Fake News Quotes

All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake "public opinion" for the benefit of the bourgeoisie. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Journalists need experts as badly as experts need journalists. ~ Steven D. Levitt

All humans are the same. It's pathetic when some denounce others for something the first also do. So mend your own business and stop intervening on others' business. ~ Maria Karvouni

It is better to not believe a truth than to believe a lie, because this defines yourself too. If you believe a lie that has negative effects, it shows you may have malicious intentions. But if you don't believe a truth that has negative effects, then you may be well-disposed. ~ Maria Karvouni

If you are verifying information for yourself, you will not send on fake news to others. If ~ Timothy Snyder

Don't trust anything, motivations vary. ~ Maria Karvouni

But no one cared about the fake news as long as there was something to talk about. ~ Anna Widzisz

The media are less a window on reality, than a stage on which officials and journalists perform self-scripted, self-serving fictions. ~ Thomas Sowell

You are fake news. ~ Donald J. Trump

The cure to eliminate fake news is that people stop reading 140-character tweets and start reading 600-page books. ~ Piero Scaruffi

From husks and rags and waste and excrement
He forms the pavement-feet and the lift-faces;
He steers the sick words into parliament
To rule a dust-bin world with deep-sleep phrases.

When healthy words or people chance to dine
Together in this rarely actual scene,
There is a love-taste in the bread and wine,
Nor is it asked: "Do you mean what you mean?"

But to their table-converse boldly comes
The same great-devil with his brush and tray,
To conjure plump loaves from the scattered crumbs,
And feed his false five thousands day by day.

- Hell ~ Robert Graves

Society is competitive and some feel inferior and are jealous of others. This motivates them to believe and spread lies. They satisfy their malevolence to lift themselves. In the world I want to live in, any form of gossip should be illegal and people should talk only about arts and sciences. ~ Maria Karvouni

To understand what ended up happening in the 2016 presidential election, you have to understand this: When protests toppled the Ukrainian government, Putin interpreted that as the United States coming into Russia, akin to an act of war; when he launched his counterattack - annexing Crimea, creeping into eastern Ukraine - he weaponized information and showed a willingness to lie, using traditional media like television, and new media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, to spread disinformation into open, Western societies like a virus. Eventually, the Russians would come into America, as they believed we'd gone into Ukraine. They took advantage of the fact that we were worn down by decades of political polarization and the balkanization of our media. America's antibodies to the sickness of Russian disinformation were weak, if they were there at all. ~ Ben Rhodes

How difficult it has become to decipher the truth from the fictitious, to trust one's own eyes over the art of image distortion. Information is power and if readings have taught us anything, it is that power inevitably corrupts. ~ Aysha Taryam

The eighth deadly sin is lies that harm. ~ Maria Karvouni

I'm a writer to the bone. I love this language you and I read, write and speak. It's called English. And I'm seriously doubting that it's known to some of the unseen people who write the news. ~ Ann Medlock

The office of the president once stood for integrity, justice, wisdom, truth, guidance, fairness, wise words, honesty and many more honorable attributes.

What happened?

I have watched the values of all these words disappear from the Whitehouse.

Aides used to guide the president, so that he wouldn't stray from these ideals and values. Now they just cower down and hope that they have a job in a week's time.

What happened?

You cannot blame fake news when you lie to the press yourself.
You cannot blame your arrogance on others when you are too ashamed to admit when you are wrong.
You cannot put yourself above the people that you swore to protect and serve.
You cannot let your ego and your temper control your words.
You cannot undermine the integrity of what the office of the president stands for.

All I want to know is...

