| The Alchemist |
[Nov. 27th, 2009|03:30 pm] |
_"What is a personal calling? It is God's blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don't all have the courage to confront out own dream.
Why?
There are four obstacles. First: we are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear, and guilt. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible. But it's still there." [pg vi]
_"So, why is it so important to live our personal calling if we are only going to suffer more than other people?
Because, once we have overcome the defeats - and we always do - we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence. In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life. Each day, each hour, is part of the good fight. We start to live with enthusiasm and pleasure. Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our soul, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives." [pg vii]
_"The boy knew a lot of people in the city. That was what made traveling appeal to him - he always made new friends, and he didn't need o spend all of his time with them. When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person's life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own." [pg 16]
_"'It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie.'" [pg 18]
_"Maybe she didn't even remember him. He was sure that it made no difference to her on which day he appeared: for her, every day was the same, and when each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises." [pg 27]
_"The camel driver, though, seemed not to be very concerned with the threat of war.
'I'm alive,' he said to the boy, as they ate a bunch of dates one night, with no fires and no moon. 'When I'm eating, that's all I think about. It I'm on the march, I just concentrate on marching. If I have to fight, it will be just as good a day to die as any other.
'Because I don't live in either my past or my future. I'm interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man. You'll see that there is life in the desert, that there are stars in the heavens, and that tribesmen fight because they are a part of the human race. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we're living right now.'
Two nights later, as he was getting ready to bed down, the boy looked for the star they followed every night. He thought that the horizon was a bit lower than it had been, because he seemed to see stars on the desert itself." [pg 84-85]
_"At that moment, it seemed to him that time stood still and the Soul of the World surged within him. When he looked into her dark eyes, and saw that her lips were poised between a laugh and silence, he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke - the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert. Something that exerted the same force whenever two pairs of eyes met, as had theirs here at the well. She smiled, and that was certainly an omen - the omen he had been awaiting, without even knowing he was, for all his life. The omen he had sought to find with his sheep and in his books, in the crystals and in the silence of the desert.
It was the pure Language of the World. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing. He was more certain of it than of anything in the world. He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way have never learned the universal language. Because, when you know that language, it's easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it's in the middle of the desert of in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one's dreams would have no meaning.
Maktub, thought the boy." [pg 92-93]
_"'Isn't wine prohibited here?' The boy asked.
'It's not what enters men's mouths that's evil,' said the alchemist. 'It's what comes out of their mouths that is.'" [pg 115]
_"'Well, what if I decide to stay?'
'Let me tell you what will happen. You'll be the counselor of the oasis. You have enough gold to buy many sheep and many camels. You'll marry Fatima, and you'll both be happy for a year. You'll learn to love the desert, and you'll get to know every one of the fifty thousand palms. You'll watch them as they grow, demonstrating how the world is always changing. And you'll get better and better at understanding omens, because the desert is the best teacher there is.
'Sometime during the second year, you'll remember about the treasure. The omens will begin insistently to speak of it, and you'll try to ignore them. You'll use your knowledge for the welfare of the oasis and its inhabitants. The tribal chieftains will appreciate what you do. And your camels will bring you wealth and power.
'During the third year, the omens will continue to speak of your treasure and your Personal Legend. You'll walk around, night after night, at the oasis, and Fatima will be unhappy because she'll feel it was she who interrupted your quest. But you will love her, and she'll return your love. You'll remember that she never asked you to stay, because a woman of the desert knows that she must await her man. So you won't blame her. But many times you'll walk the sands of the desert, thinking that maybe you could have left . . .that you could have trusted more in your love for Fatima. Because what kept you at the oasis was your own fear that you might never come back. At that point, the omens will tell you that your treasure is buried forever.
'Then, sometime during the fourth year, the omens will abandon you, because you've stopped listening to them. The tribal chieftains will see that, and you'll be dismissed from your position as counselor. But, by then, you'll be a rich merchant, with many camels and a great deal of merchandise. You'll spend the rest of your days knowing that you didn't pursue your Personal Legend, and that now it's too late.
'You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal Legend. If he abandons that pursuit, it's because it wasn't true love . . . the love that speaks the Language of the World.'" [pg 119-120]
_"'There is only one way to learn,' the alchemist answered. 'It's through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey. You need to learn only one thing more.'
The boy wanted to know what that was, but the alchemist was searching the horizon, looking for the falcon.
'Why are you called the alchemist?'
'Because that's what I am.'
'And what went wrong when other alchemists tried to make gold and were unable to do so?'
'They were looking only for gold,' his companion answered. 'They were seeking the treasure of their Personal Legend, without wanting actually to live out the Personal Legend.'
'What is it that I still need to know?' the boy asked." [pg 125]
_"'The wise men understood that this natural world is only an image and a copy of paradise. The existence of this world is simply a guarantee that there exists a worlds that is perfect. God created the world so that, through its visible objects, men could understand his spiritual teachings and the marvels of his wisdom. That's what I mean by action.'" [pg 127]
_"'Why do we have to listen to our hearts?' the boy asked, when they had made camp that day.
'Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you'll find your treasure.'
'But my heart is agitated,' the boy said. 'It has its dreams, it gets emotional, and it's become passionate over a woman of the desert. It asks things of me, and it keeps me from sleeping many nights, when I'm thinking about her.'
'Well, that's good. Your heart is alive. Keep listening to what it has to say.'" [pg 128]
_"'Even though I complain sometimes,' it said, ' it's because I'm the heart of a person, and people's hearts are that way. People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly.'
'My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,' the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.
'Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.'
'Every second of the search is an encounter with God,' the boy told his heart. 'When I have been truly searching for my treasure, every day has been luminous, because I've known that every hour was a part of the dream that I would find it. When I have been truly searching for my treasure, I've discovered things along the way that I never would have seen had I not had the courage to try things that seemed impossible for a sheperd to achieve.'
So his heart was quiet for an entire afternoon. That night, the boy slept deeply, and, when he awoke, his heart began to tell him things that came from the Soul of the World. It said that all people who are happy have God within them. And that happiness could be found in a grain of sand from the desert, as the alchemist had said. Because a grain of sand is a moment of creation, and the universe has taken millions of years to create it. 'Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him,' his heart said. 'We, people's hearts, seldom say much about those treasure, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them - the path to their Personal Legends, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.
'So, we, their hearts, speak more and more softly. We never stop speaking out, but we begin to hope that our words won't be heard: we don't want people to suffer because they don't follow their hearts.'
'Why don't people's hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams?' the boy asked the alchemist.
'Because that's what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don't like to suffer.'
From then on, the boy understood his heart. He asked it, please, never to stop speaking to him. He asked that, when he wandered far from his dreams, his heart press him and sound the alarm. The boy swore that, every time he heard the alarm, he would heed its message. " [pg 130-132]
_"The boy remembered an old proverb from his country. It said that the darkest hour of the night came just before the dawn." [pg 132]
_"'To show you on of life's simple lessons,' the alchemist answered. 'When you possess great treasure within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed.'" [pg 134]
_"'This is what we call love,' the boy said, seeing that the wind was close to granting what he requested. 'When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there's no need at all to understand what's happening, because everything happens within you, and even men can turn themselves into the wind. As long as the wind helps, of course.'" [pg 147]
_"'Because it's not love to be static like the desert, nor is it love to roam the world like the wind. And it's not love to see everything from a distance, like you do. Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World. When I first reached through to it, I thought the Soul of the World was perfect. But later, I could see that it was like other aspects of creation, and had its own passions and ward. It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse. And that's where the power of love comes in. Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are.'" [pg 150-151]
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 20th, 2009|12:13 pm] |
Anima sana in corpore sano
a sound mind in a sound body.
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| naked |
[Jun. 13th, 2009|01:07 pm] |
_"It occurred to me that my mother was a better actor than I could ever hope to be. Acting is different than posing or pretending. When done with precision, it bears a striking resemblance to lying. Stripped of the costumes and grand gestures, it presents itself as an unquestionable truth. I didn't envy my mother's skill, neither did I contradict her. That's how convincing she was. It seemed best, sitting beside her with a frozen pizza on my lap, to simply sit back and learn." [pg 105]
_"Until the age of seventeen I had been forced to attend the Holy Trinity Orthodox Church. The service was delivered in Greek by a robed priest and involved endless rounds of standing, sitting, and kneeling. Every few hours the altar boys would roam the aisles with smoldering tankards of incense, and one by one the congregation, woozy from fasting, would drop like flies. Because I could never understand what was being said, I formed an idea of a God who wasn't judgmental, just painfully boring. Christ was a mystery to me, and Jon and his friends were eager to fill in the blanks. There were days when I would leave work convinced that there was a five-hundred-dollar reward for the first person who could dunk my head into the nearest river or plastic baptismal pool. I was a lump of unformed clay surrounded by a guilt of willing sculptors. These people were the only contact I had outside of the men and women who picked me up hitchhiking back and forth to work every day. I'd arrive at the shop, listen to Christian radio, get blessed out by Jon and blessed back in by his visiting friends and neighbors. It was like being sent to a foreign country to be immersed in a language that somehow, over time, became your own." [pg 186]
_"My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions who hate you for what you are and you're likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks. I haven't got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out." [pg 215]
David Sedaris - Naked
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| johnny got his gun |
[Jun. 13th, 2009|12:30 pm] |
_"Simply put, I was not the same person after reading it that I was before. And there is no higher compliment that you can give a book, or for that matter any piece of art, than that you have been changed by it forever." [pg xiv]
_"Trumbo showed me that I had a chance to make something beautiful out of something terrible and devoid of all beauty, to take something I detested and didn't want to think about, something I despised and wanted to forget, a humiliation and great defeat and make it stand for something decent and good, something triumphant and purposeful and life-affirming, just as Joe Bonham wanted to do." [pg xx]
_"Is it possible for anything to resist change, even a mere commodity that can be bought, buried, banned, damned, praised, or ignored for all the wrong reasons? Probably not." [pg xxviii]
_"Eleven years later. Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast." [pg xxix]
_"Proportionately, Vietnam has given us eight times as many paralytics as World War II, three times as many totally disabled, 35 percent more amputees." [pg xxx]
_"So he'd never hear again. Well there were a hell of a lot of things he didn't want to hear again. He never wanted to hear the biting little castanet sound of a machine gun or the high whistle of a .75 coming down fast or the slow thunder as it hit or the whine of an airplane overhead or the yells of a guy trying to explain to somebody that he's got a bullet in his belly and that his breakfast is coming out through the front of him and why won't somebody stop going forward and him a hand only nobody can hear him they're so scared themselves. The hell with it." [pg 11]
_"He lay and thought oh Joe Joe this is no place for you. This was no war for you. This thing wasn't any of your business. What do you care about making the world safe for democracy? All you wanted to do Joe was to live . . . Oh why the hell did you ever get into this mess anyhow? Because it wasn't your fight Joe. You never really knew what the fight was all about." [pg 25]
_"He thought well kid you're deaf as a post but there isn't the pain. You've got no arms but you don't hurt. You'll never burn your hand or cut your finger or smash a nail you lucky stiff. You're alive and you don't hurt and that's much better than being alive and hurting. There are lots of things a deaf guy without arms can do if he doesn't hurt so much he goes crazy from pain. He can get hooks or something for arms and he can learn to read lips and while that doesn't exactly put him on top of the world still he's not drowned in the bottom of a river with pain tearing his brain to pieces. He's still got air and he's not struggling and he's got willow trees and he can think and he's not in pain." [pg 60]
_"That was why his head had seemed lower than his legs. Because he had no legs. Naturally they seemed light. Air is light too. Even a toenail is heavy compared to air." [pg 61]
_"It was like a full grown man suddenly being stuffed back into his mother's body. He was lying in stillness. He was completely helpless. Somewhere sticking in his stomach was a tube they fed him through. That was exactly like the womb except a baby in its mother's body could look forward to the time when it would live. He would be in this womb forever and ever and ever. He must remember that. He must never expect or hope for anything different. This was his life from now on every day and every hour and every minute of it. He would never again be able to say hello how are you I love you. He would never again be able to hear music or the whisper of the wind through trees or the chuckle of running water. He would never again breathe in the smell of a steak frying in his mother's kitchen or the dampness of spring in the air or the wonderful fragrance of sagebrush carried on the wind across a wide open plain. He would never again be able to see the faces of people who made you glad just to look at them of people like Kareen. He would never again be able to see sunlight or the stars or the little grasses that grow on a Colorado hillside." [pg 83]
_"He wondered how he could have come through it alive. You heard about somebody scratching his thumb and the next thing you knew he was dead. The mountain climber fell off the front stoop and fracturued his skull and died by Thursday. Your best friend went to the hospital to have his appendix taken out and four or five days later you were standing beside his grave. A little germ like influenza carried off five maybe ten million people in a single winter. Then how could a guy lose his arms and legs and ears and eyes and nose and mouth and still be alive? How did you make any sens out of it?" [pg 84]
_"He was twenty years old and he couldn't even summon enough strength to turn over in bed. He had never been sick a day in his life." [pg 92]
_"Maybe he was lucky his nose was shot off. It would be pretty bad to have to lie and smell the perfume of your own body as it rotted away." [pg 93]
_"When he had run without legs until he was tired and when he had screamed without voice until his throat hurt he fell back into the womb back into the quietude back into the loneliness and the blackness and the terrible silence." [pg 96]
_"But this latest thing this inability to tell dreams from thoughts was oblivion. It made him nothing and less than nothing. It robbed him of the only thing that distinguished a normal person from a crazy man. It meant that he might be lying and thinking very solemly about something that seemed important while all the time he might really be asleep and dreaming the idiotic dreams of a two year old. It robbed him of any respect for his own thoughts and that was the worst thing that could happen to anybody. He was so mixed up that he wasn't sure whether the nurse or the rat was real. Maybe neither was real. Maybe both were real. Maybe nothing was real not even himself oh god and wouldn't that be wonderful." [pg 103]
_"It was hard to understand how his father could be such a big failure when you stopped to think about the thing. He was a good man and an honest man. He kept his chidren together and they ate good food fine food rich food better food than people at in the cities. Even rich people in the cities couldn't get vegetables as fresh or as crisp. They couldn't get meat as well cured. No amount of money could buy that. Those things you had to raise for yourself. His father had managed to do it even to the honey they used on the hot biscuits his mother made. His father had manaed to produce all these things on two city lots and yet his father was a failure." [pg 109]
_"You can always hear the people who are willing to sacrifice somebody else's life. They're plenty loud and they talk all the time. You can find them in churches and schools and newspapers and legislatures and congresses. That's their business. They sound wonderful. Death before dishonor. This ground sanctified by blood. These men who died so gloriously. They shall not have died in vain. Our noble dead. Hmmmm." [pg 119]
_"Nobody but the dead know whether all these things people talk about are worth dying for or not. And the dead can't talk. So the words about noble deaths and sacred blood and honor and such are al put into dead lips by grave robbers and fakes who have no right to speak for the dead. If a man says death before dishonor he is either a fool or a liar because he doesn't know what death is." [pg 119]
_"No matter how far you are separated from other people if you have an idea of time why then you are in the same world with them you are part of them but if you lose time the others go on ahead of you and you are left alone hanging in air lost to everything forever." [pg 130]
_"He thought thank you god thank you thank you. He thought if I never have anything else I will always have dawn and morning sunlight." [pg 144]
_"If you make a war if there are guns to be aimed if there are bullets to be fired if there are men to be killed they will not be us. They will not be us the guys who grow wheat and turn it into food the guys who make clothes and paper and houses and tiles the guys who build dams and power plants and string the long moaning high tension wired the guys who crack crude oil down into a dozen different parts who make light globes and sewing machines and shovels and automobiles and airplanes and tanks and guns oh no it will not be us who die. It will be you.
It will be you - you who urge us on to battle you who incite us agains ourselves you who would have on cobbler kill another cobbler you who would have one man who works kill another man who works you who would have one human being who wants only to live kill another human being who wants only to live. Remember this. Remember this will you people who plan for war. Remember this you partiots you fierce ones you spawners of hate you inventors of slogans. Remember this as you have never remembered anthing else in your lives.
We are men of peace we are men who work and we want no quarrel. But if you destroy our peace if you take away our work if you try to range us one against the other we will know what to do. If you tell us to make the world safe for democracy we will take you seriously and by god and by Christ we will make it so. We will use the guns you force upon us we will use them to defend our very lives and the menace to our lives does not lie on the other side of a nomansland that was set apart without our consent it lies within our own boundaries here and now we have seen it and we know it.
