinny man
Died of a big disease with a little name
By chance his girlfriend came across a needle
And soon she did the same
At home there are seventeen-year-old boys
And their idea of fun
Is being in a gang called The Disciples
High on crack, totin' a machine gun.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Sign o' the Times
Song lyrics, Sign O' the Times (1987)

Disease, Home, Boy, Idea

“Childhood and magic are married in this poem inscribed in infinity, like traces on walls or cracks in venerable walls, superimposed posters lacerated by wind, rain and poetry; calligraphy and ideograph intermerge in this equation.... in this sign.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

1915 - 1940
Source: a letter to art-seller in New York Pierre Matisse, [son of Henri Matisse, 19 February 1936]; the Pierre Matisse Gallery Archives, The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York MA 5020

Childhood

“Doctor Labyrinth, like most people who read a great deal and who have too much time on their hands, had become convinced that our civilization was going the way of Rome. He saw, I think, the same cracks forming that had sundered the ancient world, the world of Greece and Rome; and it was his conviction that presently our world, our society, would pass away as theirs did, and a period of darkness would follow.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

"The Preserving Machine" (1953), The Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick, v.1: The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1987)

People, World, Way, Thinking

“The principle of visibility is violated over and over again in everyday things. In numerous designs crucial parts are carefully hidden away. Handles on cabinets distract from some design aesthetics, and so they are deliberately made invisible or left out. The cracks that signify the existence of a door can also distract from the pure lines of the design, so these significant cues are also minimized or eliminated. The result can be a smooth expanse of gleaming material, with no sign of doors or drawers, let alone of how those doors and drawers might be operated.”

Donald A. Norman book The Design of Everyday Things

Source: The Design of Everyday Things (1988, 2002), Ch. 4, p. 100.

Parting

“We don't merge kernel code just because user space was written by a retarded monkey on crack.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Torvalds, Linus, 2015-06-23, <nowiki>Linus Torvalds on the LKM mailing list</nowiki>, 2015-02-07 https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/6/23/657, 2010s, 2015

“Seriously, any other town you go to there's this little devil and a little angel on your shoulder. A little good advice, a little bad advice. – You go to Las Vegas, there's like a devil and a devil and they're just battling it out the whole time. It's like, "Smoke some crack!" "Get a hooker!" And then I go, "YEA! Yea, this is a good town. Smoke some crack and get a hooker! Alright!"”

Bill Burr (1968) American actor, comedian and a celebrity podcaster

Premium Blend, episode [2.03], June 20, 1998

Angels, Time

“We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives..., not looking for flaws, but for potential.”

Ellen Goodman (1941) American journalist and writer

Attributed

Drawing, New Year

“They are smoking crack.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Torvalds Slams SCO, 2003-08-20, Galli, Peter, 2008-03-01, eWeek http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Past-News/Torvalds-Slams-SCO/, Notes: said about SCO. 2000s, 2000-04

“The mirror cracked from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Lady of Shalott

Pt. III, st. 5
The Lady of Shalott (1832)
Context: She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.

“The drug war has nothing to do with making communities livable or creating a decent future for black kids. On the contrary, prohibition is directly responsible for the power of crack dealers to terrorize whole neighborhoods.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Hell No, I Won't Go: End the War on Drugs", The Village Voice (19 September 1989) http://www.villagevoice.com/2005/10/18/hell-no-i-wont-go/ Context: The drug war has nothing to do with making communities livable or creating a decent future for black kids. On the contrary, prohibition is directly responsible for the power of crack dealers to terrorize whole neighborhoods. And every cent spent on the cops, investigators, bureaucrats, courts, jails, weapons, and tests required to feed the drug-war machine is a cent not spent on reversing the social policies that have destroyed the cities, nourished racism, and laid the groundwork for crack culture.

War, Communication, Future

“And I
in terror
but not in doubt of
what I must do
in anguish, in haste,
wrenched from the earth root after root,
the soil heaving and cracking, the moss tearing asunder —”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)
Context: And I
in terror
but not in doubt of
what I must do
in anguish, in haste,
wrenched from the earth root after root,
the soil heaving and cracking, the moss tearing asunder —
and behind me the others: my brothers
forgotten since dawn. In the forest
they too had heard,
and were pulling their roots in pain
out of a thousand years' layers of dead leaves,
rolling the rocks away,
breaking themselves
out of
their depths.