"What happened? ~ Anthony T' Hincks

I thought they'd fact-check it, and it'd make them look worse. I mean that's how this always works: Someone posts something I write, then they find out it's false, then they look like idiots. But Trump supporters - they just keep running with it! They never fact-check anything! Now he's in the White House. Looking back, instead of hurting the campaign, I think I helped it. And that feels [bad]. ~ Paul Horner

We need to suggest the enemy within. We need enemies of the people we want their judges called enemies of the people we want their journalists called enemies of the people we want the people we decide to call enemies of the people called enemies of the people we want to say loudly over and over again on as many tv and radio shows as possible how they're silencing us. We need to say all the old stuff like it's new. We need news to be what we say it is. We need words to mean what we say they mean. We need to deny what we're saying while we're saying it. We need it not to matter what words mean. ~ Ali Smith

The greatest monster that there is: fake news media: torture with bullying, psychological warfare, spying and then using truthful misleading to complete their plot. The cheapest job ever. ~ Maria Karvouni

Alternative facts and fake news are just other names for propaganda ~ Johnny Corn

Disparate treatment of minorities should be discussed in every school in the country. Do the boys understand the difference between news and
propaganda? Misinformation is rampant on the internet, and the biggest provider of 'fake news' is the President of the United States, Ronald John. ~ Mark M. Bello

For me it was just exciting to see fake news catching on like that. We don't you know, it's interesting. I think we don't make things up. We just distill it to, hopefully, its most humorous nugget. And in that sense it seems faked and skewed just because we don't have to be subjective or pretend to be objective. We can just put it out there. ~ Jon Stewart

Trump's MAGA minions live in a Fox News bubble. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

The true things rarely get into circulation. It's usually the false things. ~ Marilyn Monroe

The truth belongs to the experience, not the attempt of third parties to interpret a story, without knowing the exact incidents, but only one or a few facts. ~ Maria Karvouni

Now more than ever, journalists have a crucial role to perform in the society. You may say, haven't they been playing that role from the very beginning! Yes, they have been doing it for a long time, since the birth of printing press, but never in history, could their failure mean devastation in their community caused by their false and illegitimate counterparts. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The strangest thing about fascism in America today is that American facists are so dumb, they don't even know they're fascists. They don't even know what the word fascism means.

They vaguely know that it had something to do with Hitler and the Nazis, but that's it. They have no idea that the first words of the Nazi anthem were "Germany above all else" which was their version of "America first." And the way Nazis demonized jews was no different than the way American fascists demonize liberals. Hitler promised to "make Germany great again." And Hitler denounced the newspapers, which exposed him for what he really was, as "Lügenpresse," which is German for "fake news."

If the German Nazi party still existed today, they would look exactly like the Republican party under Trump. Hitler's rallies looked no different than Trump's rallies. And Hitler would absolutely love a well-oiled propaganda outlet like Fox News. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

Algorithms are not arbiters of objective truth and fairness simply because they're math. ~ Zoe Quinn

The distinction between reality and fiction in America seems like it is becoming really blurry. With its religious fanaticism, reality TV programs and fake news broadcasts being aired by the government, the States feel like they are entering the Dark Ages. ~ Dana Schutz

The media's so central to our lives that we believe what we see onscreen is real. In fact, it's more real than reality: emotions are heightened, drama sharpened, issues simplified. ~ Steve Shahbazian

But in the man and his presidency Dowd had seen the tragic flaw. In the political back-and-forth, the evasions, the denials, the tweeting, the obscuring, crying "Fake News," the indignation, Trump had one overriding problem that Dowd knew but could not bring himself to say to the president: "You're a fucking liar. ~ Bob Woodward

Social media is a great thing, especially Twitter. They record all the threats, incriminating evidence, and fake news cyberbullies and their gangs put out there to harass an individual. It's out in public. It's traceable. And it's all for law enforcement to see. The act of harassing an individual online through "cybergangs" is a worse crime than what they are posting about that individual. - Strong by Kailin Gow about Social Media's Role in Aiding Law Enforcement Against Crime ~ Kailin Gow

In truth, the epoch is gone in which we had the impression that the masses of society could be guided by reason and by insights into their situation of life to achieve social improvement with their own strength. In truth, the days are gone in which the masses have a function in shaping society. It has been shown that the masses can be completely molded, that they are unconscious and capable of adapting themselves to any kind of power or infamy. ~ William S. Schlamm

Conventional wisdom in Galbraith's view must be simple, convenient, comfortable and comforting - though not necessarily true. ~ Steven D. Levitt