Put the guns into our hands and we will use them. Give us the slogans and we will turn them into realities. Sing the battle hymns and we will take them up where you left off. Not one not ten not ten thousand not a million not ten millions not a hundred millions but a billion two billions of us all the people of the world we will have the slogans and we will have the hymns and we will have the guns and we will use them and we will live. Make no mistake of it we will live. We will be alive and we will walk and talk and eat and sing and laugh and feel and love and bear our children in tranquillity in security in decency in peace. You plan the wars you masters of men plan the wars and point the way and we will point the gun." [pg 251]
Dalton Trumbo - johnny got his gun
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| The Brothers Karamazov |
[Jun. 7th, 2009|11:12 pm] |
_"The seriousness of art is not the same as the seriousness of philosophy, or the seriousness of injustice." [intro]
_"Brother, I'm not depressed and haven't lost spirit. Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter what misfortunes befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter - this is what life is, herein lies its task. I have come to recognize this. This idea has entered into my flesh and blood. Yes, it's true! That head which created, lived by the highest life of art, which acknowledged and had come to know the highest demands of the spirit, that head has been cut from my shoulders. Memory remains, and the images I have created and still not molded in flesh. They will leave their harsh mark on me, it is true! But my heart is left me, and the same flesh and blood which likewise can love and suffer and desire and remember, and this is, after all, life. On voit le soleil! Well, good-bye, brother! Do not grieve for me . . . . Never until now have such rich and healthy stores of spiritual life throbbed in me." [intro xiii]
_"Dostoevsky was not interested in typical, regional, or class differences of expression, as many writers of his time were; what he sought in the voicing of his characters was the singular expression of the person. He delighted in the richness of spoken language, its playfulness, its happy mistakes, its revealing quirks and peculiarities." [intro xvi]
_"But strangeness and oddity will sooner harm than justify any claim to attention, especially when everyone is striving to unite particulars and find at least some general sense in the general senselessness. Whereas an odd man is most often a particular and isolated case. Is that not so?" [from the author]
_"The thing was that he seemed to enjoy and even feel flattered by playing the ludicrous role of the offended husband, embroidering on and embellishing the details of the offense. "One would think you had been promoted, Fyodor Pavlovich," the scoffers used to say, "you're so pleased despite all your woes!" [pg 9]
_"Fyodor Pavlovich was drunk when he learned of his wife's death, and the story goes that he ran down the street, lifting his hands to the sky and joyfully shouting: 'Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.' Others say that he wept and sobbed like a little child, so much so that they say he was pitiful to see, however repulsive they found him. Both versions may very well be true - that is, that he rejoiced at his release and wept for her who released him, all at the same time. In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than on generally assumes. And so are we." [pg 9]
_"Generally considered, it was strange that so learned, so proud, and seemingly so prudent a young man should suddenly appear in such a scandalous house, before such a father, who had ignored him all his life, who did not know or remember him, and who, though if his son had asked, he would certainly not have given him any money for anything in the world or under any circumstances, nonetheless was afraid all his life that his sons Ivan and Alexei, too, would one day come and ask for money. And here the young man comes to live in the house of such a father, lives with him for one month, then for another, and they get along famously. This last fact especially astonished not only me but many others as well." [pg 17]
_"First of all I announce that this young man, Alyosha, was not at all a fanatic, and, in my view at least, even not at all a mystic. I will give my full opinion beforehand: he was simply an early lover of mankind, and if he threw himself into the monastery path, it was only because it alone struck him at the time and presented him, so to speak, with an ideal way out for his soul struggling from the darkness of worldly wickedness towards the light of love. And this path struck him only because on it at that time he met a remarkable being, in his opinion, our famous monastery elder Zosima, to whom he became attached with all the ardent first love of his unquenchable heart." [pg 18]
_"In his childhood and youth he was not very effusive, not even very talkative, not from mistrust, not from shyness or sullen unsociability, but even quite the contrary, from something different, from some inner preoccupation, as it were, strictly personal, of no concern to others, but so important for him that because of it he would as it were, forget others. But he did love people; he lived all his life, it seemed, with complete faith in people, and yet no one ever considered him either naive or a simpleton. There was something in him that told one, that convinced one (and it was so all his life afterwards) that he did not want to be a judge of men, that he would not take judgement upon himself and would not condemn anyone for anything." [pg 19]
_"Generally speaking, he seemed not to know the value of money at all - not, of course, in the literal sense. When he was given pocket money, which he himself never asked for, he either did not know what to do with it for weeks on end, or was so terribly careless with it that it disappeared in a moment." [pg 21]
_"Here, perhaps, is the only man in the world who, were you to leave him alone and without money on the square of some unknown city with a population of a million, would not perish, would not die of cold and hunger, for he would immediately be fed and immediately be taken care of, and if no one else took care of him, he would immediately take care of himself, and it would cost him no effort, and no humiliation, and he would be no burden to those who took care of him, who perhaps, on the contrary, would consider it a pleasure." [pg 21]
_"I keep thinking all the time: who is ever going to pray for me? Is there anyone in the world? My dear boy, you know, I'm terribly stupid about these things, would you believe it? Terribly stupid. You see, stupid as I am, I still keep thinking about it, I keep thinking, every once in a while, of course, not all the time. Surely it's impossible, I think, that the devils will forget to drag me down to their place with their hooks when I die. And then I think: hooks? Where do they get them? What are they made of? Iron? Where do they forge them? Have they got some kind of factory down there? You know, in the monastery the monks probably believe there's a ceiling in hell, for instance. Now me, I'm ready to believe in hell, only there shouldn't be any ceiling; that would be, as it were, more refined, more enlightened, more Lutheran, in other words. Does it really make any difference - with a ceiling or without a ceiling? But that's what the damned question is all about! Because if there's no celing, then there are no hooks. And if there are no hooks, the whole thing falls apart, which, again, is unlikely, because then who will drag me down with hooks, because if they don't drag me down, what then, and where is there any justice in the world? Il faudrait les inventer, those hooks, just for me, for me alone, because you have no idea, Alyosha, was a stinker I am . . .!" [pg 24]
_"Some will say, perhaps, that red cheeks are quite compatible with both fanaticism and mysticism, but it seems to me that Alyosha was even more of a realist than the rest of us. Oh, of course, in the monastery he believed absolutely in miracles, but in my opinion miracles will never confound a realist. It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself the strength and ability not to believe in miracles as well, and if a miracle stands before him as an irrefutable fact, he will sooner doubt his own senses than admit the fact. And even if he does admit it, he will admit it as a fact of nature that was previously unknown to him. In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith. Once the realist comes to believe, then, precisely because of his realism, he must also allow for miracles." [pg 25-26]
_"Although, unfortunately, these young men do not understand that the sacrifice of life is, perhaps, the easiest of all sacrifices in many cases, while to sacrifice, for example, five or six years of the ebulliently youthful life to hard, difficult studies, to learning, in order to increase tenfold their strength to serve the very truth and the very deed that they loved and set out to accomplish - such sacrifice is quite often almost beyond the strength of many of them." [pg 26]
_"What, then, is an elder? An elder is one who takes your soul, your will into his soul and into his will. Having chosen an elder, you renounce your will and give it to him under total obedience and with total self-renunciation. A man who dooms himself to this trial, this terrible school of life, does so voluntarily, in the hope that after the long trial he will achieve self-conquest, self-mastery to such a degree that he will, finally, through a whole life's obedience, attain to perfect freedom - that is, freedom from himself - and avoid the lot of those who live their whole lives without finding themselves in themselves." [pg 27-28]
_"Oh, how well he understood that for the humble soul of the simple Russian, worn out by toil and grief, and, above all, by everlasting injustice and everlasting sin, his own and the world's, there is no stronger need and consolation than to find some holy thing or person, to fall down before him and venerate him: 'Though with us there is sin, unrighteousness, and temptation, still, all the same, there is on earth, in such and such a place, somewhere, someone holy and exalted; he has the truth; he knows the truth; so the truth does not die on earth, and therefore someday it will come to us and will reign over all the earth, as has been promised.'" [pg 30]
_"No matter, he is holy, in his heart there is the secret of renewal for all, the power that will finally establish the truth on earth, and all will be holy and will love one another, and there will be neither rich nor poor, neither exalted nor humiliated, but all will be like the children of God, and the true kingdom of Christ will come. That was the dream in Alyosha's heart." [pg 31]
_"Even many 'higher' persons, even many of the most learned ones, moreover even some of the freethinkers who came out of curiousity, or for some other reason, when entering the cell with others or having obtained a private audience, considered it their foremost duty - to a man - to show the deepest respect and tactfulness throughout the audience, the more so as there was no question of money involved, but only of love and mercy on one side, and on the other of repentance and the desire to resolve some difficult question of the soul or a difficult moment in the life of the heart." [pg 42]
_"A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea - he knows all of that and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility." [pg 44]
_"Do not be afraid of anything, never be afraid, and do not grieve. Just let repentance not slacken in you, and God will forgive everything. There is not and cannot be in the whole world such a sin that the Lord will not forgive one who truly repents of it. A man even cannot commit so great a sin as would exhaust God's boundless love. How could there be a sin that exceeds God's love? Only take care that you repent without ceasing, and chase away fear altogether. Believe that God loves you so as you cannot conceive of it; even with your sin and in your sin he loves you. And there is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ten righteous men - that was said long ago. go, then, and do not be afraid. Do not be upset with people, do not take offense at their wrongs. Forgive the dead man in your heart for all the harm he did you; be reconciled with him truly. If you are repentant, it means that you love. And if you love, you already belong to God . . .With love everything is bought, everything is saved. If even I, a sinful man, just like you, was moved to tenderness and felt pity for you, how much more will God be. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can buy the whole world with it, and redeem not only your own but other people's sins. Go, and do not be afraid." [pg 52]
_"For people are created for happiness, and he who is completely happy can at once be deemed worthy of saying to himself: 'I have fulfilled God's commandment on this earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy." [pg 55]
_"Try to love your neighbors actively and tirelessly. The more you succeed in loving, the more you'll be convinced of the existence of God and the immortality of your soul. And if you reach complete selflessness in the love of your neighbor, then undoubtedly you will believe, and no doubt will even be able to enter your soul. This has been tested. It is certain." [pg 56]
_"And there is no need to trouble oneself with times and seasons, for the mystery of times and seasons is in the wisdom of God, in his foresight, and in his love." [pg 66]
_"You yourself know this property of your heart, and therein lies the whole of its torment. But thank the Creator that he has given you a lofty heart, capable of being tormented by such a torment, 'to set your mind on things that are above, for our true homeland is in heaven.' May God grant that your heart's decision overtake you still on earth, and may God bless your path!" [pg 70]
_"Old liars who have been play-acting all their lives have moments when they get so carried away by their posing that they indeed tremble and weep from excitement, even though at that same moment (or just a second later) they might whisper to themselves: 'You're lying, you shameless old man, you're acting even now, despite all your 'holy' wrath and 'holy' moment of wrath." [pg 73]
_"Christ is with you. Keep him, and he will keep you. You will behold great sorrow, and in this sorrow you will be happy. Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly." [pg 77]
_"Such honest but passionate people have a line that must not be crossed." [pg 79]
_"It always seems to me, when I go somewhere, that I am lower than everyone else and that they all take me for a buffoon - so let me indeed play the buffoon, because all of you, to a man, are lower and stupider than I am." [pg 86]
_"Father monks, why do you fast? Why do you expect a heavenly reward for that? For such a reward, I'll go and start fasting, too! No, holy monk, try being virtuous in life, be useful to society without shutting yourself up in a monastery on other people's bread, and without expecting any reward up there - that's a little more difficult." [pg 89]
_"For me, there's no such thing as an ugly woman: the fact alone that she's a woman, that alone is half the whole thing." [pg 136]
_"'Brother, let me ask you one more thing: can it be that any man has the right to decide about the rest of mankind, who is worthy to live and who is more unworthy?'
But why bring worth into it? The question is most often decided in the hearts of men not at all on the basis of worth, but for quite different reasons, much more natural ones. As for rights, tell me, who has no right to wish?'
'But surely not for another's death?'
'Maybe even for another's death. Why lie to yourself when everyone lives like that, and perhaps even cannot live any other way?'" [pg 143]
_"For you must know, my dear ones, that each of us is undoubtedly guilty on behalf of all and for all on earth, not only because of the common guilt of the world, but personally, each one of us, for all people and for each person on this earth." [pg 164]
_"Again I say, do not be proud. Do not e proud before the lowly, do not be proud before the great either. And do not hate those who reject you, disgrace you, revile you, and slander you. Do not hate atheists, teachers of evil, materialists, not even those among them who are wicked, nor those who are good, for many of them are good especially in our time. Remember them thus in your prayers: save, Lord, those whom there is no one to pray for, save also those who do not want to pray to you. And add at once: it is not in my pride that I pray for it, Lord, fr I myself am more vile than all." [pg 164]
_"'I think that everyone should love life before everything else in the world.'
'Love life more than its meaning?'
'Certainly, love it before logic, as you say, certainly before logic, and only then will I also understand its meaning. That is how I've long imagined it. Half your work is done and acquired, Ivan: you love life. Now you need only apply yourself to the second half, and you are saved." [pg 231]
_"And I will not weep from despair, but simply because I will be happy in my shed tears. I will be drunk with m own tenderness. Sticky spring leaves, the blue sky - I love them, that's all! Such things you love not with your mind, not with logic, but with your insides, your guts, you love your first young strength" [pg 230]
_"S'il n'existait pas Dieu, il faudrait l'inventer. And man has, indeed, invented God. And the strange thing, the wonder would not be that God really exists, the wonder is that such a notion - the notion of the necessity of God - could creep into the head of such a wild and wicked animal as man - so holy, so moving, so wise a notion, which does man such great honor. As for me, I long ago decided not to think about whether man created God or God created man." [pg 234]
_"And so, I accept God, not only willingly, but moreover I also accept his wisdom and his purpose, which are completely unkown to us; I believe in order, in the meaning of life, I believe in eternal harmony, in which we are all supposed to merge, I believe in the Word for whom the universe is yearning, and who himself was 'with God,' who himself is God, and so on, and so on and so forth, to infinity. Many words have been invented on the subject. It seems I'm already on a good path, eh? And now imagine that in the final outcome I do not accept this world of God's, I do not admit it at all, though I know it exists. It's not God that I do not accept, you understand, it is this world of God's, created by God, that I do not accept and cannot agree to accept. With one reservation: I have a childlike conviction that the sufferings will be healed and smoothed over, that the whole offensive comedy of human contradictions will disappear like a pitiful mirage, a vile concoction of man's Euclidean mind, feeble and puny as a atom, and that ultimately, at the world's finale, in the moment of eternal harmony, there will occur and be revealed something so precious that it will suffice for all hearts, to allay all indignation, to redeem all human villainy, all bloodshed; it will suffice not only to make forgiveness possible, but also to justify everything that has happened with men - let this, let all of this come true and be revealed, but I do not accept it and do not want to accept it! Let the parallel lines even meet before my own eyes: I shall look and say, yes, they meet, and still I will not accept it. That is my essence, Alyosha, that is my thesis. I say it to you in all seriousness." [p 235]
_"The stupider, the clearer. Stupidity is brief and guileless, while reason hedges and hides. Reason is a scoundrel, stupidity is direct and honest." [pg 236]
_"I never could understand how it's possible to love one's neighbors. In my opinion, it is precisely one's neighbors that one cannot possibly love." [pg 236]
_"If we're to come to love a man, the man himself should stay hidden, because as soon as he shows his face - love vanishes." [pg 237]
_"Indeed, people speak sometimes about the 'animal' cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. A tiger simply gnaws and tears, that is all he can do. It would never occur to him to nail people by the ears overnight, even if he were able to do it." [pg 238]
_"'What are you driving at, brother?' Alyosha asked.
'I think that if the devil does not exist, and man has therefore created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.'
