Escape Class Quotes

The Singularity is at once an escape and a birth fantasy. I said to him: A Zeus dream that avoids the organic body altogether. Brand-new creatures burst forth from men's heads. Presto! The mother and her evil vagina disappears. ~ Siri Hustvedt

I guess I was one of the popular kids. I played soccer, I was class president - I even dated the homecoming queen. ~ Matthew Morrison

Once the primary bonds which gave security to the individual are severed, once the individual faces the world outside of himself as a completely separate entity, two courses re-open to him since he has to overcome the unbearable state of powerlessness and aloneness. By one course he can progress to "positive freedom"; he can relate himself spontaneously to the world in love and work, in the genuine expression of his emotional, sensuous and intellectual capacities; he can thus become one again with man, nature, and himself, without giving up the independence and integrity of his individual self. The other course open to him is to fall back, to give up his freedom, and to try to overcome his aloneness by eliminating the gap that has arisen between his individual self and the world. This second course never reunites him with the world in the way he was related to it before he merged as an "individual," for the fact of his separateness cannot be reversed; it is an escape from an unbearable situation which would make life impossible if it were prolonged. This course of escape, therefore, is characterized by its compulsive character, like every escape from threatening panic; it is also characterized by the more or less complete surrender of individuality and the integrity of the self. Thus it is not a solution which leads to happiness and positive freedom; it is, in principle, a solution which is to be found in all neurotic phenomena. It assuages an unbearable anxiety and makes lif ~ Erich Fromm

Because I came from the working class, I still identify with them. I don't identify with the middle class. ~ Allison Anders

There is a middle class in America for only one reason: organized labor. If not for organized labor, where would you find a job where you had some sense that you had a shot of leaving behind something better than you inherited?. ~ Joe Biden

Everything in life is like a class if you can operate in a capacity to be open for the lesson. ~ Dawn Olivieri

I am well aware that many will accuse me of indecorum for presenting these pages to the public; for the experiences of this intelligent and much-injured woman belong to a class which some call delicate subjects, and others indelicate. This peculiar phase of Slavery has generally been kept veiled; but the public ought to be made acquainted with its monstrous features, and I willingly take the responsibility of presenting them with the veil withdrawn. I do this for the sake of my sisters in bondage, who are suffering wrongs so foul, that our ears are too delicate to listen to them. ~ L. Maria Child

When you're in a songwriting class, and you write a song, and you hand it in to a teacher to grade, I'm still going to say that it's a really awesome song whether I got an A or a D. I learned to stick to my guns and take the tools as tools and not as rules. ~ Madi Diaz

As an index of social change, perhaps we should follow the popularity of the slap as some sort of measure of our belief in social hierarchy. The slap carries with it all the accumulated power of the past; it uses an entire social class as its accompanying army. As we relate to each other as individuals not necessarily embedded in our respective hierarchies, perhaps we will punch each other more frequently. In some truly ironic way, that might be good news. ~ Santosh Desai

I've always been really ambitious, whatever I do. At school, I always wanted to be the best in the class - no, it wasn't enough to be the best in the class, I'd want to be the best in the country. ~ Sophia Myles

My parents say it all began with my role of Percy the Polar Bear back in nursery school! I began dance classes at the age of five (you would never guess though) and then I went on to join my local theatre group, Glantawe Players, at the age of eight and then Swansea Amateur Dramatics Society. I then joined the National Youth Music Theatre, so I really can't remember a time when I wasn't interested in Musical Theatre! ~ Francesca Jackson

I was sort of traumatized by girls in the third grade. Because there was a girl in my third grade class I had a crush on. I bought her a box of Valentine's Day chocolate. And I put it in her cubby with a note that said something like, 'I am deeply in love with you, Your Secret Admirer.' And I didn't sign my name. ~ Steve Carell

I read Norman Lock's The Boy in His Winter with delight and amazement. Styled in the vernacular of a rapidly changing America, it stays true to the themes of Mark Twain's original: class relations, race and slavery, childhood innocence, moral hypocrisy - and, of course, the stark beauty and unforgiving nature of America's greatest river. I finished this absolutely elegant narrative feeling that Huck Finn has never been more alive. ~ David Oshinsky

And so escape and love became intertwined, and from this grew a sense of not knowing, ignoring, pretending not to know... Anything I felt--grief, depression, shock, anger--I simply starved it away or exercised or drank too much wine or slept. I simply would not know. It was something I learned as a child that had somehow carried me into adulthood. Until it would no longer carry me. Until I learned to look deep into the face of whatever it was, and what I found was this: it didn't kill me. ~ Jennifer Pastiloff