Tear

“There have been people — ever since I've had any kind of position in the world — who have accused me of being ruler of the world. I have to say that I think for the large part, I would have to decide to describe them as crack pots.”

David Rockefeller (1915–2017) American banker and philanthropist

In an interview with Benjamin Fulford (13 November 2007) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3704527408635856046 Context: There have been people — ever since I've had any kind of position in the world — who have accused me of being ruler of the world. I have to say that I think for the large part, I would have to decide to describe them as crack pots. It makes no sense whatsoever, and isn't true, and won't be true, and to raise it as a serious issue seems to me to be irresponsible.

People, World, Thinking, Parting

“These men are all cracked right across the brow. And never will the pullers-down be able to cope with the builders-up.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Letter to Evert Augustus Duyckinck (3 March 1849); published in The Letters of Herman Melville (1960) edited by Merrell R. Davis and William H. Gilman, p. 78; a portion of this is sometimes modernized in two ways:
Context: I do not oscillate in Emerson's rainbow, but prefer rather to hang myself in mine own halter than swing in any other man's swing. Yet I think Emerson is more than a brilliant fellow. Be his stuff begged, borrowed, or stolen, or of his own domestic manufacture he is an uncommon man. Swear he is a humbug — then is he no common humbug. Lay it down that had not Sir Thomas Browne lived, Emerson would not have mystified — I will answer, that had not Old Zack's father begot him, old Zack would never have been the hero of Palo Alto. The truth is that we are all sons, grandsons, or nephews or great-nephews of those who go before us. No one is his own sire. — I was very agreeably disappointed in Mr Emerson. I had heard of him as full of transcendentalisms, myths & oracular gibberish; I had only glanced at a book of his once in Putnam's store — that was all I knew of him, till I heard him lecture. — To my surprise, I found him quite intelligible, tho' to say truth, they told me that that night he was unusually plain. — Now, there is a something about every man elevated above mediocrity, which is, for the most part, instinctuly perceptible. This I see in Mr Emerson. And, frankly, for the sake of the argument, let us call him a fool; — then had I rather be a fool than a wise man. —I love all men who dive. Any fish can swim near the surface, but it takes a great whale to go down stairs five miles or more; & if he don't attain the bottom, why, all the lead in Galena can't fashion the plumet that will. I'm not talking of Mr Emerson now — but of the whole corps of thought-divers, that have been diving & coming up again with bloodshot eyes since the world began.
I could readily see in Emerson, notwithstanding his merit, a gaping flaw. It was, the insinuation, that had he lived in those days when the world was made, he might have offered some valuable suggestions. These men are all cracked right across the brow. And never will the pullers-down be able to cope with the builders-up. And this pulling down is easy enough — a keg of powder blew up Block's Monument — but the man who applied the match, could not, alone, build such a pile to save his soul from the shark-maw of the Devil. But enough of this Plato who talks thro' his nose.

Men

“I'm not going to talk about that because I've never seen it, except in kids doing stuff that I don't know about and I'm not interested in… I've never taken crack and I've never taken ecstasy; none of us has. I don't want to take some strange drug and end up chewing my tongue for 12 hours.”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

Trip of a Lifetime (1999)
Context: A TV crew came over 10 years or so ago, on the anniversary of the discovery of LSD, and those guys were trying to push me towards saying how bad it was. They wanted me to talk about the dark underbelly of the drug culture. And I said, I'm not going to talk about that because I've never seen it, except in kids doing stuff that I don't know about and I'm not interested in... I've never taken crack and I've never taken ecstasy; none of us has. I don't want to take some strange drug and end up chewing my tongue for 12 hours.