'As well as God, then." [pg 239]
_"You see, once again I positively maintain that this peculiar quality exists in much of mankind - this love of torturing children, but only children. These same tortureres look upon all other examples of humankind even mildly and benevolently, being educated and humane Europeans, but they have a great love of torturing children, they even love children in that sense. It is precisely the defenselessness of these creatures that tempts the torturers, the angelic trustfulness of the child, who has nowhere to turn and no one to turn to - that is what enflames the vile blood of the torturer. There is, of course, a beast hidden in every man, a beast of rage, a beast of sensual inflammability at the cries of the tormented victim, an unrestrained beast let off the chain, a beast of diseases acquired in debauchery - gout, rotten liver, and so on." [pg 241]
_" can you understand such nonsense, my friend and my brother,my godly and humble novice, can you understand why this nonsense is needed and created? Without it, they say, man could not even have lived on earth, for he would not have known good and evil. Who wants to know this damned good and evil at such a price? The whole world of knowledge is not worth the tears of that little child to 'dear God.' I'm not talking about the suffering of grown-ups, they ate the apple and to hell with them, let the devil take them all, but these little ones! I'm tormenting you, Alyosha, you don't look yourself. I'll stop if you wish." [pg 242]
_"I tell you, novice, that absurdities are all too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities, and without them perhaps nothing at all would happen. We know what we know!" [pg 243]
_"So people themselves are to blame: tey were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, knowing that they would become unhappy - so why pity them?" [pg 244]
_"Listen: if everyone must suffer, in order to by eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children got to do with it? It's quite incomprehensible why they should have to suffer, and why they should buy harmony with their suffering. Why do they get thrown on the pile, to manure someone's future harmony with themselves? I understand solidarity in sin among men; solidarity in retribution I also understand; but what solidarity in sin do little children have? And if it is really true that they, too, are in solidarity with their fathers in all the fathers' evildoings, that truth certainly is not of this world and is incomprehensible to me." [pg 244]
_"And if the suffering of children goes to make up the sum of suffering needed to buy truth, then I assert beforehand that the whole of truth is not worth such a price." [pg 245]
_"Do you know that centuries will pass and mankind will proclaim with the mouth of its wisdom and science that there is no crime, and therefore no sin, but only hungry men? 'Feed them first, then ask virtue of them!' - that is what they will write on the banner they raise against you, and by which your temple will be destroyed." [pg 253]
_"Oh, never, never will they feed themselves without us! No science will give them bread as long as they remain free, but in the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: 'Better that you enslave us, but feed us.' They will finally understand that freedom and earthly bread in plenty or everyone are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share among themselves. They will also be convinced that they are forever incapable of being free, because they are feeble, depraved, nonentities and rebels. You promised them heavenly bread, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, eternally depraved, and eternally ignoble human race? And if in the name of heavenly bread thousands and tens of thousands will follow you, what will become of the millions and tens of thousands of millions of creatures who will not be strong enough to forgo earthly bread for the sake of the heavenly? Is it that only the tens of thousands of the great and strong are dear to you, and the remaining millions, numerous as the sands of the sea, weak but loving you, should serve only as material for the great and the strong? No, the weak, too, are dear to us. They are depraved and rebels, but in the end it is they who will become obedient. They will marvel at us, and look upon us a gods, because we, standing at their head, have agreed to suffer freedom and to rule over them - so terrible will it become for them in the end to be free! But we shall say that we are obedient to you and rule in your name. We shall deceive them again, for this time we shall not allow you to come to us. This deceit will constitute our suffering, for we shall have to lie. This is what that first question in the wilderness meant, and this is what you rejected in the name of freedom, which you placed above everything. And yet this question contains the great mystery of this world. Had you accepted the 'loaves,' you would have answered the universal and everlasting anguish of man as an individual being, and of the whole of mankind together, namely: 'before whom shall I bow down?' There is no more ceaseless of tormenting care for man, as long as he remains free, than to find someone to bow down to as soon as possible. But man seeks to bow down before that which is indisputable, so indisputable that all men at once would agree to the universal worship of it. For the care of these pitiful creatures is not just to find something before which I or some other man can bow down, but to find something that everyone else will also believe in and bow down to, for it must needs be all together. And this need for communality of worship is the chief torment of each man individually, and of mankind as a whole, from the beginning of the ages. In the cause of universal worship, they have destroyed each other with the sword. They have made gods and called upon each other: 'Abandon your gods and come and worship ours, otherwise death to you and your gods!' And so it will be until the end of the world, even when all gods have disappeared from the earth: they will still fall down before idols. You knew, you could not but know, this essential mystery of human nature, but you rejected the only absolute banner, which was offered to you to make all men bow down to you indisputably - the banner of earthly bread; and you rejected it in the name of freedom and heavenly bread." [pg 253]
_"There is nothing more seductive for man than the freedom of his conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting either." [pg 254]
_"There are three powers, only three powers on earth, capable of conquering and holding captive forever the conscience of these feeble rebels, for their own happiness - these powers are miracle, mystery, and authority." [pg 255]
_"And so, turmoil, confusion, and unhappiness - these are the present lot of mankind, after you suffered so much for their freedom!" [pg 256]
_"Freedom, free reason, and science will lead them into such a maze, and confront them with such miracles and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, unruly and ferocious, will exterminate themselves; others, unruly but feeble, will exterminate each other; and the remaining third, feeble and wretched, will crawl to our feet and cry out to us: "Yes you were right, you alone possess his mystery, and we are coming back to you - save us from ourselves.' Receiving bread from us, they will see clearly, of course, that we take from them the bread they have procured with their own hands, in order to distribute it among them, without any miracle; they will see that we have not turned stones into bread; but, indeed, more than over the bread itself, they will rejoice over taking ti from our hands! For they will remember only too well that before, without us, the very bread they procured for themselves turned to stones in their hands, an when they came back to us, the very stones in their hands turned to bread." [pg 258]
_"And if even one such man, at least, finds himself at the head of that whole army 'lusting for power only for the sake of filthy lucre,' is one such man, at least, not enough to make a tragedy? Moreover, one such man standing at its head would be enough to bring out finally the real ruling idea of the whole Roman cause, with all its armies and Jesuits - the highest idea of this cause. I tell you outright that I firmly believe that this one man has never been lacking among those standing at the head of the movement. Who knows, perhaps such 'ones' have even been found among the Roman pontiffs. Who knows, maybe this accursed old man, who loves mankind so stubbornly in his own way, exists even now, in the form of a great host of such old men, and by no means accidentally, but in concert, as a secret union, organized long ago for the purpose of keeping the mystery, of keeping it from unhappy and feeble mankind with the aim of making them happy. It surely exists, and it should be so." [pg 261]
_"Life will bring you many misfortunes, but through them you will be happy, and you will bless life and cause others to bless it - which is the most important thing." [pg 285]
_"'Mama, my joy,' he said, ' it is not possible for there to be no masters and servants, but let me also be the servant of my servants, the same as they are to me. And I shall also tell you, dear mother, that each of us is guilty in everything before everyone, and I most of all.' At that mother even smiled, she wept and smiled: 'How can it be,' she said, 'that you are the most guilty before everyone? There are murderers and robbers, and how have you managed to sin so that you should accuse yourself most of all?' 'Dear mother, heart of my heart,' he said (he had then begun saying such unexpected, endearing words), 'heart of my heart, my joyful one, you must know that verily each of us is guilty before everyone, for everyone and everything. I do not know hot to explain it to you, but I feel it so srongly that it pains me." [pg 289]
_"'But what are years, what are months!' he would exclaim. 'Why count the days, when even one day is enough for a man to know all happiness. My dears, why do we quarrel, boast before each other remember each other's offenses? Let us go to the garden, let us walk and play and love and praise and kiss each other, and bless our life.'" [pg 289]
_"From my parental home I brought only precious memories, for no memories are more precious to a man than those of his earliest childhood in his parental home, and that is almost always so, as long as there is even a little bit of love and unity in the family. But from a very bad family, too, one can keep precious memories, if only one's soul knows how to seek out what is precious." [pg 290]
_"My life is coming to an end, I know and sense it, but I feel with every day that is left me how my earthly life is already touching a new, infinite, unknown, but swift-approaching life, anticipating which my soul trembles with rapture, my mind is radiant, and my heart weeps joyfully . . ." [pg 292]
_"For each blade of grass, each little bug, ant, golden bee, knows its way amazingly; being without reason, they witness to the divine mystery, they ceaselessly enact it." [pg 295]
_"'Mother, heart of my heart, truly each of us is guilty before everyone and for everyone, only people do not know it, and if they knew it, the world would at once become paradise.'" [pg 298]
_"'Gentlemen,' I cried suddenly from the bottom of my heart, 'look at the divine gifts around us: the clear sky, the fresh air, the tender grass, the birds, nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, we alone, are godless and foolish, and do not understand that life is paradise, for we need only wish to understand, and it will come at once in all its beauty, and we shall embrace each other and weep . . .'" [pg 299]
_"'Paradise,' he said, 'is hidden in each one of us, it is concealed within me, too, right now, and if I wish, it will come for me in reality, tomorrow even, and for the rest of my life.'" [pg 303]
_"This is a matter of the soul, a psychological matter. In order to make the world over anew, people themselves must turn onto a different path psychically. Until one has indeed become the brother of all, there will be no brotherhood. No science of self-interest will ever enable people to share their property and their rights among themselves without offense. Each will always think his share too small, and they will keep murmuring, they will envy and destroy one another. You ask when it will come true. It will come true, but first the period of human isolation must conclude." [pg 303]
_"'That which is now reigning everywhere, especially in our age, but it is not all concluded yet, its term has not come. For everyone now strives most of all to separate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life but full suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation. For all men in our age are separated into units, each seeks seclusion in his own hole, each withdraws from the others, hides himself, and hides what he has, and ends by pushing himself away from people and pushing people away from himself. He accumulates wealth in solitude, thinking: how strong, how secure I am now; and does not see, madman as he is, that the more he accumulates, the more he sinks into suicidal impotence. For he is accustomed to relying only on himself, he has separated his unit from th whole, he has accustomed his soul to not believing in people's help, in people or in mankind, and now only trembles lest his money and his acquired privileges perish. Everywhere now the human mind has begun laughably not to understand that a man's true security lies not in his own solitary effort, but in the general wholeness of humanity. But there must needs come a term to this horrible isolation, and everyone will all at once realize how unnaturally they have separated themselves one from another. Such will be the spirit of the time, and they will be astonished that they sat in darkness for so long, and did not see the light. " [pg 303]
_" But, as so often happens, crimes committed with extraordinary boldness are more likely to succeed than any others." [pg 305]
_"All will pass, the truth alone will remain." [pg 308]
_"The Lord is not in power but in truth." [pg 308]
_"'Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." [pg 309]
_"For the world says: 'You have needs, therefore satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the noblest and richest men. Do not be afraid to satisfy them, but even increase them' - this is the current teaching of the world. And in this they see freedom. But what comes of this right to increase one's needs? For the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; for the poor, envy and murder, for they have been given rights, but have no yet been shown any way of satisfying their needs. We are assured that the world is becoming more and more united, is being formed into brotherly communion, by the shortening of distances, by the transmitting of thoughts through the air. Alas, do not believe in such a union of people. Taking freedom to mean the increase and prompt satisfaction of needs, they distort their own nature, for they generate many meaningless and foolish desires, habits, and the most absurd fancies in themselves. They live only for mutual envy, for pleasure-seeking and self-display. To have dinners, horses, carriages, rank, and slaves to serve them is now considered such a necessity that for the sake of it, to satisfy it, they will sacrifice life, honor, the love of mankind, and will even kill themselves if they are unable to satisfy it. We see the same thing in those who are not rich, while the poor, so far, simply drown their unsatisfied needs and envy in drink. But soon they will get drunk on blood instead of wine, they are being led to that. I ask you: is such a man free?" [pg 313]
_" Equality is only in man's spiritual dignity, and only among us will that be understood. Where there are brothers, there will be brotherhood; but before brotherhood they will never share among themselves." [pg 316]
_"'Here are the two of us, he at home and I on the road, both no doubt sighing and smiling joyfully, in the gladness of our hearts, shaking our heads when we recall how God granted us this meeting.' I never saw him again after that." [pg 317]
_"The world cannot do without servants, but see to it that your servant is freer in spirit than if he were not a servant. And why can I not be the servant of my servant, and in such wise that he even sees it, and without any pride on my part, or any disbelief on his? Why can my servant not be like my own kin, so that I may finally receive him into my family, and rejoice for it? This may be accomplished even now, but it will serve as the foundation for the magnificent communion of mankind in the future, when a man will not seek servants for himself, and will not wish to turn his fellow men into servants, as now, but, on the contrary, will wish with all his strength to become himself the servant of all, in accordance with the Gospel." [pg 317]
_"Brothers, do not be afraid of men's sin, love man also in his sin, for this likeness of God's love is the height of love on earth. Love all of God's creation, both the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love animals, love plants, love each thing. If you love each thing, you will perceive the mystery of God in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin tirelessly to perceive more and more of it every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an entire, universal love. Love the animals: God gave them the rudiments of thought and an untroubled joy. Do not trouble it, do not torment them, do not take their joy from them, do not go against God's purpose. Man, do not exalt yourself above the animals: they are sinless, and you, you with your grandeur, fester the earth by your appearance on it, and leave your festering trace behind you - alas, almost everyone of us does! Love children especially, for they, too, are sinless, like angels, and live to bring us to tenderness and the purification of our hearts and as a sort of example for us." [pg 319]
_"A loving humility is a terrible power, the most powerful of all, nothing compare with it. Keep company with yourself and look to yourself every day and hour, every minute, that your image be ever gracious" [pg 319]
_"for one ought to love not for a chance moment but for all time" [pg 319]
_"Work tirelessly. If, as you are going to sleep at night you remember: 'I did not do what I ought to have done,' arise at once and do it. If you are surrounded by spiteful and callous people who do not want to listen to you, fall down before them and ask their forgiveness, for the guilt is yours, too, that they do not want to listen to you." [pg 321]
_"People are always saved after the death of him who saved them. The generation of men does not welcome its prophets and kills them, but men love their martyrs and venerate those they have tortured to death." [pg 322]
_"Christ will not be angered by love." [pg 323]
_"but in certain cases, really, it is more honorable to yield to some passion, however unwise, if it springs from great love, than not to yield to it at all." [pg 338]
_"He fell to the earth a weak youth and rose up a fighter, steadfast for the rest of his life, and he knew it and felt it suddenly, in that very moment of his ecstasy. Never, never in all his life would Alyosha forget that moment. 'Someone visited my soul in that hour,' he would say afterwards, with firm belief in his words . . .Three days later he left the monastery, which was also in accordance with the words of his late elder, who had bidden him to 'sojourn in the world,'" [pg 363]
_"Ah, no, there are people who feel deeply but are somehow beaten down. Their buffoonery is something like a spiteful irony against those to whom they dare not speak the truth directly because of a long-standing, humiliating timidity before them. Believe me, Krasotkin, such buffoonery is somethings extremely tragic." [pg 537]
_"'What, don't you believe in God?'
'On the contrary, I have nothing against God. Of course God is only a hypothesis . . but . . . I admit, he is necessary, for the sake of order . . . for the order of the world and so on . . . and if there were no God, he would have to be invented,' Kolya added." [pg 553]
_"'Its possible to love mankind even without believing in God, don't you think? Voltaire did not believe in God, but he loved mankind, didn't he?'" [pg 553]
_"Even there, in the mine, underground, you can find a human heart in the convict and murderer standing next to you, and you can be close to him, because there, too, it's possible to live, and love, and suffer! You can revive and resurrect the frozen heart in this convict, you can look after him for years, and finally bring up from the cave into the light a soul that is lofty now, a suffering consciousness, you can revive an angel, resurrect a hero!" [pg 591]
_"And it seems to me there's so much strength in me now that I can overcome everything, all sufferings, only in order to say and tell myself every moment: I am! In a thousand torments - I am; writhing under torture - but I am. Locked up in a tower, but still I exist, I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, still I know it is. And the whole of life is there - in knowing that the sun is." [pg 592]
_"But I'm not lying, it's all true; unfortunately, the truth is hardly ever witty." [pg 640]
_"Je pense donc je suis" [pg 642]
_"'Judging by the enthusiasm with which you deny me,' the gentleman laughed, 'I'm convinced that you do believe in me all the same." [pg 645]
_"And here is the real horror, that such dark affairs have almost ceased to horrify us! It is this, and not the isolated crime of one individual or another, that should horrify us: that we are so used to it. Where lie the reasons for our indifference, our lukewarm attitude towards such affairs, such signs of the times, which prophesy for us an unenviable future? In our cynicism, in an early exhaustion of mind and imagination in our society, s young and yet so prematurely decrepit? In our moral principles, shattered to their foundations, or, finally, in the fact that we, perhaps, are not even possessed of such moral principles at all? I do not mean to resolve these questions; nevertheless they are painful, and every citizen not only ought, but is even obliged, to suffer over them." [pg 693]
_" Granted he is a monster, but now, in our time, I no longer dare say he is just an isolated monster. Another man may not kill, perhaps, but he will think and feel exactly the same way, in his heart he is just as dishonest as the first." [pg 694]
_"But should not we, too, some day begin to live soberly and thoughtfully; should not we, too, take a look at ourselves as a society; should not we, to, understand at least something of our social duty, or at least begin to understand?" [pg 695]
_"Oh, we can also be good and beautiful, but only when we are feeling good and beautiful ourselves." [pg 698]
_"Let us lay aside psychology, gentlemen, let us lay aside medicine, let us lay aside even logic itself, let us turn just to the facts, simply to the facts alone, and let us see what the facts will tell us." [pg 709]
_"Not for nothing are we a poet, not for nothing have we been burning our life like a candle at both ends." [pg 716]
_"Why must we assume what we imagine, or imagine what we have assumed?" [pg 736]
_"But the greater the power, the more terrible its application." [pg 741]
_"Love cannot be created out of nothing: only God creates out of nothing." [pg 744]
_"We are not long on this earth, we do many evil deeds and say many evil words. And therefore let us all seize the favorable moments of our being together in order to say a good word to each other as well." [pg 744]
_"How decide it, then? Here is how: let the son stand before his father and ask him reasonably: 'Father, tell me, why should I love you? Father, prove to me that I should love you' - and if the father an, if he is able to answer and give him proof, then we have a real, normal family, established not just on mystical prejudice, but on reasonable, self-accountable, and strictly humane foundations." [pg 745]
_"There are souls that in their narrowness blame the whole world. But overwhelm such a soul with mercy, give it love, and it will curse what it has done, for there are so many germs of good in it. The sould will expand and behold how merciful God is, and how beautiful and just people are." [pg 747]
_"It is better to let ten who are guilty go, than to punish one who is innocent - do you hear, do you hear this majestic voice from the last century of our glorious history?" [pg 747]
_" You must know that there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder, or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory, especially a memory from childhoor, from the parental home. You hear a lot said about your education, yet some such beautiful, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man stores up many such memories to take into life, then he is saved for his whole life. And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve some day for our salvation." [pg 774]
Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
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| down these mean streets |
[Apr. 10th, 2009|12:57 am] |
_"Sometimes when you have too much, the good gets lost within and you have to look very hard. But when you have a little, then the good does not have to be looked for so hard." [p 9]
_"I like los Estados Unidos, but it's sometimes a cold place to live - not because of the winter and the landlord not giving heart but because of the snow in the hearts of the people." [p 10]
_"Things were looking up for us, but it had taken a damn war to do it. A lousy rumble had to get called so we could start to live better. I thought, How do you figure this crap out?. . . War or peace - what difference did it really make?" [p 13]
_"Caramba, it was great to see Momma happy. I'd go through the rest of my life making like funnies if I was sure Momma would be happy." [p 19]
_"Pops, I wondered, how come me and you is always on the outs? Is it something we don't know nothing about? I wonder if it's something I done, or something I am. Why do I feel so left outta things with you - like Moms is both of you to me, like if you and me was just an accident around here? I dig when you holler at the other kids for doing something wrong. How come it sounds so different when you holler at me? Why does it sound harder and meaner? Maybe I'm wrong, Pops. I know we all get the same good and clothes, anything and everything - except there's this feeling between you and me. Like it's not the same for me. How come when we all play with you, I can't really enjoy it like the rest? How come when we all get hit for doing something wrong, I feel it the hardest? Maybe' cause I'm the biggest, huh? Or maybe it's 'cause I'm the darkest in this family. Pops, you ain't like Herby's father, are you? I mean, you love us all the same, right?" [p 22]
_"I heard the home cheers of 'Yea, yea, bust that spic wide open!' Then I bloodied Tony's nose. He blinked and sniffed without putting his hands to his nose, and I remembered Poppa telling me, 'Son, if you're ever fighting somebody an' you punch him in the nose, and he just blinks an' sniffs whithout holding his nose, you can do one of two things: fight like hell or run like hell - 'cause that cat's a fighter.' . . . Poppa, I didn't put my hands to my nose." [p 31]
_"Moving into a new block is a big jump for a Harlem kid. You're torn us from your hard-won turf and brought into an 'I don't know you' block were every kid is some kind of enemy. Even when the block belongs to your own people, you are still an outsider who has to prove himself a down stud with heart." [p 47]
_"I'm tough, a voice within said. I hope I'm tough enough. I am tough enough. I've got mucho corazon, I'm king wherever I go. I'm a killer to my heart. I not only can live, I will live, no punk out, no die out, walk bad; be down, cool breeze, smooth." [p 48]
_"Hey world, do you know these mean streets is like a clip machine? It takes, an' keeps on taking, till it makes a cat feel like every day is something that's gotta be forgotten. But there's good things, too, man. Like standing together with your boys, and feeling like king. Like being down for anything, even though you're scared sweat will stand out all over you and your brave heart wants to crawl out through your pores.
