Country Noir Quotes

He had been hurt doing everything he had ever done. He expected it, even wanted it. Nothing centered a man like pain. Nothing drove the irrelevant bullshit our of your mind like the taste of your own blood. Duffy always wanted to tell people who were worried about the future of their children, or about God and the order of the universe, to go out and break a rib or two. A few broken ribs threw all thoughts of children, God and the order of the universe right out the window. Nobody with broken ribs ever had free-floating anxiety, or so Duffy was convinced. It was cheaper that a psychiatrist and never so humiliating. ~ Harry Crews

I don't know anybody who doesn't hate being called alt.country. It just sounds like a website. I don't mind being called Americana, I don't mind being called country noir, or independent country is fine, but the words alt.country make me insane. ~ Neko Case

My object, having a surplus to deal with, is to consider how I can deal with it to the greatest advantage to the consumer- how, without inflicting any injury on Canada, I can secure the most substantial benefit to this country, to the manufacturing, to the commercial, and to the agricultural interests ... The real way in which we can benefit the working and manufacturing classes is, unquestionably, by removing the burden that presses on the springs of manufactures and commerce. ~ Robert Peel

That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings. ~ John Ruskin

Advertising seemed almost natural to me because it was a business where you had to inform, persuade and educate. And so from being a junior copywriter to being the creative director of one of the largest advertising agencies in the country took me 4.5 years, which is, well, a fairly spectacular rise. ~ Bryce Courtenay

I can't really remember the days. The light of the sun blurred and annihilated all color. But the nights, I remember them. The blue was more distant than the sky, beyond all depths, covering the bounds of the world. The sky, for me, was the stretch of pure brilliance crossing the blue, that cold coalescence beyond all color. Sometimes, it was in Vinh Long, when my mother was sad she'd order the gig and we'd drive out into the country to see the nighta s it was in the dry season. I had that good fortune- those nights, that mother. The light fell from the sky in cataracts of pure transparency, in torrents of silence and immobility. The air was blue, you could hold it in your hand. Blue. The sky was the continual throbbing of the brilliance of the light. The night lit up everything, all the country on either bank of the river as far as the eye could reach. Every night was different, each one had a name as long as it lasted. Their sound was that of the dogs, the country dogs baying at mystery. They answered on another from village to village, until the time and space of the night were utterly consumed. ~ Marguerite Duras

Mexico is the second most important destination of U.S. exports. What does this mean? The U.S. sells to our country almost the same as it sells to all the European Union, five times what it sells Brazil. More than what it sells together to Brazil, Russia, China, and India. ~ Enrique Pena Nieto

What I'm trying to do is save and rescue the country if I can, and I'm doing my best to do it. ~ Najib Mikati

We now have a national security consideration, public health issues, we have an epidemic of heroine overdoses in all places in this country because of the ease of bringing heroine in. We have to secure the border. ~ Jeb Bush

But maybe because I'm from a part of the country where there are more meth labs than drive-throughs, anything harder than cough syrup always makes me nervous. ~ Alena Graedon

Across the country, red states are poorer and have more teen mothers, more divorce, worse health, more obesity, more trauma-related deaths, more low-birth-weight babies, and lower school enrollment. On average, people in red states die five years earlier than people in blue states. Indeed, the gap in life expectancy between Louisiana (75.7) and Connecticut (80.8) is the same as that between the United States and Nicaragua. Red states suffer more in another highly important but little-known way, one that speaks to the very biological self-interest in health and life: industrial pollution. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild

Most codes extend their definitions of treason to acts not really against one's country. They do not distinguish between acts against the government, and acts against the oppressions of the government. The latter are virtues, yet have furnished more victims to the executioner than the former. Real treasons are rare; oppressions frequent. The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The Republican Party is bringing out here onto the floor of Congress an all-out assault on the protection of the rights of people who work in the fields of our country, in the factories of our country, in the offices of our country. ~ Ed Markey

Ahh, my heart fell down when I began to see dead buffalo scattered all over our beautiful country, killed and skinned, and left to rot by white men, many, many hundreds of buffalo ... Our hearts were like stones. And yet nobody believed, even then, that the white man could kill all the buffalo. Since the beginning of things there had always been so many! ~ Pretty Shield

There is probably no country so barbarous that would not disclose all it knew, if it received equivalent information; and I am apt to think that a person who was ready to give more knowledge than he received would be welcome wherever he came. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

Believing that fundamental conditions of the country are sound and there is nothing in the business situation to warrant the destruction of values that has taken place on the exchanges during the past week, my son and I have for some days been purchasing sound common stocks. We are continuing and will continue our purchases in substantial amounts at levels which we believe represent sound investment values. ~ John D. Rockefeller

I've never really been a traditional country kind of guy. I wanted my music to sound more like the end of the '90s and to have the kind of great music, pop or whatever, that radio will embrace. ~ Bryan White

In Washington, D.C., far from the Capitol dome, was an old redbrick office building with office space and apartments available for rent. On the fifth floor, at the end of a narrow hall with a noisy steam radiator, was a plain little office with its title painted in small black letters on the door: The Veritas Project. Just inside that door, Consuela, the secretary, sorted through conventional mail at her desk. Seated at a computer nearby, Carrie, the assistant, scanned through e-mails from all around the country. Between their two workstations was another door, and beyond that door was the cluttered office of Mr. Morgan, the boss. Mr. ~ Frank E. Peretti