She started life with a number, not a name. Class: S, No. 13295. She has them memorized by rote, though nobody ever calls her that. The Scientists feel foolish addressing her in long, bewildering strings of alphanumerics. They have told her so themselves. To save time, they simply call her Snow. ~ Nenia Campbell

Black holes generate an amazing amount of light. The problem is, their gravity is so great, the light can't escape - it just gets pulled in along with everything else. ~ Neal Shusterman

My grandma used to make syrup for us because we couldn't afford it and I just played around with her recipe. I made strawberry syrup and that didn't really work out but I made strawberry-vanilla and that sold. Then I just went out and took marketing classes, went to seminars, learned about marketing a product and striking deals. It ended up taking orders of $1.5 million. ~ Farrah Gray

Whether life finds us guilty or not guilty, we ourselves know we are not innocent. ~ Sandor Marai

I wonder if liberal kids call liberal talk shows and ask how to get along in a conservative teacher's class? No. No. It doesn't happen, 'cause there's no thought of getting along. ~ Rush Limbaugh

Seed Leaves

Homage to R. F.

Here something stubborn comes,

Dislodging the earth crumbs

And making crusty rubble.

it comes up bending double,

And looks like a green staple.

It could be seedling maple,

Or artichoke, or bean.

That remains to be seen.



Forced to make choice of ends,

The stalk in time unbends,

Shakes off the seed-case, heaves

Aloft, and spreads two leaves

Which still display no sure

And special signature.

Toothless and fat, they keep

The oval form of sleep.



This plant would like to grow

And yet be embryo;

In crease, and yet escape

The doom of taking shape;

Be vaguely vast, and climb

To the tip end of time

With all of space to fill,

Like boundless Igdrasil

That has the stars for fruit.



But something at the root

More urgent that the urge

Bids two true leaves emerge;

And now the plant, resigned

To being self-defined

Before it can commerce

With the great universe,

Takes aim at all the sky

And starts to ramify. ~ Richard Wilbur

Isn't it true that every aristocrat wants to die? ~ Harold Pinter

I desire a society which selects its rulers from the best elements of every class and denies the right of any class or corporation to usurp the government itself
whether it be the nobles, the clergy, the bourgeoisie, or the proletariat. For government by any class is fatal to the welfare of the whole, ~ Rafael Sabatini

U.S. society, after all, continues to be starkly segregated along class and race lines, never allowing people to have the sort of interactions necessary to undo prejudices, stereotypes, and oppressions. ~ Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

All I can do is read a book to stay awake, and it rips my life away, but it's a great escape. ~ Blind Melon

To most middle-class feminists, as to most middle-class non-feminists, working-class women remain mysterious creatures to be "reached out to" in some abstract way. No connection. No solidarity. ~ Irena Klepfisz

Kitsch is the aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements. Those of us who live in a society where various political tendencies exist side by side and competing influences cancel or limit one another can manage more or less to escape the kitsch inquisition: the individual can preserve his individuality; the artist can create unusual works. But whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch. ~ Milan Kundera

That's what counted. It was more than a security system: it was a state of mind. Although Herkmoor had suffered many escape attempts, some extraordinarily clever, none had succeeded - and every guard at Herkmoor, every employee, was acutely aware of that fact ~ Douglas Preston

Like most people I am smarter than some, dumber than others, skinnier than most, and fatter than a few, but none was ever more confused than I was. I flew with confusion always parallel to me, and a whole internal chase at my rear. The one matter that was not confusing to me, but seemed to escape all the others, was the fact that the only thing that was certain to become obsolete, would necessarily become wearied and worn, was the truth. I knew this in spite of the truth that I had had little truck with the truth in my life. It was not that I considered myself a resident in a den of lies, but rather that my history was shrouded and diced and soaking wet with hysteria and contradiction. Contradictions or no, my trajectory through life, though different from most, was, nonetheless, a trajectory. ~ Percival Everett

Everyone will be tracked, cradle to grave, with no possibility of escape. ~ Dave Eggers

...that old unfulfilled craving became an obsession I couldn't escape, a black hole of raw grief I kept falling deeper into. 'Where are my children?' I felt their absence and loss as if they existed somewhere I couldn't reach, as if they were stuck forever on the other side of a membrane and I could never access them. ~ Kate Christensen