Man! You meet your boys and make it to a jump, where you can break night dancing. You walk down them streets and you feel tall and tough. You dig people watching you an' walk a little more boppy. You let your tailormade hang cool between tight lips, unlit, and when you talk, your voice is soft and deep. Your shoulders brush against your boys. Music pours out of candy stores, restaurants and open windows and you feel good-o at the greatness of the sounds. You see the five-story crumbling building where the dance is happening. You flick your eyeballs around from force of habit, to see if any of the Jolly Rogers are around. The shit's on. But nobody like that's around, so you all make it up the stairs, and the sounds of shoes beating them long, dead wooden steps make it sound like a young army going to war. It's only nine guys, but each is a down stud. You think about how many boys you got an' it's more than you need.
The set is on the fifth floor and the floor is creaking an' groaning under the weight of all the coolies that are swinging. You dig the open door of the roof and smell burning pot. It smells like burned leaves. You and your boys dig each other for the same idea and, like one, make it up to the roof. Joints are pulled out of the brims of hats and soon there's no noise except the music and the steady hiss of cats blasting away on kick-sticks.
Then it comes - the tight feeling, like a rubber band being squeezed around your forehead. You feel your Adam's apple doing an up-an'-down act - gulp, gulp, gulp - and you feel great - great, dammit! So fine, so smooth. You like this feeling of being air-light, with your head tight. You like the sharpness of your ears as they dig the mambo music coming up the stairs. You hear every note clear. You have the power to pick out one instrument from another. Bongos, congas, flute, piano, maracas, marimba. You keep in time with your whole body and swinging soul, and all of a sudden you're in the middle, hung up with a chick; and the music is soft and she's softer, and you make the most of grinding against her warmth. Viva, viva, viva!
Then the Jolly Rogers walk in and everybody starts dealing. Your boys are fighting and you fall in with them. Bottles are hitting everything but the walls. You feel somebody put his damn fist square in your damn mouth and split your damn lip and you taste your own sweet blood - and all of a sudden you're really glad you came. You're glad you smoked pot, you're glad somebody punched you in the mouth; you're glad for another chance to prove how much heart you got. You scream mad and your moth is full of 'motherfuckers!' and you swing out hard. Ah, chevere! That broke his fuckin' nose.
Everybody's screaming; there's sounds of feet kicking, fallen bad men; there's sounds of chicks screaming 'Po-leece' outta open windows. Then the police siren is heard. It sounds like a stepped-on bitch. A blank is put on the rumble and everybody puts the law into effect. The fight stops and everybody makes it outta the place like it had caught fire. We still hate each other, but we hate the cops worse.
Everybody splits and beats it over hills and over dales - and over rooftops. You feel so good that when the cops make it up them five flights, they ain't gonna find nothing but a sad Puerto Rican record playing a sad bolero called 'Adios, motherfuckers.'
Yeah. But the best is the walk back to the block, with the talk about the heart shown in the rumble, the questions put down and the answers given. The look of pride and the warmth of hurts received and given. And each cat makes it to his pad to cop a nod and have his dreams sweetened by his show of corazon. Yeah, man, we sure messed them Jolly Rogers up . . . swoommmmm-swoommm..." [pg 59-60]
_"I felt both good and bad. I felt strong and drained. I hadn't liked the scene, but if a guy gotta live, he gotta do it from the bottom of his heart; he has to want it, to feel it." [pg 62]
_"Isn't this boss, I thought, just lying here, like this was my whole world? Someday I'm gonna buy this here country Central Park - and anybody can come in, but only if they promise not to chew more than one twig or blade of country Central Park grass. On second thought, not everybody can come in, only people like me. Along with the 'No Dogs Allowed' signs, I'll have 'Only People Like Me Allowed.' I'll tear down the ' Keep off the Grass' signs. And while I'm doing this, I might as well tear down the 'No Dogs Allowed' and the 'Curb Your Dogs' signs also. Maybe I'll put up 'Curb Your People' signs. Man if this is gonna be my country Central Park, I might as well do it up right. Let's see, 'No Bopping Allowed' signs or better yet : BOPPING ALLOWED FROM 9 P.M. to 1 A.M. - MON. to FRI.; 1 A.M. to 6 P.M. - SAT.; NO BOPPING ON SUN. LORD'S DAY." [pg 63]
_"I dreamed big; it didn't cost anything." [pg 70]
_"But wasn't it great to work for a living? I calculated how long it would take to make my first million shining shoes. Too long. I would be something like 987 years old. Maybe I could steal it faster." [pg 72]
_"'This Long Island ain't nuttin' like Harlem, and with all your green treets it ain't nuttin' like your Puerto Rico'." [pg 91]
_"I wondered how some guys could take the chance of cooking up and shooting up in any public place like a shithouse, where anybody can walk in, but when a cat's in need, he's a fool indeed." [pg 117]
_"What a world! Whether you're right or wrong, as long as you're strong, you're right." [pg 118]
_"This was the 'dozens,' a game of insults. The dozens is a dangerous game even among friends, and many a tooth has been lost between fine, ass-tight amigos. Now I wanted the game to get serious. I didn't know exactly why." [pg 121]
_"He's a lot darker than me, but one thing is for sure, neither of us is white." [pg 125]
_"But inside me, I felt hot and real stink about this funny world and all the funny people in it." [pg 141]
_"'Son,' Poppa said, 'there's a lot of things I'm right in and there's a lot of things you don't understand just yet. Maybe you see something in me I haven't seen yet, or maybe won't admit yet. I don't like feeling to be a black man. Can you understand it's a pride to me being a Puerto Rican?' 'What kind, Poppa, black or white?'" [pg 150]
_"So I ask you, if a white man can be a Negro if he has some Negro blood in him, why can't a Negro be a white man if he has white blood in him?" [pg 176]
_"I felt like maybe i had bought a ticket to the wrong technicolor movie." [pg 179]
_"'I feel like shit. It ain't just that I don't wanna be what I'm supposed to be, it's just that I'm fightin' me and the whole goddamn world at the same time. Jesus, Brew, I don't know if I'm makin' any sense at all, but everybody knows paddies are prejudiced against Negroes - and Negroes want to be prejudiced right back.'" [pg 180]
_"Yet there is something about dogie - heroin - it's a super-duper tranquilizer. All your troubles become a bunch of bleary blurred memories when you're in a nod of your own special dimension. And it was only when my messed-up system became a screaming want for the next fix did I really know just how short an escape from reality it really brought. The shivering, nose-running, crawling damp, ice-cold skin it produced were just the next worst step of - like my guts were gonna blow up and muscles in my body becoming so tight I could almost hear them snapping." [pg 200-201]
_"I hated the evenings because a whole night in prison lay before me, and I hated the mornings because I felt like Dracula returning to his coffin." [pg 255]
_"In prison you minded your business and fought your own fights or you were a punk. . . Sometimes a fight between two men makes them the greatest of friends, because of the respect that is born between the swinging fists." [pg 260-261]
_"'No matter a man's color or race, he has a need of dignity and he'll go anywhere, become anything, or do anything to get it - anything . . .'" [pg 297]
_"For the first time I was aware that I didn't know myself, outside of the fact that I ate when hungry, slept when sleepy, and got laid when horny. I wanted something better for my stick of living. Maybe God is psychology, or psychology is God." [pg 299]
_"I knelt at the foot of the bed and told God what was in my heart. I made like he was there in the flesh with me. I talked to him plain, like always; no big words, no big almighties, no big deals. I talked to Him like I had wanted to talk to my old man so many years ago. I talked like a little kid and I told Him of my wants and lacks, of my hopes and disappointments. I asked the Big Man to overlook my blanks and to make a cool way for me and that everything I ever learned or knew would be better if He and I could be buddies. I began to feel better inside, like God had become Pops and Moms to me. I felt like I was someone that belonged to somebody who cared. I felt like I could even cry if I wanted to, something I hadn't been able to do for years. 'God,' I concluded, 'maybe I won't be an angel, but I do know I'll try not to be a blank. So in Your name, and in Cristo's name. I ask this. Amen." [pg 317]
_"And, like the Bible lessons said, first would come faith, and then would come understanding. 'Good night, Chico,' I said. 'I'm thinking that God is always with us - it's just us that aren't with Him.'
I fell asleep thinking that I heard the kid crying softly. Cry, kid, I thought, bigger ones done it. I hear even Christ cried." [pg 317]
_"Then I started smoking pot. This went on for some weeks; then, one morning, after a wild, all-night pot party, I crept into Tia's apartment and dug myself in the mirror. What I saw shook me up. My eyes were red from smoke and my face was strained from the effort of trying to be cool. I saw myself as I had been six years ago, hustling, whoring, and hating, heading toward the same long years and the hard bit. i didn't want to go that route; I didn't want to go dig that past scene again.
I pulled away from the mirror and sat of the edge of my bed. My head was still full of pot, and I felt scared. I couldn't stop trembling inside. I felt as though I had found a hole in my face and out of it were pouring all the different masks that my cara-pollo face had fought so hard to keep hidden. I thought, I ain't goin' back to what I was." [pg 321]
_"Man, everything was the same; only I had changed." [pg 322]
_"Let me out and I'll push my arm back down there and hlep some other guy get a break." [pg 323]
_"Everything happened yesterday. Trina was yesterday. Brew was yesterday, Johnny Gringo was yesterday. I was a kid yesterday and my whole world was yesterday. I ain't got nothing but today and a whole lot of tomorrows." [pg 330]
_"When I was a kid running down dark ghetto streets, there was a saying from which I learned wisdom. "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me." The first part about 'stones breaking my bones' is right, but the part about 'words will never harm me' is bullsheet!! Words can harm a child when they are negative like 'nigger' or 'spic' or 'minority.' Why should we repeat the indignity by referring to each other with contemptuous racist terms? We must learn words can be bullets or butterflies, we must learn to say what we mean and mean what we say. For if we are what we eat, we are what we think, so let's not mug each other with racism and hatred, which are not the sole domain of one color." [pg 336]
Down These Mean Streets - Piri Thomas
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| The Way I See It #76 |
[Feb. 14th, 2009|01:02 am] |
"The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating - in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life." - Anne Morriss (Starbucks customer from New York City. She describes herself as an "organization builder, restless American citizen, optimist.")
the phrase on my starbucks cup.
i liked it.
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| henry V |
[Dec. 11th, 2008|05:24 pm] |
_"The play is both a story of rapacious warfare and a romantic comedy; England is both underdog and aggressor; unified and fracttious; a "band of brothers" and an army with a strict, and strictly enforced, pecking order. Henry himself is both the "mirror of all Christian kings" and a ruthless and Machiavellian performer of power." [introduction xxvii]
_"Perhaps anamorphism best sums up the curious compound of perspectives - romance and realpolitik - that constitutes this play." [introduction xxvii]
_"In his Saint Crispin's Day speech before the battle, Henry proffers a fantasy of national unity to his company. . . The words are thrilling and inspiring, as they are intended to be. Yet in death, on the very heels of the battle, this brotherhood is coldly enumerated by Henry not as a singly fellowship but in order of rank and degree." [introduction xxix]
_"These two sides - the inspiring and the calculating - constitute the double face of Henry, but it is a duality that does not so much discredit his rulership as render it all the more compelling. He is both righteous and ruthless, glorious and repellent, and the combination serves to make him both difficult to grasp and a king for every moment." [introduction xxx]
_"Such is in fact the function of this royal marriage, to aestheticize and romanticize the brutality of foreign invasion, to convert rape into romance." [introduction xxxiii]
_"The idealizing pressures of Henry V may at times cloy and coerce; but we ultimately forgive the play its glorifications, not only because we too crave a world where the underdog is the victor, few of the good guys die, and the hero gets the girl, but because we also know - and here we learn again - that such things are all too rare and fleeting." [introduction xxxiv]
_ CANTERBURY - "The courses of his youth promised it not./ The breath no sooner left his father's body/ But that his wildness, mortified in him,/ Seemed to die too." [I.1.24-27]
_KING HENRY - "Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor./ If that same demon that hath gulled thee thus/ Should with his lion gait walk the whole world,/ He might return to vasty Tartar back/ And tell the legions, 'I can never win/ A soul so easy as that Englishman's.'/ O, how hast thou with jealousy infected/ The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful?/ Why, so didst thou. Seem they grave and learned?/ Why, so didst thou. Come they of noble family?/ Why, so didst thou. Seem they religious?/ Why, so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet,/ Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,/ Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,/ Garnished and decked in modest complement,/ Not working with the eye without the ear,/ And but in purged judgment trusting neither?/ Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem;/ And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot/ To mark the full-fraught man and best indued/ With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;/ For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like/ Another fall of man. Their faults are open./ Arrest them to the answer of the law;/ And God acquit them of their practices!" EXETER - "I arrest thee of high treason by the name of Richard Earl of Cambridge. I arrest thee of high treason by the name of Henry Lord Scroop of Masham. I arrest thee of high treason by the name of Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland." [II.2.120-150]
_KING HENRY - "Now, lords, for France; the enterprise whereof/ Shall be to you as us, like glorius./ We doubt not of a fair and lucky war,/ Since God so graciously hath brought to light/ This dangerous treason, lurking in our way/ To hinder our beginnings. We doubt not now/ But every rub is smoothed on our way./ Then forth, dear countrymen. Let us deliver/ Our puissance into the hand of God,/ Putting it straight in expedition./ Cheerly to sea the signs of war advance./ No king of England, if not King of France!" [II.2.182-193]
_DAUPHIN - "Well, 'tis not so, my Lord High Constable./ But though we think it so, it is no matter./ In cases of defense 'tis best to weigh/ The enemy more mighty than he seems./ So the proportions of defense are filled;/ Which of a weak and niggardly projection/ Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat with scanting/ A little cloth." [II.4.41-48]
_DAUPHIN - "Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin/ As self-neglecting." [II.4.74-75]
_EXETER - "In every branch truly demonstrative;/ Willing you overlook this pedigree;/ And when you find him evenly derived/ From his most famed of famous ancestors,/ Edward the Third, he bids you then resign/ Your crown and kingdom, indirectly held/ From him, the native and true challenger." KING - "Or else what follows?" EXETER - "Bloody constraint; for if you hide the crown/ Even in your hearts, there will he rake for it,/ Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming,/ In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove;/ That if requiring fail, he will compel;/ And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,/ Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy/ On the poor souls for whom this hungry war/ Opens his vastly jaaws; and on your head/ Turning the widows' tears, the orphans' cries,/ The dead man's blood, the prived maidens' groans,/ For husbands, fathers, and betrothed lovers/ That shall be swallowed in this contoversy./ This is his claim, his threat'ning, and my message;/ Unless the Dauphin be in presence here,/ To whom expressly I bring greeting too." [II.4.89-112]
_MONTJOY - "Thus says my king: Say thou to Harry of England: Though we seemed dead, we did but sleep. Advantage is a better soldier than rashness. Tell him we could have rebuked him at Harfluer, but that we thought not good to bruise an injury till it were full ripe. Now we speak upon our cue, and our voice is imperial. England shall repent his folly, see his weakness, and admire our sufferance. Bid him therefore consider of his ransom, which must proportion the losses we have borne, the subjects we have lost, the disgrace we have digested; which in weight to re-answer, his pettiness would bow under. For our losses, his exchequer is too poor; for th'effusion of our blood, the muster of his kingdom too faint a number; and for our disgrace, his own person kneeling at our feet but a weak and worthless satisfaction. To this add defiance; and tell him for conclusion he hath betrayed his followerd, whose condemnation is pronounced. So far my king and master; so much my office." [III.6.116-134]
_KING HENRY - "Go therefore tell thy master here I am;/ My ransom is this frail and worthless trunk;/ My army but a weak and sickly guard;/ Yet, God before, tell him we will come on,/ Though France himself and such another neighbor/ Stand in our way. There's for they labor, Montjoy./ Go bid thy master well advise himself:/ If we may pass, we will; if we be hind'red/ We shall your tawny ground with your red blood; Discolor; and so, Montjoy, fare you well./ The sum of all our answer is but this:/ We would not seek a battle as we are,/ Nor, as we are, we say we will not shun it.? So tell your master." [III.6.151-164]
_KING HENRY - "We are in God's hand, brother, not in theirs." [III.6.167]
_KING HENRY - "No; nor it is not meet he should. For though I speak it to you, I think the king is but a man, as I am. The violet smells to him as it doth to me; the element shows to him as it doth to me; all his senses have but human conditions. His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing. Therefore, when he sees reason of fears, as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are. Yet, in reason, no man should possess him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his army." [IV.1.99-110]
_KING HENRY - "If we are marked to die, we are enow/ To do our country loss; and if to live,/ The fewer men, the greater share of honor./ God's will! I pray thee wish not one man more./ By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,/ Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;/ It yearns me not if men my garments wear;/ Such outward things dwell not in my desires:/ But if it be a sin to covet honor,/ I am the most offending soul alive./ No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England./ God's peace! I would not lose so great an honor/ As one man more methinks would share from me/ For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!/ Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,/ That he which hath no stomach to this fight,/ Let him depart; his passport shall be made,/ And crowns for convoy put into his purse./ We would not die in that man's company/ That fears his fellowship to die with us./ This day is called the Feast of Crispian./ He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,/ Will stand a-tiptoe when this day is named/ And rouse him at the name of Crispian./ He that shall see this day, and live old age,/ Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors/ And say, 'Tomorrow is Sain Crispian.'/ Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,/ [And say, 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.']/ Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,/ But he'll remember, with advantages,/ What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,/ Familiar in his mouth as household words - / Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,/ Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester - / Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered,/ This story shall the good man teach his son;/ And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,/ From this day to the ending of the world,/ But we in it shall be remembered - / We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;/ For he today that sheds his blood with me/ Shall be my brother. Be he ne'er so vile,/ This day shall gentle his condition;/ And gentleman in England now abed/ Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,/ And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks/ That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day." [IV.3.21-68]
_KING HENRY - "What! A speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall, a straight back will stoop, a black beard will turn white, a curled pate will grow bald, a fair face will wither, a full eye will wax hollow; but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon; or rather, the sun, and not the moon, for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly." [V.2.159-165]
Henry V - William Shakespeare
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| UNIV 102 - Seminar Parting Thoughts |
[Dec. 11th, 2008|05:12 pm] |
Parting thoughts from Professor Scheidenhelm :)
"We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same."
-Anne Frank
"For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven"
-Ecclesiastes
"As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences."
-Senator Eugene McCarthy
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 7th, 2008|11:51 pm] |
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulleth edge of husbandry.