It was the American middle class. No one's house cost more than two or three year's salary, and I doubt the spread in annual wages (except for the osteopath) exceeded more than five thousand dollars. And other than the doctor (who made house calls), the store managers, the minister, the salesman, and the banker, everyone belonged to a union. That meant they worked a forty-hour week, had the entire weekend off (plus two to four weeks' paid vacation in the summer), comprehensive medical benefits, and job security. In return for all that, the country became the most productive in the world and in our little neighborhood it meant your furnace was always working, your kids could be dropped off at the neighbors without notice, you could run next door anytime to borrow a half-dozen eggs, and the doors to all the homes were never locked
because who would need to steal anything if they already had all that they needed? ~ Michael Moore

It is singular to look round upon a country where the dreams of sages, smiled at as utopian, seem distinctly realized, a people voluntarily submitting to laws of their own imposing, with arms in their hands respecting the voice of a government which their breath created and which their breath could in a moment destroy! ~ Frances Wright

The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home
and the slow nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries. ~ Rolf Potts

Scotch beef, salmon and shellfish are recognised the world over for their excellence and Scottish provenance. People recognise the Scottish brand. They associate the country with quality food and drink, and clearly other Scottish sectors, such as dairy, can benefit from that, too. ~ Nicola Sturgeon

All of the members of my new team have displayed in their work a strong sense of pragmatism that I promote ... While the backgrounds of principal officials are diverse, they all share a common commitment to our country, our territory and our people and agree with my governing philosophy. ~ Donald Tsang

One has so much time for thought in the country! However occupied one may be, 'tis with nothing that engrosses the mind, which works away on its own account like a mill-wheel. ~ Eugenie De Guerin

People in this country are still waiting for the war of their freedom to come from somewhere else, from the jungles, from the mountains, from China, from Pakistan. That will never happen. Every man must make his own Benaras.
The book of your revolution sits in the pit of your belly, young Indian. Crap it out, and read. ~ Aravind Adiga

Good afternoon, Mrs. Blackstone. Who the hell is this and what does he think he's doing carting you around like a sack of potatoes?"
"This is Mark," Letty said. "He's going to be the model for our new ad campaign. You know, the one aimed at the experienced high-country
backpacker and rock climber."
"I trust he's not going to try to pack you into the high country?"
"Heavens, no. He was just proving to me that he could lift a hundred and twenty pounds of camping and climbing gear, weren't you, Mark? ~ Jayne Ann Krentz

...Puritanism has made life itself impossible. More than art, more than estheticism, life represents beauty in a thousand variations; it is indeed, a gigantic panorama of eternal change. Puritanism, on the other hand, rests on a fixed and immovable conception of life; it is based on the Calvinistic idea that life is a curse, imposed upon man by the wrath of God. In order to redeem himself man must do constant penance, must repudiate every natural and healthy impulse, and turn his back on joy and beauty.

Puritanism celebrated its reign of terror in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, destroying and crushing every manifestation of art and culture. It was the spirit of Puritanism which robbed Shelley of his children, because he would not bow to the dicta of religion. It was the same narrow spirit which alienated Byron from his native land, because that great genius rebelled against the monotony, dullness, and pettiness of his country. It was Puritanism, too, that forced some of England's freest women into the conventional lie of marriage: Mary Wollstonecraft and, later, George Eliot. And recently Puritanism has demanded another toll--the life of Oscar Wilde. In fact, Puritanism has never ceased to be the most pernicious factor in the domain of John Bull, acting as censor of the artistic expression of his people, and stamping its approval only on the dullness of middle-class respectability. ~ Emma Goldman

With Germany conquered, the Kremlin checkmated, Japan converted, it became easier - safer - to peek around looking for someone to fear ... and maybe do something about. Ideally, somebody far away, from a country about which almost nothing was known. ~ David Douglas Duncan

It's just cheaper to be White in America than it is to be Black, because of educational advances, because of the police incidents, because of the poverty we grow up in as African-Americans. So, it's just cheaper in this country if you're born a Caucasian than being born a Black person. ~ Warren Ballentine

The hearts of the people of Muslim countries are beating with the call of jihad. ~ Osama Bin Laden

Lord Salisbury's basic educational philosophy was that higher authority could, at best, have only a marginal effect; real desire to learn had to come from within. "N. has been very hard put to it for something to do," he wrote of a son who had been left alone with him for a few days at Hatfield. "Having tried all the weapons in the gun-cupboard in succession - some in the riding room and some, he tells me, in his own room - and having failed to blow his fingers off, he has been driven to reading Sydney Smith's Essays and studying Hogarth's pictures." Lady Salisbury did not share her husband's detached approach. "He may be able to govern the country," she said, "but he is quite unfit to be left in charge of his children. ~ Robert K. Massie

I'm a very, very proud Canadian, and having the privilege to represent my country on the international level was the highlight of my 18-year career. ~ Paul Henderson