“Oh fountain of blood, forever inexhaustible! Life will be a knife, a gray and agile and cutting and exact and arbitrary blade that falls and slashes and divides. To crack, to claw, to quarter, the verbs that move with giant steps against us!”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

The Clerk's Vision (1949)
Context: No use going out or staying at home. No use erecting walls against the impalpable. A mouth will extinguish all the fires, a doubt will root up all the decisions. It will be everywhere without being anywhere. It will blur all the. mirrors. Penetrating walls and convictions, vestments and well-tempered souls, it will install itself in the marrow of everyone. Whistling between body and body, crouching between soul and soul. And all the wounds will open because, with expert and delicate, although somewhat cold, hands, it will irritate sores and pimples, will burst pustules and swellings and dig into the old, badly healed wounds. Oh fountain of blood, forever inexhaustible! Life will be a knife, a gray and agile and cutting and exact and arbitrary blade that falls and slashes and divides. To crack, to claw, to quarter, the verbs that move with giant steps against us!
It is not the sword that shines in the confusion of what will be. It is not the saber, but fear and the whip. I speak of what is already among us. Everywhere there are trembling and whispers, insinuations and murmurs. Everywhere the light wind blows, the breeze that provokes the immense Whiplash each time it unwinds in the air. Already many carry the purple insignia in their flesh. The light wind rises from the meadows of the past, and hurries closer to our time.

Life

“Many great civilisations have fallen, leaving nothing but cracked ruins and scattered genetics.”

David Eagleman (1971) neuroscientist and author

"Six ways the internet will save civilisation" in WIRED magazine (9 November 2010) http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2010/12/start/apocalypse-no Context: Many great civilisations have fallen, leaving nothing but cracked ruins and scattered genetics. Usually this results from: natural disasters, resource depletion, economic meltdown, disease, poor information flow and corruption. But we’re luckier than our predecessors because we command a technology that no one else possessed: a rapid communication network that finds its highest expression in the internet. I propose that there are six ways in which the net has vastly reduced the threat of societal collapse.

“Besides we feel that mind to being comes
Along with body, with body grows and ages.
For just as children totter round about
With frames infirm and tender, so there follows
A weakling wisdom in their minds; and then,
Where years have ripened into robust powers,
Counsel is also greater, more increased
The power of mind; thereafter, where already
The body's shattered by master-powers of eld,
And fallen the frame with its enfeebled powers,
Thought hobbles, tongue wanders, and the mind gives way;
All fails, all's lacking at the selfsame time.
Therefore it suits that even the soul's dissolved,
Like smoke, into the lofty winds of air;
Since we behold the same to being come
Along with body and grow, and, as I've taught,
Crumble and crack, therewith outworn by eld.”
Praeterea gigni pariter cum corpore et una crescere sentimus pariterque senescere mentem. nam vel ut infirmo pueri teneroque vagantur corpore, sic animi sequitur sententia tenvis. inde ubi robustis adolevit viribus aetas, consilium quoque maius et auctior est animi vis. post ubi iam validis quassatum est viribus aevi corpus et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus, claudicat ingenium, delirat lingua labat mens, omnia deficiunt atque uno tempore desunt. ergo dissolui quoque convenit omnem animai naturam, ceu fumus, in altas aëris auras; quando quidem gigni pariter pariterque videmus crescere et, ut docui, simul aevo fessa fatisci.

Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher

Book III, lines 445–458 (tr. W. E. Leonard)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

Wisdom, Children, Age, Way

“When the Everywhere couple crack a joke
It's laughed at by all right-thinking folk.
When the Everywhere couple adopt a pose
It's the with-it view as everyone knows.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

context (16) "Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere: Calypso (stanzas 2, 5, and 7) 
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
Context: Watching their sets in a kind of trance
were people in Mexico, people in France.
They don't chase Jones but the dreams are the same —
Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere, that's the right name!
Herr und Frau Uberall or les Partout,
A gadget on the set makes them look like you. When the Everywhere couple crack a joke
It's laughed at by all right-thinking folk.
When the Everywhere couple adopt a pose
It's the with-it view as everyone knows.
It may be a rumor or it may be true
But a gadget on the set has it said by you! "What do you think about Yatakang?"
"I think the same as the Everywhere gang."
"What do you think of Beninia then?"
"The Everywheres will tell me but I don't know when."
Whatever my country and whatever my name
A gadget on the set makes me think the same.