This above all, to thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
This above all, to thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
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| king lear |
[Nov. 3rd, 2008|12:56 am] |
_CORDELIA - "And yet not so, since I am sure my love's/ More richer than my tongue." [1.1.70 - 71]
_CORDELIA - "Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave/ My heart into my mouth. I love your majesty/ According to my bond, nor more nor less." [1.1.80 - 82]
_KENT - "And your large speeches may your deeds approve,/ That good effects may spring from words of love." [1.1.172 - 173]
_GONERIL - "He always loved our sister most, and with what poor judgment he hath now cast her off appears too gross." [1.1.278 - 280]
_EDMUND - "Well then,/ Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land./ Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund/ As to the legitimate. Well, my legitimate, if/ This letter speed and my invention thrive,/ Edmund the base shall to th' legitimate./ I grow, I prosper. Now gods, stand up for bastards!" [1.2.15 - 21]
_EDMUND - "This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune - often the surfeit of our own behavior - we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treacherers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting on." [1.2.112 - 120]
_EDGAR - "Some villian hath done me wrong." [1.2.156]
_EDMUND - "A credulous father, and a brother noble,/ Whose nature is so far from doing harms/ That he suspects none, on whose foolish honesty/ My practices ride easy. I see the business./ Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit./ All with me's meet that I can fashion fit." [1.2.164 - 169]
_LEAR - "Dost thou call me fool, boy?" FOOL - "All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with." [1.4.144 - 146]
_FOOL - "Yes. Thou wouldst make a good fool." [1.5.38]
_FOOL - "Thou shouldst not have been old before thou hadst been wise." [1.5.43 - 44]
_OSWALD - "What dost thou know me for?" KENT - "A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats, a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave; a whoreson, glass-gazing, superfinical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the compostition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch, whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deny the least syllable of the addition." [2.2.12 - 22]
_KENT - "Fortune, good night;/ Smile; once more turn thy wheel." [2.2.169 - 170]
_FOOL - "We'll set thee to school to a ant, to teach thee there's no laboring in the winter. All that follow their noses are led by their eyes but blind men, and there's not a nose among a hundred but can smell him that's stinking. Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break they neck with following it; but the great one that goes up the hill, let him draw thee after. When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again. I would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it." [2.4.51 - 60]
_LEAR - "I am a man more sinned against than sinning." [3.2.60]
_THIRD SERVANT - "If she live long/ And in the end meet the old course of death,/ Women will all turn monsters." [3.7.104 - 106]
_EDGAR - "Yet better thus and known to be contemned/ Than still contemned and flattered. To be worst,/ The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,/ Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear./ The lamentable change is from the best,/ The worst returns to laugher." [4.1.1 - 6]
_EDGAR - "And worse I may be yet. The worst is not/ As long as we can say 'This is the worst.'" [4.1.26 - 27]
_ALBANY - "Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;/ Filths savor but themselves." [4.2.39 - 40]
_EDGAR - "Men must endure/ Their going hence even as their coming hither./ Ripeness is all." [5.2.9 - 11]
_EDMUND - "What you have charged me with, that have I done,/ And more, much more. The time will bring it out./ 'Tis past, and so am I. But what art thou/ That hast this fortune on me? If thou beest noble,/ I do fogive thee." [5.3.158 - 162]
_EDMUND - "Thou hast spoken truth./ The wheel is come full circled; I am here." [5.3.169 - 170]
_ALBANY - "The weight of this sad time we must obey,/ Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say./ The oldest have borne most; we that are young/ Shall never see so much, nor live so long." [5.3.321 - 324]
The History of King Lear - William Shakespeare
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| venus |
[Nov. 3rd, 2008|12:39 am] |
_THE YOUNG MAN - "'The Man who has never been from his own home is no Man. For how can a Man call himself Man if he has not stepped off his own doorstep and wandered out into the world . . .Visit the world and Man he will be.'" [pg 26]
_THE YOUNG MAN - "When a Man takes his journey beyond all that to him was hitherto the Known, when a Man packs his baggage and walks himself beyond the Familiar, then sees he his true I; not in the eyes of the Known but in the eyes of the Known-Not.'" [pg 26]
Venus - Suzan-Lori Parks |
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| macbeth |
[Nov. 3rd, 2008|12:12 am] |
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_"The drama of Macbeth is really a matter between Macbeth and his ambition, Macbeth and the witches and his wife and his hallucinations and his own tortured soul, the drama of prophecies and riddles, and how he understands them, and what he decides to do about them, and how they, in themselves, constitute retribution." [pg xxxviii]
_"But why does virtue need an agent, while vice can act for itself?" [pg xliii]
_LADY MACBETH - "Yet do I fear thy nature./ It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness/ To catch the nearest way" [1.5.15 - 17]
_LADY MACBETH - "Come, you spirits/ That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,/ And fill me from the crown to the toe topful/ Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood;" [1.5.39 - 42]
_MACBETH - "But here upon this bank and shoal of time,/ We'd jump the life to come. But in these cases/ We still have judgment here, that we but teach/ Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return/ To plague th' inventor." [1.7.6 - 10]
_LADY MACBETH - "What beast was't then/ That made you brek this enterprise to me?/ When you durst do it, then you were a man;/ And to be more than what you were, you would/ Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place/ Did then adhere, and yet you would make both./ They have made themselves, and that their fitness now/ Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know/ How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:/ I would, while it was smiling in my face,/ Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums/ And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you/ Have done to this." MACBETH - "If we should fail?" LADY MACBETH - "We fail? But screw your courage to the sticking place/ And we'll not fail." [1.7.47 - 62]
_MACBETH - "Is this a dagger which I see before me,/ The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee./ I have thee not, and yet I see thee still./ Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible/ To feeling as to sight? or art thou but/ A dagger of the mind, a false creation/ Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?" [2.1.34 - 40]
_MACBETH - "I go, and it is done. The bell invites me./ Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell/ That summons thee to heaven, or to hell." [2.1.63 - 65]
_MACBETH - "Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more!/ Macbeth does murder sleep' - the innocent sleep,/ Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,/ The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,/ Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,/ Chief nourisher in life's feast." LADY MACBETH - "What do you mean?" MACBETH - "Still it cried 'Sleep no more!' to all the house;/ 'Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor/ Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more'." [2.1.38 - 46]
_LADY MACBETH - "My hands are of your color, but I shame/ To wear a heart so white." [2.1.67 - 68]
_MACDUFF - "Right the alarum bell! Murder and treason!/ Banquo and Donalbain! Malcolm, awake!/ Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit,/ And look on death itself. Up, up, and see/ The great doom's image. Malcolm! Banquo!/ As from your graves rise up and walk like sprites/ To countenance this horror." [2.3.73 - 79]
_MACBETH - "Who could refrain/ That had a heart to love, and in that heart/ Courage to make's love known?" [2.3.114 - 116]
_DONALBAIN - "There's daggers in men's smiles; the near in blood,/ The nearer bloody." [2.3.138 - 139]
_OLD MAN - "God's benison go with you, and with those/ That would make good of bad, and friends of foes." [2.4.40 - 41]
_BANQUO - "Thou hast it now - king, Cawdor, Glamis, all,/ As the weird women promised; and I fear/ Thou play'dst most foully for't. Yet it was said/ It should not stand in they posterity,/ But that myself should be the root and father/ Of many kings. If there come truth from them - / As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine - / Why, by the verities on thee made good,/ May they not be my oracles as well/ And set me up in hope? But hush, no more." [3.1.1 - 10]
_MACBETH - "To be thus is nothing, but to be safetly thus." [3.1.48]
_MACBETH - "It is concluded. Banquo, thy soul's flight,/ If it find heaven, must find it out tonight." [3.1.140 - 142]
_MACBETH - "For mine own good/ All causes shall give way. I am in blood/ Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,/ Returning were as tedious as go o'er./ Strange things I have in head, that will to hand,/ Which must be acted ere they may be scanned." [3.4.136 - 141]
_LADY MACDUFF - "When our actions do not,/ Our fears do make us traitors." [4.2.3 - 4]
_LADY MACDUFF - "All is the fear and nothing is the love,/ As little is the wisdom, where the flight/ So runs against all reason." [4.2.12 - 14]
_ROSS - "But cruel are the times when we are traitors/ And do not know ourselves;" [4.2.18 - 19]
_SON - "Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enow to beat the honest men and hang up them." [4.2.56 - 58]
_LADY MACBETH - "Out damned spot! Out, I say! One - two - why then 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie! a soldeir and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?" [5.1.35 - 40]
_MACBETH - "Cure her of that./ Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,/ Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,/ Raze out the written troubles of the brain,/ And with some sweet oblivious antidote/ Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff/ Which weighs upon the heart?" [5.3.41 - 47]
_MACBETH - "She should have died hereafter:/ There would have been a time for such a word./ Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow/ Creeps in this p etty pace from day to day/ To the last syllable of recorded time,/ And all our yesterdays have lighted fools/ The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle,/ Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more. It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing." [5.5.17 - 28]
Macbeth - William Shakespeare |
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| lyrics |
[Oct. 28th, 2008|08:35 pm] |
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"Alice the world
is full of ugly things
that you can't change
pretend it's not that way
that's my idea of faith
you can blow it off
and say there's good
in nearly everyone
just give them all a chance
give them all a chance"
-Ben Folds Five
-Alice Childress
"No, I'm not colorblind
I know the world is black and white
Try to keep an open mind
But I just can't sleep on this tonight
Stop this train
I wanna get off
And go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can't
But honestly, won't someone stop this train?
Don't know how else to say it
Don't want to see my parents go
One generation's length away
From fighting life out on my own
Stop this train
I wanna get off
And go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can't
But honestly, won't someone stop this train?
So scared of getting older
I'm only good at being young
So I play the numbers game
To find a way to say that life has just begun
Had a talk with my old man
Said "help me understand"
He said "turn sixty-eight
You renegotiate"
"Don't stop this train
Don't for a minute change the place you're in
And don't think I couldn't ever understand
I tried my hand
John, honestly we'll never stop this train"
Once in awhile, when it's good
It'll feel like it should
And they're all still around
And you're still safe and sound
And you don't miss a thing
Till you cry when you're driving away in the dark
Singing
Stop this train
I wanna get off
And go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can
Cause now I see I'll never stop this train" -John Mayer
-Stop This Train
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| maud martha |
[Oct. 28th, 2008|03:51 pm] |
_"But dandelions were what she chiefly saw. Yellow jewels for everyday, studding the patched green dress of her back yard. She liked their demure prettiness second to their everydayness; for in that latter quality she thought she saw a picture of herself, and it was comforting to find that what was common could also be a flower." [pg 2]
_"Then just what was important? What had been important about this life, this Uncle Tim? Was the world any better off for his having lived? A little, perhaps. Perhaps he had stopped his car short once, and saved a dog, so that another car could kill it a month later. Perhaps he had given some little street wretch a nickel's worth of peanuts in its unhappy hour, and that little wretch would grow up and forget Uncle Tim but all its life would carry in its heart an anonymous, seemingly underivative softness for mankind. Perhaps." [pg 25]
_"Maud Martha saw people, after having all but nocked themselves out below, climbing up the golden, golden stairs, to a throne where sat Jesus, or the Almighty God; who promptly opened a Book, similar to the arithmetic book she had had in grammar school, turned to the back, and pointed out - the Answers! And the people, poor little things, nodding and cackling among themselves - 'So that was it all the time! that is what I should have done!' 'But - so simple! so easy! I should just have turned here! instead of there!' How wonderful! Was it true? Were people to get the Answers in the sky? Were people really going to understand It better by and by? When it was too late?" [pg 27]
_"Helen was still the one they wanted in the wagon, still 'the pretty one,' 'the dainty one.' The lovely one.
She did not know what it was. She had tried to find the something that must be there to imitate, that she might imitate it. But she did not know what it was. I wash as much as Heln does, she thought. My hair is longer and thicker, she thought. I'm much smarter. I read books and newspapers and old folks like to talk with me, she thought." [pg 34-35]
_"'You'll never get a boy friend,' said Helen, fluffing on her Golden Peacock powder, 'if you don't stop reading those books.'" [pg 39]
_"The name 'New York' glittered in front of her like the silver in the shops on Michigan Boulevard. It was silver, and it was solid, and it was remote: it was behind glass, it was behind bright glass like the silver in the shops. It was not for her. Yet." [pg 47]
_"New York, for Maud Martha, was a symbol. Her idea of it stood for what she felt life ought to be. Jeweled. Polished. Smiling. Poised. Calmly rushing! Straight up and down, yet graceful enough." [pg 50]
_"She was eighteen years old, and the world waited. To caress her." [pg 51]
_"I know what he is thinking, thought Maud Martha, as she sat on the porch in the porch swing with Paul Phillips. He is thinking that I am all right. That I am really all right. That I will do.
And I am glad of that, because my whole body is singing beside him. And when you feel like that beside a man you ought to be married to him." [pg 52]
_"Was her attitude unco-operative? Should she be wanting to sacrifice more, for the sake of her man? A procession of pioneer women strode down her imagination; strong women, bold; praiseworthy, faithful, stout-minded; with a stout light beating in the eyes. Women who could stand low temperatures. Women who would toil eminently, to improve the lot of their men. Women who cooked. She thought of herself, dying for her man. It was a beautiful thought." [pg 59]
_"And these things - roaches, and having to be satisfied with the place as it was - were not the only annoyances that had to be reckoned with. She was becoming aware of an oddness in color and sound and smell about her, the color and sound and smell of the kitchenette building. The color was gray, and the smell and sound had taken on a suggestion of the properties of color, and impressed one as gray, too. The sobbings, the frustrations, the small hates, the large and ugly hates, the little pushing-through love, the boredom, that came to her from behind those walls (some of them beaver-board) via speech and scream and sigh - all these were gray. And the smells of various types of sweat, and of bathing and bodily functions (the bathroom was always in use, someone was always in the bathroom) and of fresh or stale love-making, which rushed in thick fumes to your nostrils as you walked down the hall, or down the stairs - these were gray.
There was a whole lot of grayness here." [pg 63-64]
_"The strolling women were cleverly gowned. Some of them had flowers or flashers in their hair. They looked - cooked. Well cared-for. And as though they had never seen a roach or a rat in their lives. Or gone without heat for a week. And the men had even edges. They were men, Maud Martha thought, who wouldn't stoop to fret over less than a thousand dollars.
'We're the only colored people here,' said Paul.
She hated him a little. 'Oh, hell. Who in hell cares.'" [pg 75]
_"She pressed back, smiling beautifully to herself in the darkness. Though she knew that once the spell was over it would be a year, two years, more, before he would return to the World Playhouse. And he might never go to a real play. But she was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.
When the picture was over, and the lights revealed them for what they were, the Negroes stood up among the furs and good cloth and faint perfume, looked about them eagerly. They hoped they would meet no cruel eyes. They hoped no one would look intruded upon. They had enjoyed the picture so, they were so happy, they wanted to laugh, to say warmly to the other outgoers, 'Good, huh? Wasn't it swell?'
This, of course, they could not do. But if only no one would look intruded upon . . . . " [pg 78]
_"The Ball made toys of her emotions, stirred her variously. But she was anxious to have it end, she was anxious to be at home again, with the door closed behind herself and her husband. Then, he might be warm. There might be more than the absent courtesy he had been giving her of late. Then, he might be the tree she had a great need to lean against, in this 'emergency.' There was no telling what dear thing he might say to her, what little gem let fall.
But, to tell the truth, his behavior now was not very promising of gems to come. After their second dance he escorted her to a bench by the wall, left her. Trying to look nonchalant, she sat. She sat, trying not to show the inferiority she did not feel. When the music struck up again, he began to dance with someone red-haired and curved, and white as a white. Who was she? He had approached her easily, he had taken her confidently, he held her and conversed with her as though he had known her well for a long, long time. The girl smiled up at him. Her gold-spangled bosom was pressed - was pressed against that maleness-" [pg 84-85]
_"Paul came back from the reception hall. Maella was clinging to his arm. A final cry of the saxophone finished that particular slice of the blues. Maud Martha's partner bowed, escorted her to a chair by a rubber plant, bowed again, left.
'I could,' considered Maud Martha, 'go over there and scratch her upsweep down. I could spit on her back. I could scream. 'Listen,' I could scream, 'I'm making a baby for this man and I mean to do it in peace.' '
But if the root was sour what business did she have up there hacking at a leaf?" [pg 88]
_"The doctor brought the baby and laid it in the bed beside Maud Martha. Shortly before she had heard it in the kitchen - a bright delight had flooded through her upon first hearing that part of Maud Martha Brown Phillips expressing itself with a voice of its own. But now the baby was quiet and returned its mother's stare with one that seemed equally curious and mystified but perfectly cool and undisturbed." [pg 99]
_"Then there was Clement Lewy, a little boy at the back, on the second floor.
Lewy life was not terrifically tossed. Saltless, rather. Or like an unmixed batter. Lumpy.
Littly Clement's mother had grown listless after the desertion. She looked as though she had been scrubbed, up and down, on the washing board, doused from time to time in gray and noisome water...
She started toward her housemaid's work each morning at seven. She left a glass of milk and a bowl of dry cereal and a dish of prunes on the table, and set the alarm clock for eight. At eight little Clement punched off the alarm, stretched, got up, washed, dressed, combed, brushed, ate his breakfast. . . At three o'clock he returned from school, opened the door with his key. It was quiet in the apartment. He got a couple of graham crackers out of the cookie can. He drew himself a glass of water. He changed his clothes. . .As he played, he kept a lookout for his mother, who usually arrived at seven, or near that hour. When he saw her rounding the corner, his little face underwent a transformation. His eyes lashed into brightness, his lips opened suddenly and became a smile, and his eyebrows climbed towards his hairline in relief and joy.
He would run to his mother and almost throw his little body at her. 'Here I am, mother! Here I am! Here I am!'" [pg 114 -116]
_"Often, visiting them, you were embarrassed, because it was obvious that you were interrupting the progress of a truly great love; even as you conversed, there they would be, kissing or patting each other, or gazing into each other' eyes." [pg 120 - 121]
_"'And there was this young - man. Twenty-one or two years old, wasn't he, Maudie?' David looked down at his guest. When they sat, their heights were equal, for his length was in the legs. But he thought he was looking down at her, and she was very willing to concede that that was what he was doing, for the immediate effect of the look was to make her sit straight as a stick." [pg 131]
_"'I'm mighty glad,' she confided, 'that the cold weather is in. I love the cold. It was awful, walking the streets in that nasty old August weather. And even September was rather close this year, didn't you think?'
Sonia agreed. 'Sure was.'
'People,' confided Miss Ingram, 'think this is a snap job. It ain't. I work like a nigger to make a few pennies. A few lousy pennies.'
Maud Martha's head shot up. She did not look at Miss Ingram. She stared intently at Sonia Johnson. Sonia Johnson's sympathetic smile remained. Her eyes turned, as if magnetized, toward Maud Marta; but she forced her smile to stay on. Maud Martha went back to Vogue. 'For,' she thought, 'I must have been mistaken. I was afraid I heard that woman say 'nigger.' Apparently not. Because of course, Mrs. Johnson wouldn't let her get away with it. In her own shop.' Maud Martha closed Vogue. . .
Mis Ingram said, smiling in a tired manner, as she buttoned the top button of her Persian lamb. She walked quickly out the door. The little bell tinkled charmingly. . .
'You know, why I didn't catch her up on that, is - our people is got to stop feeling so sensitive about these words like 'nigger' and such. I often think about this, and how these words like 'nigger' don't mean to some of these here white people what our people think they mean.' . . .
'You mean to say,' Maud Martha broke in, 'that that woman really did say 'nigger'?' . . .
'Well! At first, I thought she said it, but then I decided I must have been mistaken, because you were't getting after her.'
'Now that's what I'm trying to explain to you, dearie. Sure I could have got all hot and bothered, and told her to clear out of here, or cussed her daddy, or something like that. But what would be the point, when, like I say, that word 'nigger' can mean on of them just as fast as one of us, and in fact it don't mean us, and in fact we're just too sensitive and all? What would be the point? Why make enemies? Why go getting all hot and bothered all the time?'
Maud Martha stared steadily into Sonia Johnson's irises. She said nothing. She kept on staring into Sonia Johnson's irises." [pg 140 - 142]
_"She watched the little dreams of smoke as they spiraled about his hand, and she thought about happenings. She was afraid to suggest to him that, to most people, nothing at all 'happens.' That most people merely live from day to day until they die. That, after he had been dead a year, doubtless fewer than five people would think of him oftener than once a year. That there might even come a year when no one on earth would think of him at all." [pg 149-150]
_"People could do this! people could cut a chicken open, take out the mess, with bare hands or a bread knife, pour water in, as in a bag, pour water out, shake the corpse by neck or by legs, free the straggles of water. Could feel that insinuating slipping bone, survey that soft, that headless death. The fainthearted could do it. But if the chicken were a man! - cold man with no head or feet and with all the little feath - er, hairs to be pulled, and the intestines loosened and beginning to ooze out, and the gizzard yet to be grabbed and the stench beginning to rise! And yet the chicken was a sort of person, a respetable individual, with its own kind of dignity. The difference was in the knowing. What was unreal to you, you could deal with violently. If chickens were ever to be safe, people would have to live with them, and know them, see them loving their children, finishing the evening meal, arranging jealousy.
When the animal was ready for the oven Maud Martha smacked her lips at the thought of her meal." [pg 152 - 153]
Maud Martha - Gwendolyn Brooks
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| the man with the golden arm |
[Oct. 18th, 2008|10:15 pm] |
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_"The city had filled him with the guilt of others;" [pg 5]
_"Till the finger of guilt, pointing so sternly for so long across the query-room blotter, had grown bored with it all at last and turned, capriciously, to touch the fibers of the dark gray muscle behind the captain's light gray eyes. So that though by daylight he remained the pursuer there had come nights, this windless first week of December, when he had dreamed he was being pursued." [pg 5]
_"The tranquil, square-faced, shagheaded little buffalo-eyed blond called Frankie Machine and the ruffled, jittery punk called Sparrow felt they were about as sharp as the next pair of hustlers. These walls, that had held them both before, had never held either long." [pg 9]
_"Neither God, war, nor the ward super work any deep change on West Division Street." [pg 9]
_"The only thing neither the super's God nor the super was wise to was the hypo Frankie kept, among other souvenirs, at the bottom of a faded duffel bag in another veteran's room." [pg 10]
_"That's me - the kid with the golden arm." [pg 11]
_"'That's one Hebe knows how bad it can get,' Frankie sometimes explained their friendship obscurely, 'knows how bad it can get 'n knows how good it can be. Knows the way it used to be 'n how it's gettin' now. I'd trust him with my sister all night. Provided, of course, she wasn't carryin' more than thirty-five cents.'" [pg 12]
_"Frankie could never acknowledge that he squinted a bit. 'If anythin' was wrong with my peepers the army wouldn't of took me,' he argued, 'the hand is quicker than the eye - 'n I got a very naked eye.' Yet he sometimes failed to see a thing directly beneath that same very naked eye. 'Where's the bag?' he would ask. 'Under your nose, Dealer' someone would point out. 'Well, there's supposed to be six bucks in it,' he'd explain as if that, somehow, were why he hadn't seen it right away.'" [pg 12]
_"Somehow Sparrow never seemed certain which were the odd and which the even numbers. 'Mat'matics is on my offbalanced side,' he allowed, 'I make them dirty offslips.' Yet he was as accurate as an adding machine in anticipating combinations in any alley crap game; he distinguished clearly between odd and even then - sometimes before they turned up." [pg 14]
_"No oath was necessary. He would have died before betraying the smallest of Frankie's professional secrets." [pg 14]
_"For no seeming reason Sparrow suddenly pointed an accusing finger at Frankie. 'Who's the ugliest man in this jail?' he demanded to know and answered himself just as suddenly. 'Me.'" [pg 16]
_"'When you're as ugly as I am you got to keep things movin' so's people don't get the time to make fun of you. That's how you keep from feelin' bad.'" [pg 16]
_"The great, secret and special American guilt of owning nothing, nothing at all, in the one land where ownership and virtue are one." [pg 19]
_"He had not even been a success in the taverns. Even there he could not afford the liquor that lends distinction nor the beer that gives that special glow of health, leading, often quite suddenly, to startling social success." [pg 19]
_"A roach had leaper, or fallen, from the ceiling into the water bucket, where a soggy slice of pumpernickel and a sodden hunk of sausage now circled slowly, about and about, although there was no current. Belly upward, the roach's legs plied the alien air, trying dreamily to regain a foothold; while Frankie, leaning dreamily on one elbow, knew just how that felt." [pg 22]
_"'I'm no good but my wife's a hundred per cent.' somebody down the tier confided aloud to everyone in hearing distance. 'Mine stinks,' Frankie Machine thought softly; immediately his conscience kicked him in the shin. 'I got a good one too,' he answered loudly to make up for everything. And his conscience kicked him in the other shin for lying." [pg 23]
_"'I just smelled 'em 'n asked her 'n she told me, 'Piggy give me four sticks,' that's all. So I told him to lay off her.' Adding to himself: 'One customer in the family is all we can afford.'" [pg 25]
_"' I never asked you where the stuff comes from,' Frankie reminded him, 'but I'll tell you one place where it ain't goin', 'n that's upstairs where I live. I'm kickin' the stuff altogether this week end, I don't want you hustlin' Soph onto no kick like that. I can't afford.'" [pg 26]
_"' I hope you go from monkey to zero 'n never get hooked again.'" [pg 26]
_"'All that's wrong with you is you don't know what to do with yourself so you take picks on that girl. Why she puts up with you you'll never make me understand.' He let John pass to the street at last. It was true. He was simply a man who didn't know what to do with himself, for he didn't yet know who he was. It's sometimes easier to find a job than to find oneself and John hadn't yet gotten around to doing the first. How could he know who he was? Some find themselves through joy, some through suffering and some through toil. Johnny had till now tried nothing but whisky. A process which left him feeling like somebody new every day." [pg 31]
_"He was many men and no man at all. He was a hysterical little bundle of possibilities that could never come true. He was a mouth at the end of a whisky glass, a knock-kneed shuffle in dancing pumps." [pg 31]
_"'Sophie's gonna be real worried about you, Frankie,' Sparrow chose the moment to remind the dealer. Frankie rose and pushed back his chair as though he thought it might somehow by Molly Novotny to whom he was going home tonight." [pg 31]
_"Schwabatski's ears had long ago tuned out the sort of roarer that the dealer and his Sophie sometimes put on. To a stranger it would have sounded like one word short of muder; but the Jailer would shuffle past, explaining it to himself: 'They want to love each other - but they don't know how.' And shrug upon his way." [pg 33]
_"Frankie grabbed his cap. He needed air. He needed sleep. He needed a good stiff drink. He needed anything, anything at all for just one short hour of peace." [pg 42]
_"Again it had been all his fault, she realized: even the dog on the landing below began yapping up at him. And on top of everything else calling her dirty names - nothing could make up for a man calling his wife dirty names any more than broken china could be mended to look like new. It struck her abruptly that her dishes were broken. There at her feet her own sweet dead mother's very best dishes broken just because that Frankie Majcinek had turned out so mean - blaming her now for being a cripple, breaking up the house to show how he felt just as if it hadn't been him who'd put her in the chair in the first place." [pg 42]
_"For Nifty Louie paid the rent and Frankie knew too well who the landlord was. He had met him before, that certain down-at-heel vet growing stooped from carrying a thirty-five-pound monkey on his back. Frankie remembered that face, ravaged by love of its own suffering as by some endless all-night orgy. A face forged out of his own wound fever in a windy ward tent on the narrow Meuse. He had met Private McGantic before: both had served their country well." [pg 56-7]
_"Frankie moaned like an animal that cannot understand its own pain. His shirt had soaked through and the pain had frozen so deep in his bones nothing could make him warm again." [pg 58]
_"It hit all right. It hit the heart like a runaway locomotive, it hit like a falling wall. Frankie's whole body lifted with that smashing surge, the very heart seemed to lift up-up-up - then rolled over and he slipped into a long warm bath with one long orgasmic sigh of relief. Frankie opened his eyes. He was in a room. Somebody's dust-colored wavy-walled room and he wasn't quite dead after all. He had died, had felt himself fall away and die but now he wasn't dead any more. Just sick. But not too sick. He wasn't going to be really sick, he wasn't a student any more. Maybe he wasn't going to be sick at all, he was beginning to feel just right." [pg 59]
_"So what was the use of spending forty dollars in the bars when you could do better at home on one? That was how Frankie had it figured that week end. To Louie, listening close, he'd already talked like a twenty-dollar-a-day man." [pg 59]
_"Louie was the best fixer of them all because he knew what it was to need to get well. Louie had had a big habit - he was one man who could tell you you lied if you said no junkie could kick the habit once he was hooked. For Louie was theone junkie in ten thousand who'd kicked it and kicked it for keeps." [pg 60]
_"'I had a great big habit. One time I knocked out one of my own teet' to get the gold for a fix. You call that bein' hooked or not? Hooked? Man, I wasn't hooked, I was crucified. The monkey got so big he was carryin' me. 'Cause the way it starts is like this, students: you let the habit feed you first 'n one mornin' you wake up 'n you're feedin' the habit. 'But don't tell me you can't kick it if you want to. When I hear a junkie tell me he wants to kick the habit but he just can't I know he lies even if he don't know he does. He wants to carry the monkey, he's punishin' hisself for somethin' 'n don't even know it.'" [pg 60]
_"'Fixer - you just give the boy with the golden arm his very lastest fix.'" [pg 61]
_"How had they both forgotten God so soon? Or had God forgotten them? Certainly God had gone somewhere far away at just the time when she'd needed Him most. Perhaps He too had volunteered and just hadn't gotten His discharge yet. Perhaps He had been a full colonel and still felt the need of keeping His distance. If He had been only a private, then He must have re-enlisted. Or else the world had gone wrong all by itself." [pg 63]
_"That unforgivable, careless grin that she couldn't get out of her system and had to have all for herself and couldn't ever quite seem to get all for her very own for keeps." [pg 63]
_"'You're my honey, I wouldn't choke you really,' she'd assure him weakly at last. He had won every single one of those skirmishes though he'd been dead in the wrong every time. And each time she'd been so right, so terribly right. Till each defeat she suffered had aroused a secret need for the sort of vengeance that a certain sort of love requires." [pg 65]
_"It had been in that curtained corner, at last, that her mock pregnancy had been devised. Out of the false pregnancy their marriage had been forged. Had it been because she had really wanted a baby so badly? Or had needed so to punish him? Her breasts had swollen, she had suffered morning sickness - and after five months had wound up the game by lying nine days with an icebag instead of a baby at her breast. Empty-breasted and empty-armed while other women nursed their young. And when he'd come to see her hadn't reproached him once. It wasn't necessary. She had read in his eyes the realization of what he'd done. 'Don't look sorry, Frankie - it wasn't your fault,' she'd told him. He had been too miserable to reply. He knew whose fault it had been all right." [pg 65]
_"'He told me he loved me that night,' she still liked to recall. 'I remember. 'Cause I asked him.' 'You would of kicked me out of bed if I hadn't said yes,' Frankie Majcinek might have replied. Because, right off, it hadn't felt like holy wedlock at all. He'd celebrated his wedding night by taking over the drums in a three-piece band hired for the occasion and getting blind drunk to follow. Wedlock hasn't changed a thing. His love-making was still maddeningly casual, a sort of routine which she couldn't feel was anything more than he'd had with too many lilies of the valley. Once he'd even had the brassbound nerve to ask her, 'What'd you rather do - go to bed 'r listen to me keep time on the tubs to the radio?' 'Neither,' she'd told him. But had chalked up one more in her book of grudges all the same. For when he gaver her pride the back of his hand she no longer protested openly. After their marriage her anger raged silently. If only he would have hit her so that they would have been able to make it all up in bed later. 'If Jesus Christ treated me like you do I'd drive in the nails myself,' she told him in her mind as, in a passion of frustration, she watched him dealing, eternally dealing. She could draw neither anger nor hate from him - until the accident that had left her in the wheelchair." [pg 66]
_"Never once did he seem to see, even dimly, how inwardly she bled." [pg 67]
_"The only thing that had kept him near her had been the accident. The blessed, cursed, wonderful-terribly God's-own-accident that had truly married them at last. For where her love and the Church's ritual had failed to bind, guilt had now drawn the irrevocable knot so fiercely that she felt he could never be free of her again." [pg 67]
_"When she sat napping, one arm resting on the wheelchair's arm, he saw her index finger pointing its long red-tinted nail - even in sleep she accused him." [pg 67]
_"'You call this livin'?' Sophie wanted to know, and her voice rose into such a hysterical rattle that Violet slapped her cleanly across the cheek. For one moment Sophie's full-moon face stared out in white shock at Violet's impudence. 'Now my best friend turns on me,' she mourned, 'he made me this way 'n you stick up fer him - you got a name like a flower but you're a devil all the same.'" [pg 80]
_"'Stop whimperin'," Violet scolded her, 'of course he loves you like he used. He wouldn't be takin' care of you so good if he didn't.' Which was true enough, Violet knew: he loved her as little as ever and took just as small care of her as before." [pg 81]
_"For those nearest our hearts are the ones most likely to treat upon them. What she could not gain through love she sought to possess by mockery. He was too dear to her: into everything he did she must read some secret hatred of herself." [pg 82]
_"So it was up to me to show him he was somebody all by hisself - that's the first thing a woman got to do for a man." [pg 85]
_"'It all just goes to show you, don't try to do too much for people or you'll wind up in the short end of the funnel. It's my one big weakness, helpin' guys who can't help theirselves.'" [pg 85]
_"For she, like the luminous Christ, had also been betrayed. She too had bled, and bled each day, for another's sin. Between herself and that tarnished crucifix a bond of blood and pain had grown. She had seen that it glowed out of love of everyone she herself wished to love and could not. How could she love who had never learned how?" [pg 94]
_"Nobody was at home to anyone else any more." [pg 96]
_"She grew tense to see how the nameless people were bound, as they went, to the streets as the streets seemed bound to the night and the night to the nameless day. And all days to a nameless remorse. No one moved easily, freely and unafraid any longer, all hurried worriedly to work and anxiously by night returned; waited despairingly for traffic lights to change, forever fearing thatthe green light might change too soon and, when that warning yellow flashed, stormed through to bead the deadly red. Was there no time left for easy passages and casual pleasures down tree-lines boulevards?" [pg 96]
_"The wind, like the moon and Frankie Machine, all had turned secretly against her. One wind or another, one moon or the next, whether he returned by midnight or noon - all things recalled to her only that dead year's final midnight when the chairs had been stacked and some fool had left a cracked crutch between a juke and a 7-Up sign. 'It was mine 'n i didn't even know it,' she felt a ceaseless wonder now. And a bottomless sorrowing: 'I shouldn't ought to have laughed when I seen it.'" [pg 96-7]
_"Yet he didn't like to ask money of Frankie, it seemed like Frankie never had a dime any more. And looked so pale, so pale." [pg 100]
_"'This is a great big city,/ There's a million things to see,/ But the one I love is missing./ Ain't no town big enough for me.'" [pg 110]
_"Later on that Sunday forenoon Frankie lay again on his own bed up on the second floor trying to believe that, if there had been no war at all, if he hadn't volunteered, if there had been no accident, if there hadn't been this and there hadn't been that, then everything would certainly have turned out a lot better for Frankie." [pg 112]
_"But Sunday morning was always pretty rugged for anything but sleep. All the miracles were performed on Saturday night, it seemed. Down on the first floor front." [pg 112]
_"He had found that, with Molly Novotny's arms around him, he could resist the sickneww and the loneliness that drove him to the room above the Safari." [pg 112]
_"Only the blurred image of a woman in a wheelchair remained to darken his moods: that was the monkey's other paw." [pg 113]
_'They didn't call him Machine just because he was fast. They called him Machine because he was regular." [pg 114]
_"She'd com down off that high horse onto her knees. He'd brought her down till she'd never have her full height again. He'd broken her pride for keeps that afternoon." [pg 116]
_"Their hell was a full house that never won and their last hope of heaven a royal flush." [pg 117]
_"'What's right is right,' Frankie decided as the last hand was dealt around, 'you can't go smashin' up a woman 'n then make a fool of her on top of it with another woman. A guy got to draw the line somewheres on how bad he can treat somebody who can't help herself no more just account of him.'" [pg 119]
_"'A man just got to stick by a wife who can't stand on her own two feet five minutes at a time.'" [pg 121]
_"He hadn't stopped by Molly Novotny's door for three nights and three days. But for the second time in the week he had had his last, final and never-again fix. This time he was through and meant it... Frankie had dark-haired Molly on his mind as well as the needle and he couldn't get either off." [pg 139]
_"'You wouldn't fall in love with her the way she wanted you to, the way she was in love, she had to get even with you for that. She never got another chance till the accident. That was her one big chance 'n she took it without even carin' what she was doin' to herself. It's all she ever tried to do for you was to get even. 'N you're lettin' her do it every time you knock on that Fomorowski's door or sneak up to see Blind Pig. You know it in your heart 'n you're backin' down from admittin' it to yourself just like you backed down that other night.'" [pg 141]
_"'You got to believe that that girl was wrong before the accident and the accident was just somethin' that could have happened to anybody who'd had one too many.'" [pg 141]
_"She'd never given his aggies back. He lost them anew to her every day. Well, let her keep them then, let her keep everything. Let it be as she said, all his fault, and let him go at last. He felt an almost animal-like yearning to let his guard down and take all the blows there were in the world till there were no blows left: to sink under them in utter weariness into sleep and wake up being the real Frankie Majcinek. The Frankie who was straight with himself as he was with the world. The Frankie he had never been." [pg 142]
_"Frankie locked his fingers to stop their shaking. If the shaking didn't stop he was going to cry in front of the punk and a flame of cold shame for having lain in a cold and secret sweat begging for morphine charged the fingers with a pride of their own. He rose on the balls of his toes and came down with all his weight full upon that white defenseless nape. The throat made a single startled gurgle. Then the neck flopped forward like a hen's with the ax half through it." [pg 148]
_"Everybody who counted, a few who just imagined they counted, and a couple dozen more who knew well they never had, never would, never could and had never been intended to count at all." [pg 158]
_"It was Happy New Year everywhere except in Molly Novotny's heart; neither her heart nor her nest gave sign of the season. The stove was smoking again and she thought carelessly, 'We get the ones the landlords buy up for old iron,' of both the stove and her heart. The day comes when both feel past throwing heat." [pg 161]
_"Everyone said the cat was dumb, all insisted he had never even been heard to purr. Antek alone knew differently; he alone had heard the old cat purr. ''N when you hear that one purr you're through,' Antek was convinced. 'That one keeps track of how many shots you put down every day. So long as you're just a sociable drinker he don't purr. But when you take the one that puts you on the lush for keeps, then he knows you'll never get off the bottle all your life, 'n he purrs once at you. He purred at me 'n he'll purr at you 'n with my own ears I heard him purr at Rumdum.' The old cat knew, Frankie realized dreamily, only the old cat knew. Watching and waiting for the finishing shot that each hustler came to with the cat-gray stroke of the years." [pg 166]
_"So first of all he'd have to get stright himself. He motioned to Antek for a double shot to start getting straight on right away. For way down there, in a shot glass's false bottom, everything was bound to turn out fine after all... Vi would take good care of Zosh then, till Zosh was back on her feet again and married to some fellow, some sort of doctor, who'd take better care of her than Frankie ever had. So that after a while there'd be hardly any hard feelings left at all and he and Molly would go to visit Soph and this real good guy she'd married and they'd all wish each other good luck and really mean it." [pg 171]
_"That was the last sad afternoon that the dealer and the steerer sat together to pretend things were as they once had been between them." [pg 175]
_"With tedious attention to detail someone had illustrated precisely how a certain aging judge would look, gavel in hand, wearing nothing but high-button shoes and a flowered cravat, while sentencing a sensibly clothed civilian to the electric chair for indecent exposure: a single button had been found loose upon the offender's fly.