Thinking

“Infancy is not what it is cracked up to be.”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

The Almost Perfect State (1921)
Context: Infancy is not what it is cracked up to be. The child seems happy all the time to the adult, because the adult knows that the child is untouched by the real problems of life; if the adult were similarly untouched he is sure that he would be happy. But children, not knowing that they are having an easy time, have a good many hard times. Growing and learning and obeying the rules of their elders, or fighting against them, are not easy things to do.

“Glass, china and reputation are easily cracked and never well mended.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

“A large part of the problem of understanding how modern rebellions come about is the reporting of them. Euphoric moments are condensed to slogans on one hand and on the other into vivid narratives of the crimes of the fallen regime. What falls through the cracks is the process by which the actions of an often small dissident circle are translated into a mass movement involving a sufficient cross-section of society to sweep away a tyrant. If that clouds our understanding, so too does the tendency to limit our examination of rebellions to the facts of the revolutionary moment itself. Instead, what we should be doing is examining why populations ever accept dictatorships. In doing so, we may comprehend more about why they are then rejected, often so suddenly.”

Peter Beaumont (journalist) (1961) British journalist

How dictators fall https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/02/protests-how-dictators-fall, 2 Mar 2011, The Guardian.

Understanding, Problem, Parting

“This Delta, he thought: This Delta. This land which man has deswamped and denuded and derivered in two generations so that white men can own plantations and commute every night to Memphis and black men own plantations and ride in jim crow cars to Chicago to live in millionaires’ mansions on Lakeshore Drive, where white men rent farms and live like niggers and niggers crop on shares and live like animals, where cotton is planted and grows man-tall in the very cracks of the sidewalks, and usury and mortgage and bankruptcy and measureless wealth, Chinese and African and Aryan and Jew, all breed and spawn together until no man has time to say which is which nor cares…. No wonder the ruined woods I used to know don’t cry for retribution! he thought: The people who have destroyed it will accomplish its revenge.”

William Faulkner book Go Down, Moses

Delta Autumn (p. 347)
Go Down, Moses (1942)

Men, People, Cars, Revenge

“Her forte was not necessarily the audibility of her music, for she had a defective area where her voice cracked at a high-pitch, with a limited one-octave range, but she turned it into her virtue for she knew how to mould her voice.”

Begum Akhtar (1914–1974) Indian musician

What a life

Music

“Undoubtedly, looking back, we nearly all allowed ourselves, for decades, to be frozen into rates of personal taxation which were ludicrously high…That frozen framework has been decisively cracked, not only by the prescripts of Chancellors but in the expectations of the people. It is one of the things for which the Government deserve credit…However, even beneficial revolutions have a strong tendency to breed their own excesses. There is now a real danger of the conventional wisdom about taxation, public expenditure and the duty of the state in relation to the distribution of rewards, swinging much too far in the opposite direction…I put in a strong reservation against the view, gaining ground a little dangerously I think, that the supreme duty of statesmanship is to reduce taxation.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1988/feb/24/opportunity-and-income-social-disparities in the House of Lords (24 February 1988) 1980s

Wisdom, People, Thinking, Decision

“I had completely forgotten about religion and in this respect had a savage ignorance of it. The first glimmer of truth came to me through an encounter with a great poet, who played a predominant part in the formation of my thinking and to whom I owe an eternal debt, Arthur Rimbaud. Reading Illuminations, then a few months later, Use Saison en Enfer was for me a capital event. For the first time, his books opened a crack in my materialist servitude and gave me a vivid and almost physical impression of the supernatural.”