To leave nothing to the imagination the chair, sizzling invitingly, had been sketched in beside his honor. To show how no time was lost, locally, in appeals for pardon, parole or probation, the judge had his hand in reaching distance of the switch and was sweating with impatience to fry this miserable joker personally. There would be no commutation of sentence here.
Chicago justice was in a bad way all right. One could see that at a glance: not a single finger of scorn was pointed at the judge for his own nakedness." [pg 181]
_"But any one side of any jailhouse wall is never much different than any other side. There are only the same old threadbare variations on the same age-old warnings against all the well-tried ancestral foes: whisky and women, sin and cigarettes, marijuana and morphine, marked cards and capped cocaine, dirty laughter and easy tears, engineered dice and casual disease, bad luck and adultery, old age and shyster lawyers, quack doctors and ambitious cops, crooked priests and honest burglars, lack of money and hard work." [pg 183]
_"Frankie Machine wasn't happy; yet Frankie wasn't too sad. He felt oddly relieved no that, for a while at least, all things would be solved for him. There was nothing he could do now about Sophie, nothing he could do about Molly, nothing he could do about boozing. Not a thing he could do about hitching up the reindeers for a sleigh ride through drifting snow.
'It'll be my chance to kick the habit for keeps,' he realized. Caught between the wheelchair and the first floor front, between Old Crow and a little brown drugstore bottle, between his need for Molly Novotny and his need for the man with the thirty-five-pound monkey on his back, the dealer had found an iron sanctuary.
'When i get out I'll be stright as a cue, 'n Molly-O'll be so proud we'll stick together the rest of our lives 'n everythin' on the legit,' Frankie assured himself.
And meant every word of it, too." [185]
_"Yet they come on and come on, and where they come from no captain knows and where they go no captain goes: mush workers and lush workers, catamites and sodomites, bucket workers and bail jumpers, till tappers and assistant pickpockets, square johns and copper johns; lamisters and hallroom boys, ancient pious perverts and old blown parolees, rapoes and record-men; the damned and the undaunted, the jaunty and condemned." [pg 194]
_"Worst of all were the witnesses who snickered after every questioning. If only, just once, one of them would laugh out from the heart." [pg 195]
_"'Because I believe we are all members of one another.'" [pg 196]
_"To follow each man to a cell all his own, there to confess the thousand sins he had committed in his heart...For there was no priest to wash clean the guilt of the captain's darkening spirit nor any judge to hear his accusing heart...'Come down off that cross youself,' he counseled himself sternly, like warning another. But the captain couldn't come down. The captain was impaled." [pg 197]
_"They were the ones who had never leanred to want. For they were secretly afraid of being alive and the less they desired the closer they came to death. They had never been given one good reason for applying their strength. So now they disavowed their strength by all sorts of self-deceptions.
They gave nothing because nothing had been given them. If they lost their privileges they strugged it off, they had lost certain privilages before; one way or another they had had always to forfeit any small advantage gained by luck, chance or stealth." [pg 206]
_"Deadlock meant a monotony more deadly even than the regular abnormal monotony of jailhouse days and nights. For no one can sleep all the time and deadlock brought hours when memory caught up with a man at last. Hours in which to sit and remember that willing long-ago lovely who'd married some square after all; or a family that cared less than ever. Or how suddenly the rain had come one blue-and-gold Easter Sunday a dozen blue-gold Easters ago." [pg 207]
_"From the passage of the nights now he gained more strength than he had ever gained from a hypo. He felt himself getting over the roughest point of the hump without so much as a quarter grain to help him over. And knowing how proud Molly-O was going to be for him, felt proud of himself." [pg 209]
_"Pity was the thing people used to conceal their hatred, Lester had decided, for the chaplain himself came now only out of a sense of duty. Lester had had trouble turning the chaplain against him but he had done it at last and now the chaplain hated him as cordially as did the screws, the warden, the sheriff, his attorney, his mother and sisters, his father and his old girl friend." [pg 213]
_"Such calmness seemed somehow more terrible to Frankie than if they'd said Lester was lying on his bunk in a dead-cold nightmare sweating out the hours. Instead he was sitting there killing the hours with cards just as Frankie had killed so many; while a clock had ticked away below a luminous crucifix.
There were no luminous Christs for Lester. Neither Christs nor clocks nor calendars.
Yet each man knew the hour. As each man knew the day." [pg 219]
_"Four buttons had been pushed by four unnamed men. They said. Yet only one of these had pushed the live one. None would ever have to think it was himself had sparked the living flame...It wasn't until weeks after he'd been released that Frankie learned Little Lester had died on his bunk with eleven hours yet to live. A heart attack, the warden had concluded. Arsenic, the coroner's physician had insisted...Frankie could tell himself at last that he had buried his monkey as deeply as the county had buried Little Lester." [pg 221]
_"'The old man got good heart,' Frankie told himself. Everyone, even those who left doors ajar just to bait him a bit, knew the old man had the truest sort of heart.
It was only that there was so little demand for the truer sort of heart of late.
Hearts shaped like valentines aren't at all the fashion. What is more in demand are hearts with a bit of iron - and a twist to the iron at that. A stream-lined heart, say, with a claw like a hammer's claw, better used for ripping than for tapping at old repairs - that's what's needed to get by these days. It's the new style in hearts. The non-corrugated kind don't wear well any longer.
Hearts with a twist to the iron - that's what makes a good hustler's heart." [pg 226]
_"But she'd seen spurts of golden hope in him before. It would wear off now as it always had. He'd be back dealing where he ought to be and she'd be sitting where she ought to be and everything would be just the way it had been, just as it ought always to be." [pg 228]
_"If it hadn't been for the punk, it somehow seemed, he'd be on the legit now somewhere with Molly instead of still hustling suckers all night long. His eyes, under the nightlight, no longer reflected the light.
It's all in the wrist, with a deck or a cue; yet the fingers had lost the touch. The feel of the deck wasn't there any more." [pg 232]
_"But the feel of the deck had died with the light that had died in his eyes, leaving only a loneliness that was a loneliness for mre than any lost skill.
More than a loneliness for careless nights when he and the punk had first gone on drunks together. More even than the gnawing need for Molly-O.
A loneliness that took on substance and form, like a crouching man wearing some sort of faded, outworn uniform.
He was lonely all right. He was lonely for his old buddy with the thifty-five-pound monkey on his back." [pg 236]
_"Solly Saltskin wasn't as happy, sleeping in the late Stash Koskozka's bed, as he'd once thought he'd be. If he could, occasionally, have slept there alone it might have been endurable. Sneaking in for an hour of fast woo a couple times a week when Old Husband had still been padding about had been one thing: being tied down to these same four bedposts all night long, night after night, was strictly something else." [pg 238]
_"And so returned, with the city a golden roar in his ears, to the horse-and-wagon alleys of his childhood; with a rueful renascence in his heart.
For the alleys never changed. It was as though no time had passed since he had first escaped down them: playing hooky from that first truant officer as he was on the hook from Violet now. It seemed the same morning of golden escape.
The alleys had always been his sanctuary; they had been kinder to him than the streets." [pg 242]
_"The Jews recalled last year's losses and forgot this hand's winnings. The Poles played the game for its own sake, to kill the monotony of their lives. The Jews played to make the hours return to them of what other hours, in other cities, had robbed their fathers; their lives were less boring away from the board than at it. The Pole, even when playing on borrowed money and the rent overdue, still felt, somehow, that he could afford to lose all night because he was so sure to win everything in the end. The Jew knew that the moment he felt he could afford to lose he would begin losing till the bottom of the world fell through and he himself went through the hole. It was more fun being a Polish gambler; it was sater to be a Jewish one." [pg 246]
_"He remembered it was the hotel at which he had first registered with Violet as man and wife and no more luggage between them than that carried by the pigeons drowsing in the eaves." [pg 251]
_"'I must be cheatin' on somebody,' he told himself uneasily, 'I got that guilty-culprit feelin', like somethin's goin' to happen.' ... When he turned to see what was keeping the cage on the third-floor level that fishy-eyed starter pointed to 315B and called out in a soft-clothes man's command: 'Knowck!'
In a kind of paralysis, afraid to knock and afraid not to, fearing the ones who'd open the door when he did and fearing fast footsteps down the carpet behind him and the flash of a badge, he raised his ragged little claws to the indifferent wood.
And never knocked at all. The door opened to him.
Frankie.
With a line of sweat under his hair line and looking so sick Sparrow could only stammer, 'I didn't know who I was comin' to.' Frankie yanked him inside, slammed the door, took the bottle out of the punk's pocket and unwrapped it with fumbling fingers while Sparrow protested his innocence. 'Honest to Jesus, Frankie, I didn't know it was fer you 'n it begun to feel like a dirty frame 'n I got scared.'" [pg 252]
_"'It kills me in the heart, how you are not,' Sparrow couldn't keep from saying. 'It just ain't like bein' Frankie no more.'
"That's the hardest thing of all for me to be, Solly,' Frankie told him with a strange gentleness. 'I'm gettin' farther away from myself all the time. It's why I have to have a charge so bad, so I can come back 'n be myself a little while again. But it's a longer way to go every time. It keeps gettin' harder 'n harder. It's gettin' so hard I can't hardly affort it.' He laughed thinly. 'I can't hardly afford to be myself no more, Solly, with the way Piggy-O is peggin' the price up on me. I got to economize 'n be just Mr. Nobody, I guess.' He looked at Sparrow curiously. 'Who am I anyhow, Solly?'
He really didn't know any longer. From one day to the next, he no longer knew." [pg 253]
_"'Then tell me just this - why do some cats swing like this?'
Solly didn't know that either. He didn't know what to make of the answer any more than he'd known what to make of the question. Yet Frankie was laughing, weakly on and on, just as if he'd said something funny. While that naked arm looked far too white to have any gold left in its veins." [pg 254]
_"Frankie coughed into his palm. 'It's like this, Solly. You put it down for months 'n months, you work yourself down from monkey to zero. You beat it. You got it beat at last.' He was talking low and breathlessly, like one who fears that, if he doesn't get his story told quickly it will never be told at all; like one who believes he is the only one who knows. Really knows. 'You know you got it beat. You got it beat so stiff when the fixer says, 'It ain't gonna cost you a dime this time, I got some new stuff I just want to try,' you tell him, 'try it yourself,' 'n give him the laugh. When he tells you, innocent-like, 'The hypo is in the top drawer over there, help yourself any time,' just to put it in your head how easy it'd be, you turn him down flat. Because gettin' fixed is the one thing you'll never need again all your life.
'Three weeks later you wake up, it's dark out but not like night 'n it ain't morning neither -it's just Fix Time. It's comin' on like a wave way out there, bigger 'n bigger 'n comin' right at you till it's big as this hotel, it hits you 'n you're gone. You're so sick you're just turnin' around down there under that wave not carin' who knows, your mother 'r your sister 'r your buddy 'r your wife - anythin' just so's you can stop drowin' for a minute.
'Nobody can stand gettin' that sick 'n live, Solly. You have to puke 'n you can't You just heave 'n heave 'n sweat 'n heave 'n still nothin' happens - then somebody turns on the faucet in the sink or the bathtub down the hall 'n just the sound of water runnin' rolls your whole stomach over on top of itself 'n you got to puke 'r die.
'Then you don't even know no more where you're sick - if you think just for one second, 'It's my poor gut' - it starts bustin' your brains out the back of your head just to show you. So you think it's your head 'n it slams you a dirty one in the stones - it's here 'n it's there 'n you're shaggin' it in a dream, tryin' to pin it down to some place you can feel it so you can fight it.
'But it won't stay still 'n you can't get hold 'n if you don't pin it in a minute you're dead' - he brushed the buffalo-colored shag of hair out of his eyes - 'that's all. There ain't no 'will power' to it like squares like to say. There ain't that much will power on God's green earth. If you had that much will power you wouldn't be a man, you'd be Jesus Christ.' He began drying the sweat out of his armpits with the pillowcase. 'You know what you brought me in that little bottle, Solly?' ...
'A itty-bittsy little old monkey, Solly, that's what you brought me in the bottle.'" [pg 259]
_"It was always December in the query room." [pg 270]
_"The Widow brought him a warm beer and he let it stand while trying to guess which of his two pursuers he might dodge the longest. Bednar or McGantic. How long was he going to be able to stay out of sight when he started getting sick?" [pg 287]
_"That McGantic was working for Bednar now, blocking him off into just those very places where the captain would look for him first.
The man with the thirty-five-pound monkey on his back was running him down and between that one and Bednar he had most to fear from McGantic. That was the wiser pursuer. For he knew Frankie's next move before Frankie himself. Indeed, he told Frankie where to go and could wave to Bednar: 'Here he comes.' He would never shake off Bednar unless he shook off the sergeant first." [pg 288]
_"What did it mean that all the guilty felt so certain of their own innocence while he felt so uncertain of his own? It was patently wrong that men locked up by the law should laugh while the man who locked them there no longer felt able even to cry. As if those caged there had learned secretly that all men are inncocent in a way no captain might ever understand." [pg 291]
_"Then why did it feel like turning informer, why did he feel he had sold out a son, like being paid off in gold? For if everyone were members of one another - he put the notion down. That would mean those on the other side of the wall were his own kind." [pg 292]
_"For every man was secretly against the law in his heart, the captain knew; and it was the heart that mattered. There were no men innocent of intent to transgress. If they were human - look out. What was needed, he had learned long ago, was higher walls and stronger bars - there was no limit to what they were capable of.
Somewhere along the line he had learned,too, that not one was worth the saving. So he'd been right in saving none but himself. And if that had left them all to be members of one another, then it had left him to be a member of no one at all. Had, indeed, left him feeling tonight like the most fallen of anybody." [pg 293]
_"It was time to be going home, if he could just find out where one was. It was time for bed, time for a drink, time for a change and time to give himself up. There was nothing left for Frankie Machine, with his hands pressed so hard to his temples, but the bottles behind the bar, the age-old monkey above the bottles, and the voice of the wind, bringing snow, rain and sleet, down all the streets where the squadrols sought him." [pg 301]
_"Molly could not see him weaving against the table out there in the dark while he was trying to understand to himself whether it was time for him to leave, before she saw him, or time to go to her before he lost her again.