Paul Claudel (1868–1955) French diplomat

J'avais complètement oublié la religion et j'étais à son égard d'une ignorance sauvage. La première lueur de vérité me fut donnée par la rencontre des livres d'un grand poète, à qui je dois une éternelle reconnaissance, et qui a eu dans la formation de ma pensée une part prépondérante, Arthur Rimbaud. La lecture des Illuminations, puis, quelques mois après, d'Une Saison en enfer, fut pour moi un événement capital. Pour la première fois, ces livres ouvraient une fissure dans mon bagne matérialiste et me donnaient l'impression vivante et presque physique du surnaturel.
"My Conversion," December 1886, as translated in Negritude and the Civilization of the Universal, p. 28

Truth, Books, Religion, Thinking

“The porkbusters fight is fun now, but not since early cave men tried to train grizzly bears to give them tongue-baths has a project seemed more obviously doomed to end in disappointment. Expecting Congress — of either party — to give back pork which has already been approved and passed into law is like expecting crack whores to give refunds days after services have been rendered.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2000s, 2005, Unhappy Warrior (2005)

Men, Law, Disappointment, Fight

“As Chief Minister, he cracked down heavily on the dacoits, who were terrorizing the south west Uttar Pradesh. He was applauded for his offer of resignation when he failed to subdue the problem.”

V. P. Singh (1931–2008) Indian politician

VP Singh: The Renaissance Man (25 June 1931- 27 Nov 2008)

Problem

“Missing the Battle of Midway has been the greatest disappointment of my career, but I am going back to the Pacific where I intend personally to have a crack at those yellow bellied sons of bitches and their carriers.”

William Frederick Halsey, Jr. (1882–1959) United States admiral

Speech at the Naval Academy, as quoted in James C. Bradford, Quarterdeck and Bridge: Two Centuries of American Naval Leaders (1997), p. 350.

Disappointment, Personality, Bitch

“I had gotten really bad. I mean my place was almost like a crack house.”

Lawrence Taylor (1959) All-American college football player, professional football player, linebacker, Pro Football Hall of Fame member

discussing the depths of his drug problems after he retired, in his 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace. Source: L.T. Over The Edge: Former Hall Of Famer Reveals Shocking Stories From His Playing Days http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/10/60minutes/main642605.shtml, cbsnews.com, accessed January 29, 2007.

Bad luck, Housing

“If you want to happy for the rest of your life, make a crack-whore your wife.”

Kerry Jackson

Radio From Hell (July 27 2005)

Life, Happiness, Making love, Whore

“People tend to wear the mask that shows them off in the best possible light—humble, confident, diligent. They say the right things, smile, and seem interested in our ideas. They learn to conceal their insecurities and envy. If we take this appearance for reality, we never really know their true feelings, and on occasion we are blindsided by their sudden resistance, hostility, and manipulative actions. Fortunately, the mask has cracks in it. People continually leak out their true feelings and unconscious desires in the nonverbal cues they cannot completely control—facial expressions, vocal inflections, tension in the body, and nervous gestures. You must master this language by transforming yourself into a superior reader of men and women. Armed with this knowledge, you can take the proper defensive measures. On the other hand, since appearances are what people judge you by, you must learn how to present the best front and play your role to maximum effect.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 3 : See Through People’s Masks
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Women, Men, Hostility, People

“A realistic definition of capitalism should not present it as a constant, created and characterized by unicentral thought and action. It is , in essence, the result of the actions of opportunist individuals and groups who established themselves into openings and cracks within society a the potential for surplus product developed; these actions became systemaised as they nibbled away at the surplus product.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

Source: The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Liberating Life: Women's Revolution, pp. 82

“It is only in the cracks of division that corruption can seep in and pollution can spew out.”

Jerome Foster II (2002)

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/9/20/youth_climate_lawsuit_juliana_v_united#transcript https://www.democracynow.org/2019/9/20/youth_climate_lawsuit_juliana_v_united#transcript DemocracyNow (20 September 2019)

“O people, you were not created in vain, nor will you be left to yourselves. Rather, you will return to a place in which Allah will descend in order to judge among you and distinguish between you. Destitute and lost are those who forsake the all-encompassing Mercy of Allah, and they will be excluded from Paradise, the borders of which are as wide as the heavens and the Earth. Don't you know that protection, tomorrow, will be limited to those who feared Allah [today], and to those who sold something ephemeral for something permanent, something small for something great, and fear for protection? Don't you realize that you are the descendants of those who have perished, that those who remain will take place after you, and that this will continue until you are all returned to Allah? Every day you dispatch to Allah, at all times of the day, someone who has ded, his term having come to an end. You bury him in a crack in the earth and then leave him without a pillow or a bed. He has parted from his loved ones, severed his connections with the living, and taken up residence in the earth, whereupon he comes face to face with the accounting. He is mortgaged to his deeds: He needs his accomplishments, but not the material things he left on earth. Therefore, fear Allah before death descends and its appointed times expire. I swear by Allah that I say those words to you knowing that I myself have committed more sins than any of you; I therefore ask Allah for forgiveness and I repent. Whenever we learn that one of you needs something, I try to satisfy his need to the extent that I am able. Whenever I can provide satisfaction to one of you out of you of my possessions, I seek to treat him as my equal and m relative, so that my life and his life are of equal value. I swear by Allah that had I wanted something else, namely, affluence, then it would have been easy for me to utter the word, aware as I am of the means for obtaining this. But Allah has issued in an eloquent Book (Quran) and a just example Sunnah by means of which He guides us to obedience and proscribes disobedience.”

Umar II (681–720) Umayyad caliph

History of the Prophets and Kings, Vol. 24, p. 98/99, also quoted in Umar Bin Abd Al-Aziz, p. 708-710
Last Sermon delivered to People

Love, Life, Death, People

“When we talked about Danish novels, it was as if we had in mind a vague impression of Dostoyevsky and those other story-tellers who appear to have spilled a great mass of tar which then, obeying only the laws of gravity, somehow oozes along formlessly into every crack and crevice.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

Law, Appearance

“I felt that I was dying, and perhaps I did die a little, or rather began to die in the way that the cocoon of the chrysalis cracks at the end of winter; but unfortunately I did not die so thoroughly that I achieved new life like a butterfly.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

Life, Way, Winter

“I think I am a tough mountaineer who, when he has the top in sight, is bounced off again [by mental break-downs], but some day I will succeed.. .I must do it, there is no other way for me. It is always such a pity that Jo [his wife] is cracked up so quickly, otherwise I didn't mind very much.”

Herman Kruyder (1881–1935) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018

(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Herman Kruyder uit zijn brief, in het Nederlands:) Ik vind mij een stoere bergbeklimmer die steeds als hij de top in zicht heeft er weer afgestoten wordt, maar eens lukt het.. .Toch moet ik, ik kan niet anders. 't Is zoo jammer dat Jo [zijn vrouw] altijd zo gauw instort, anders vond ik de zaak niet zo heel erg.

Quote of Kruyder in a letter to P.A. Regnault, from Limburg April 1930; as cited in Herman Kruyder 1881 – 1935: gedoemde scheppingen, ed. Mabel Hoogendonk; (ISBN 90-400-9905-7), Waanders, Zwolle 1997, p. 31

both had very frequently their break-downs and went into the mental hospital for some time
dated quotes

Way, Mountain, Thinking

“Riding through the city on my bike all day
Cause the filth took away my license
It doesn't get me down and I feel OK
Cause the sights that I'm seeing are pricelessEverything seems to look as it should
But I wonder what goes on behind doors
A fella looking dapper, but he's sitting with a slapper
Then I see it's a pimp and his crack whore.”

Lily Allen (1985) English singer, songwriter, actress, and television presenter

LDN
Song lyrics, Alright, Still (2006)

Feeling, Whore

“For the man crucified on the crossed machine guns
Without name, without resurrection, without stars,
His dark head heavy with death and his flesh long sour
With the smell of his many prisons — John Smith, John Doe,
John Nobody — oh, crack your mind for his name!
Faceless as water, naked as the dust,
Dishonored as the earth the gas-shells poison
And barbarous with portent.
This is he.
This is the man they ate at the green table
Putting their gloves on ere they touched the meat.
This is the fruit of war, the fruit of peace,
The ripeness of invention, the new lamb,
The answer to the wisdom of the wise.
And still he hangs, and still he will not die
And still, on the steel city of our years
The light falls and the terrible blood streams down.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

Death, Wisdom, War, Peace

“[On postmodernism] We historians are, in a way, fighting for our lives. Certainly, we are fighting for the lives of innocent young people beset by devilish tempters who claim to offer higher forms of thought and deeper truths and insights – the intellectual equivalent of crack, in fact. Any acceptance of these theories – even the most gentle or modest bow in their direction – can prove fatal.”