He felt a sickening sort of shame, this was just the way he wished not to be in finding her again: broke, sick and hunted. What was it someone had said of her long ago? 'She's the kind got the sort of heart you can walk in 'n out of with boots on.'" [pg 303]
_"'It's Frankie comin' home.' To make it all up to her for leaving like that without even saying goodbye.
Without even telling her what it was for that the wagon men had wanted him. Without even telling her it was all a lie about him and that public hide on the first floor front. Without giving her so much as a word to fight with when the neighbors said things behind her back. It would serve him right if she told him now: 'You've brough it all on yourself. It's every bit your fault.' But by the way he came on, so heavily with every step, she could tell how sorry he really was. He was sorry at last, truly truly sorry, he'd come back to make it all up to her now.
To make it all up, and have something to eat, a place to sleep and a place to hide - what was the difference whether he'd slept with this one or that, whether he'd hit some other bum on the head sometime or other - the main thing was he was coming back, he was sorry, for he loved her after all. She bit her nails with excitement." [pg 305]
_"'If he loves her, what are a few blows?' Sophie thought with sudden clarity. 'If a man tells you you're his - what are a few slaps to that?'" [pg 308]
_"Of course Molly-O was right, she had that way of knowing what was wisest and best for Frankie; it was only for herself she couldn't tell what was wisest.
'One to twenty'd be worse than the cair for you,' she told him. 'The shape you're in you wouldn't live four.' Then she was sorry for saying it like that and came to him, he looked so beat, where he sat at the bare little table where he always sat, dealing to men he'd never deal to again; and took the deck from his hand." [pg 310]
_"'I slugged him.' The toughness was still in the grin if not in the biceps, the arms making a loose, outswinging gesture which she took to mean he'd first tried shoving that certain guy off. 'then his neck made a sort of dead sound 'n I knew that was it.'
'His mouth, you mean.'
'No. His neck.' Now the grin came one-sided, both tough and weak, like that of a fighter who knows he's beat trying to convince everyone he can take still more. He lifted the thin wrists toward her as naively as a child. 'Wit' these.' He locked the fingers till the knuckles cracked and the fingers reddened faintly at the tips. 'It's all in the wrists,' he told her thinly, 'I used to have the touch.'
She ran her hands over the locked fingers curiously, trying to feel what power had been in them that was there no more, then parting the fingers slowly; as though they had been manacled too long to open of themselves. They dropped onto his lap of their own weight and the very hopelessness of the way he'd let them fall reached at her heart. To put strength back into those fingers and the light back into those eyes was what Molly Novotny wanted and there was a gladness in her just at having such a chance." [pg 311]
_"Jesus Christ hisself couldn't come down of that cross." [pg 312]
_"God had forgotten His own." [pg 329]
_"Sergeant McGantic had come to call and the sergeant brought his own small mercies. The sergeant wasn't one to let a good junkie down. Frankie's eyes went seeking about the room to see what the sergeant had brought him and found it at last. It didn't make any real difference now that there was no hypo to this fix at all.
It was enough that the sergeant had tossed, across the bedpost and in a reach of a good junkie's hand, one thin double strand of yellow newspaper twine...
'It's all in the wrist 'n I got the touch,' he told himself in a surge of ice-cold confidence and far, so far it told him he was still seconds ahead of them all, the siren's first metallic cry fluttered the shade, whimpering faintly along the chicken wire and then a bit louder till it was a moaning telegraphic code shaking a wavering message across the waves of the brain - 'Have a good dream you're dancin', Zosh' - and the words were whirled like leaves in a dead-cold wind blowing up from the other side of the wall. Into one brief strangled whimpering.
To rustle away down the last dark wall of all." [pg 331]
The Man with the Golden Arm - Nelson Algren
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[Sep. 30th, 2008|10:58 pm] |
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_"When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with a person, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." - When Harry Met Sally
_"La vita e bella; la vita e amore. -- Life is beautiful; life is love." - Life is Beautiful
_"To love is to place our happiness in the happiness of another." - G.W. Von Leibriitz
_"I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for their religion-/ I have shudder'd at it./ I shudder no more./ I could be martyr'd for my religion/ Love is my religion/ And I could die for that/ I could die for you." - John Keats
_"To be in love is merely to be/ In a state of perpetual anesthesia;/ To mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god/ Or an ordinary young woman for a goddess." -H.L. Mencken
_"I love thee, I love but thee/ With a love that shall not die/ Till the sun grows cold/ And the stars grow old." - William Shakespeare
_"Did my heart love till now?/ Forswear it sight,/ For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night." -Romeo, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
_"To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with." - Mark Twain
_"The greatest weakness of most humans/ Is their hesitancy to tell others,/ How much they love them/ While they're alive." -O.A. Battista
_"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres" - 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7
_"Love is always open arms. If you close your arms about love you will find that you are left holding only yourself." - Leo Buscaglia
_"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward in the same direction." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery - Le Petit Prince
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| hamlet |
[Sep. 29th, 2008|07:24 pm] |
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_HAMLET - "A little more than kin, and less than kind!" (1.2.65)
_KING - "How is it that the clouds still hang on you?" Hamlet-"Not so, my lord. I am too much in the sun." (1.2.66-67)
_QUEEN - "Thou know'st 'tis common. All that lives must die,/ Passing through nature to eternity." (1.2.72-73)
_HAMLET - "Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not "seems."/ 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,/ Notr customary suits of solemn black,/ Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,/ No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,/ Nor the dejected havior of the visage,/ Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,/ That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,/ For they are actions that a man might play,/ But I have that within which passes show -./ These but the trappings and the suits of woe." (1.2.76-86)
_HAMLET - "O that this too too sullied flesh would melt,/ Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,/ Or that the Everlasting had not fixed/ His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. O God, God,/ How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable/ Seem to me all the uses of this world!/ Fie on't, ah, fie, 'tis an unweeded garden/ That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature/ Possess it merely. That is should come to this,/ But wo months dead, nay, not so much, not two,/ So excellent a king, that was to this/ Hyperion to a satyr, so loving to my mother/ That he might not beteem the winds of heaven/ Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth,/ Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him/ As if increase of appetite had grown/ By when it fed on, and yet within a month-/ Let me not think on't; frailty, thy name is woman -/ A little month, or ere those shoes were old/ With which she followed my poor father's body/ Like niobe, all tears, why she-/ O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason/ Would have mourned longer - married with my uncle,/ My father's brother, but no more like my father/ Than I to Hercules. Within a month,/ Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears/ Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,/ She married. O, most wicked speed, to post/ With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!/ It is not nor it cannot come to good./ But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue." (1.2.129-159)
_LAERTES - "Perhaps he loves you now,/ And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch/ The virtue of his will, but you must fear,/ His greatness weighed, his will is not his own,/ He may not, as unvalued persons do,/ Carve for himself, for on his choice depends/ The safety and health of this whole state," (1.3.14-20)..."If with too credent ear you list his songs,/ Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open/ To his unmastered importunity./ Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister," (1.3.29-32)
_POLONIUS - "Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;" (1.3.67)..."This above all, to thine own self be true," (1.3. 77)
_HAMLET - "Why, what should be the fear?/ I do not set my life at a pin's fee,/ And for my soul, what can it do to that,/ Being a thing immortal as itself?/ It waves me forth again. I'll follow it." (1.4.64-68).
_MARCELLUS - "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." (1.5.90)
_GHOST - "Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,/ With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts -/ O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power/ So to seduce! - won to his shameful lust/ The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen." (1.5.42-46) ... "Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,/ My custom always of the afternoon,/ Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole/ With juice of cursed hebona in a vial,/ And in the porches of my ears did pour/ The leperous distillment, whose effect/ Holds such an enmity with blood of man/ That swift as quicksilver it courses through/ The natural gates and alleys of the body/ And with a sudden vigor it doth posset/ And curd, like eager droppings into milk,/ The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine,/ And a most instant tetter barked about/ Most lazarlike with vile and loathsome crust/ All my smooth body./ Thus was I sleeping by a brother's hand/ Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched,/ Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,/ Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,/ No reck'ning made, but sent to my account/ With all my imperfections on my head./ O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!/ If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not./ Let not the royal bed of Denmark be/ A couch for luxury and damned incest./ But howsomever thou pursues this act,/ Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive/ Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven/ And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge/ To prick and sting her." (1.5. 42-88)
_HAMLET - "Remember thee?/ Yea, from the table of my memory/ I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,/ All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past/ That youth and observation copied there,/ And they commandment all alone shall live/ Within the book and volume of my brain," (1.5.97-103) ... "That one may smile, and smile, and be a villian./ At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark." (1.5.108-109)
_POLONIUS - "This is the very ecstasy of love" (2.1.101)
_POLONIUS - " "Doubt thou the stars are fire;/ Doubt that the sun doth move;/ Doubt truth to be a liar:/ But never doubt I love." " (2.2.116-119)
_POLONIUS - "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't." (2.2.204-205)
_HAMLET - "In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true;/ she is a strumpet." (2.2.234-235)
_HAMLET - "What piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me - nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so." (2.2.273-280)
_HAMLET - "It is not very strange, for my uncle is King of Denmark, and those that would make mouths at him while my father lived give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little." (2.2.306-309)
_HAMLET - "God's bodken, man, much better! Use every man after his desert, and who shall scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in." (2.2.469-473)
_HAMLET - "Am I a coward?/ Who calls me villian? breaks my pate across?/ Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?/ Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' th' throat/ As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?/ Ha, 'swounds, I should take it, for it cannot be/ But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall/ To make oppression bitter, or ere this/ I should ha'fatted all the region kites/ With this slave's offral. Bloody, bawdy villiam!/ Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villian!/ Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,/ That I, the son of a dear father murdered,/ Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,/ Must like a whore unpack my heart with words/ And fall a-cursing like a very drab,/ A stallion! Fie upon't, foh! About, my brains. Hum-/ I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play/ Have by the very cunning of the scene/ Been struck so to the soul that presently/ They have proclaimed their malefactions./ For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak/ With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players/ Play something like the murder of my father/ Before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks./ I'll tent him to the quick. If a do blench,/ I know my course. The spirit that I have seen/ May be a devil, and the devil hath power/ T'assume a pleasing shape, yea, and perhaps/ Out of my weakness and my melancholy,/ As he is very potent with such spirits,/ Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds/ More relative than this. The play's the thing/ Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." (3.1.510-544)
_POLONIUS - "'Tis too much proved, that with devotion's visage/ And pious action we do sugar o'er/ The devil himself" (3.1.47-49)
_HAMLET - "To be, or not to be - that is the question:/ Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/ Or to take arms against a sea of troubles/ And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep/ No more, and by a sleep to say we end/ The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks/ That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation/ Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,/ To sleep - perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub,/ For in that sleep of death what dreams may come/ When we have shuffled off this mortal coil/ Must give us pause. There's the respect/ That makes calamity of so long life./ For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,/ Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,/ The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,/ The insolence of office, and the spurns/ That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,/ When he himself might his quietus make/ With a bare bodken? Who would fardels bear,/ To grunt and sweat under a weary life,/ But that the dread of something after death,/ The undiscovered country, from whose bourn/ No traveler returns, puzzles the will./ And makes us rather bear those ills we have/ Than fly to others that we know not of?/ Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,/ And enterprises of great pitch and moment/ With this regard their currents turn awry/ And lose the name of action. -Soft you now,/ The fair Ophelia! - Nymph, in thy orisons/ Be all my sins remembered." (3.1.56-90)
_HAMLET - "Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?" (3.1.121-122)
_HAMLET - "Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them." (3.1. 138-140)
_HAMLET - "I say we will have no more marriage. Those that are married already - all but one - shall live." (3.1.147-148)
_KING - "Madness in great ones must not unwatched go." (3.1.189)
_HAMLET - "Give me that man/ That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him/ In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,/ As I do thee." (3.2.70-73)
_OPHELIA - "'Tis brief, my lord." HAMLET - "As woman's love." (3.2.148-149)
_QUEEN - "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." (3.2.226)
_HAMLET - "Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me." (3.2.357-365)
_HAMLET - "I will speak daggers to her, but use none." (3.2.389)
_KING - "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below./ Words without thoughts never to heaven go." (3.3.97-98)
_QUEEN - "Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended." HAMLET - "Mother, you have my father much offended." QUEEN - "Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue." HAMLET - "Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue." (3.4.9-12)
_HAMLET - "A bloody deed - almost as bad, good mother,/ As kill a king, and marry with his brother." (3.4.28-29)
_HAMLET - "O shame, where is they blush?" (3.4.82)
_HAMLET - "I must be cruel only to be kind." (3.4.178)
_HAMLET - "Rightly to be great/ Is not to stir without great argument,/ But greatly to find quarrel in a straw/ When honor's at the stake. How stand I then,/ That have a father killed, a mother stained,/ Excitements of my reason and my blood,/ And let all sleep, while to my shame I see/ The imminent death of twenty thousand men/ That for a fantasy and trick of fame/ Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot/ Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,/ Which is not tomb enough and continent/ To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,/ My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!" (4.4.53-66)
_HAMLET - "To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till a find it stopping a bunghole?" (5.1.192-194)
_QUEEN - "Sweets to the sweet! Farewell." (5.1.233)
_HAMLET - "I loved Ophelia. Forty thoussand brothers/ Could not with all their quantity of love/ Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?" (5.1.259-261)
_HAMLET - "Does it not, think thee, stand me now upon - / He that hath killed my king and whored my mother,/ Popped in between th'election and my hopes,/ Thrown out his angle for my proper life,/ And with such coz'nage - is't not perfect conscience?" (5.2.62-66)
_HAMLET - "Not a whit, we defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is't to leave betimes? Let be." (5.2.197-202)
_HORATIO - "So shall you hear/ Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,/ Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,/ Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,/ And, in this upshot, purposes mistook/ Fall'n on th'inventors' heads. All this can I/ Truly deliver." (5.2.363-368) The Tragical History of Hamlet Prince of Denmark - William Shakespeare
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| going after cacciato |
[Jul. 28th, 2008|06:33 pm] |
_"For Paul Berlin, who marched last in the column, it was hard work but not unpleasant. He liked the silence. He liked the feel of motion, one leg then the next. No fears of ambush, no tapping sounds in the brush. The sky was empty. He liked this. Walking away, it was something fine to think about. Even if it had to end, there was still the pleasure of pretending it might go on forever: step by step, a mile, ten miles, two hundred, eight thousand. Was it really so impossible? Or was there a chance, even one in a million, that it might truly be done? He walked on and considered this, figuring the odds, speculating on how Cacciato might lead them through the steep country, beyond the mountains, deeper, and how in the end they might reach Paris. He smiled. It was something to think about." [pg 16]
_"But the lieutenant knew that in war purpose is never paramount, neither purpose nor cause, and that battles are always fought among human beings, not purposes. He could not imagine dying for a purpose. Death was its own purpose, no qualification or restraint. He did not celebrate war. He did not believe in glory. But he recognized the enduring appeal of battle: the chance to confront death many times, as often as there were battles. Secretly the lieutenant believed that war had been invented for just that reason - so that through repetition men might try to do better, so that lessons might be learned and applied the next time, so that men might not be robbed of their own deaths." [pg 166]
_"Paul Berlin, who had no desire to confront death until he was old and feeble, and who believed firmly that he could not survive a true battle in the mountains, marched up the road knowing he would not fight well, knowing it certainly, but still climbing, one step then the next, climbing, seeing each thing seperately, a wildflower with write blossoms, a pebble rolling, always climbing, as if drawn along by some physical force - inertia or herd affinity or magnetic attraction. He marched up the road with no exercise of will, no desire and no determination, no pride, just legs and lungs, climbing without thought and without will and without purpose." [pg 167}
_"'I speak only of history," he said, "never of future. Fortune-telling is for lunatics and old women. History is the stronger science, for it has the virtue of certainty without the vice of blasphemy. God alone tells futures. God alone makes history." [pg 179]
_"In battle, in a war, a soldier sees only a tiny fragment of what is available to be seen. The soldier is not a photographic machine. He is not a camera. He registers, so to speak, only those few items that his predisposed to register and not a single thing more. Do you understand this? So I am saying to you that after a battle each soldier will have different stories to tell, vastly different stories, and that when a war is ended it is as if there have been a million wars, or as many wars as there were soldiers." [pg 196]
_"The point is that war is war no matter how it's perceived. War has its own reality. War kills and maims and rips up the land and makes orphans and widows. These are the things of war. Any war. So when I say that there's nothing new to tell about Nam, I'm saying it was just a war like every war. Politics be damned. Sociology be damned. It pisses me off to hear everybody say how special Nam is, how it's a big aberration in the history of American wars - how for the soldier it's somehow different from Korea or Wold War Two. Follow me? I'm saying that the feel of war is the same in Nam or Okinawa - the emotions are the same, the same fundamental stuff is seen and remembered. That's what I'm saying." [pg 197]
_"That was all of them. Frenchie, Pederson, Rudy Chassler, Billy Boy Watkins, Bernie Lynn, Ready Mix, Sidney Martin, and Buff. Six months. A few half-remembered faces. That was the curious thing about it. Out of all that time, time aching itself away, his memory sputtered around those scant hours of horror. The real war was forgotten. The dullness and the heat and the endless tracts of time and the tired villages and petty conversations and warmed-over jokes and rivalries and rumors and hole-digging and hole-filling and the long marches without incident or foul play - all this was blurred and fuzzy like a far-off summer day. Odd, because what he remembered was so trivial, so obvious and corny, that to speak of it was embarrassing. War stories. That was what remained: a few stupid war stories, hackneyed and unprofound. Even the lessons were commonplace. It hurts to be shot. Dead men are heavy. Don't seek trouble, it'll find you soon enough. You hear the shot that gets you. Scared to death on the field of battle. Life after death. These were hard lessons, true, but they were lessons of ignorance; ignorant men, trite truths. What remained was simple event. The facts, the physical things. A war like any war. No new messages. Stories that began and ended without transition. No developing drama or tension or direction. No order." [pg 287]
_"Peace was shy. That was one lesson: Peace never bragged. If you didn't look for it, it wasn't there." [pg 294]
Going After Cacciato - Tim O'Brien |
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| invisible monsters |
[Jul. 1st, 2008|01:34 pm] |
_"No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention.
Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day." [pg 22]
_"Only when we eat up this planet will God give us another. We'll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create." [pg 103]
Invisible Monsters - Chuck Palahniuk |
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