Geoffrey Elton (1921–1994) historian

Source: Geoffrey Rudolph Elton, Return to Essentials (2002)

People, Truth, Way, Fight

“Look, working nine, ten years old at the farm, I was not harmed at all. When a nine-year-old, ten-year-old goes to work somewhere, it's full of people there. Now, when I'm smoking a crack pipe, nobody says anything. [...] But I want to say that I, my older brother, a sister of mine, a little younger, at that age, eight, nine, ten, twelve years, worked on the farm.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

In a live social media broadcast on 4 July 2019, defending child labor. Bolsonaro Defends Child Labor https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/brazil/2019/07/bolsonaro-defends-child-labor.shtml. Folha de S.Paulo (5 July 2019). 2019

People, Age, Sister

“And I
in terror
but not in doubt of
what I must do
in anguish, in haste,
wrenched from the earth root after root,
the soil heaving and cracking, the moss tearing asunder —
and behind me the others: my brothers
forgotten since dawn. In the forest
they too had heard,
and were pulling their roots in pain
out of a thousand years' layers of dead leaves,
rolling the rocks away,
breaking themselves
out of
their depths.”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)

Pain, Tear, Dead

“And we see it in the mothers and the fathers who get up at the crack of dawn; they work two jobs and sometimes three jobs. They sacrifice every day for the furniture and — future of their children.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Trump at the 2017 Values Voter Summit https://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/random-words-donald-trump/5573/ (13 October 2017) 2017, October 2017

Children, Future

“There is a crack in every thing God has made.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/11/16/light/
Context: Siegfried, in the Nibelungen, is not quite immortal, for a leaf fell on his back whilst he was bathing in the Dragon’s blood, and that spot which it covered is mortal. And so it always is. There is a crack in every thing God has made.

God

“He said the giant was a deity that offered salvation from a meaningless cycle of birth and rebirth, and perhaps the cracked stonework still possessed a lingering divinity.”

David Mitchell book Cloud Atlas

"An Orison of Sonmi~451", p. 329
Cloud Atlas (2004), An Orison of Sonmi~451 (Part 2)

Birth

“Fortunately, power has a shelf life. When the time comes, maybe this mighty empire will, like others before it, overreach itself and implode from within. It looks as though structural cracks have already appeared... America’s corporate heart is hemorrhaging.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Source: Articles, Come September (29 Sep 2002)

Life, Appearance, Time, Heart

“See, what I would do right here now is throw him out and I'd piledrive him on the steps. That way you crack his head open and you break both shoulders at the same time. Good amateur move.”

Bobby Heenan (1944–2017) American professional wrestler, professional wrestling commentator and manager

Misc.

Way, Time

“We burn with longing to find some firm stance, some ultimate, unshakable basis, on which we may build the tower that can reach up to infinity. But all our foundations crack and earth opens to the abyss. THEREFORE LET US NOT SEEK CERTAINTY OR SECURITY.”

Lev Shestov (1866–1938) Russian theologian

Source: In Job's Balances: on the sources of the eternal truths, Gethsemane Night - Pascal's Philosophy p. 284-285

“Like a cracked china cup, the continental crust is still fragile where it has been damaged in the past.”

Shawna Vogel science writer

Naked Earth: the New Geophysics (1995)

Past

“When I’m told to laugh, I begin laughing. Even during filming, when I’m told to crack up, I end up being the only one who cracks up.”

Noa Tsurushima (2001) Japanese actress

“I didn’t realize that in truth what makes you a good teacher is really living your own practice, and living it so much that you request it to other people. Ultimately, everything you do that you teach someone else is something that you’re working through to teach yourself, and that practice of really digging within yourself, it feels like having your soul cracked open.”

Jessamyn Stanley (1987) American yoga teacher and author

Source: Jessamyn Stanley is fighting for radical visibility and yoga for every body, Samantha Grasso, Aug 28, 2018, 2018 https://www.dailydot.com/irl/jessamyn-stanley/,

People, Truth, Feeling, Soul

Quotes about crack page 4

Quotes about crack
page 4