The official philosophies of the totalitarian regimes unanimously brand as nonsensical the idea that there exists a single objective truth valid for everybody. The criterion of "truth," they say, is not agreement with reality, but agreement with the spirit of a race or nation or class - that is, racial, national or utilitarian. Pushing to their limits the biological, pragmatist, activist theories of truth, the official philosophies of the totalitarian regimes deny the inherent value of thought. For them thought is not a light but a weapon: its function, they say, is not to discover reality as it is, but to change and transform it with the purpose of leading us towards what is not. Such being the case, myth is better than science and rhetoric that works on the passions preferable to proof that appeals to the intellect. ~ Alexandre Koyré

Be wary, though, of the way news media use the word "significant," because to statisticians it doesn't mean "noteworthy." In statistics, the word "significant" means that the results passed mathematical tests such as t-tests, chi-square tests, regression, and principal components analysis (there are hundreds). Statistical significance tests quantify how easily pure chance can explain the results. With a very large number of observations, even small differences that are trivial in magnitude can be beyond what our models of change and randomness can explain. These tests don't know what's noteworthy and what's not - that's a human judgment. ~ Daniel J. Levitin

Brandolini's law, developed in the context of twenty-first social media, is equally applicable to 1920s Klan-speak: 'The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude greater than that needed to produce it. ~ Linda Gordon

Because I went from the 'Daily Show' where I was a fake news guy on a fake news show, to 'Bruce Almighty' where I played a news guy, to 'Anchorman' where I played a news guy, now I'm ... yeah, I tend to gravitate towards suits. ~ Steve Carell

NO DIVINE BOVINE ! The clumsy creature currently inhabiting the White House is a distinctly dangerous animal. Part boneheaded raging bully, part dastardly coward showing signs of advanced stage mad cow disease. Neither of good pedigree nor useful breeding stock, there is essentially very little of substance between the T (bone) and the RUMP, except of course for an abundance of methane and bullshit. It's high time brave matadors for you to enter the bullring, with nimble step and fleet of foot. Take good aim and bring down this marauding beast once and for all. Slay public enemy number one and we will salute you forever. A louder cheer you will not hear from Madrid to Mexico City, from Beijing to Brussels, from London to Lahore, from Toronto to Tehran and ten thousand cities in between. ~ Alex Morritt

The word fascism is not a word of abuse any more than the word capitalism is. It is a concept denoting a very definite kind of mass leadership and mass influence: authoritarian, one-party system, hence totalitarian, a system in which power takes priority over objective interests, and facts are distorted for political purposes. Hence, there are "fascist Jews," just as there are "fascist Democrats. ~ Wilhelm Reich

Before the invention of printing press, the problem was, lack of information, and now due to the rise of social media, it is too much information - the former leads to mental starvation and the latter to mental obesity. ~ Abhijit Naskar

I see many so-called conservative commentators, including some faith leaders, focusing on favorable policy initiatives or court appointments to justify their acceptance of this damage, while de-emphasizing the impact of this president on basic norms and ethics. That strikes me as both hypocritical and wrong. The hypocrisy is evident if you simply switch the names and imagine that a President Hillary Clinton had conducted herself in a similar fashion in office. I've said this earlier but it's worth repeating: close your eyes and imagine these same voices if President Hillary Clinton had told the FBI director, 'I hope you will let it go,' about the investigation of a senior aide, or told casual, easily disprovable lies nearly every day and then demanded we believe them. The hypocrisy is so thick as to be almost darkly funny. I say this as someone who has worked in law enforcement for most of my life, and served presidents of both parties. What is happening now is not normal. It is not fake news. It is not okay.

Whatever your politics, it is wrong to dismiss the damage to the norms and traditions that have guided the presidency and our public life for decades or, in many cases, since the republic was founded. It is also wrong to stand idly by, or worse, to stay silent when you know better, while a president so brazenly seeks to undermine public confidence in law enforcement institutions that were established to keep our leaders in check...without these checks on our l ~ James Comey

Believe half of what you see and nothing you read online. ~ Pablo Reyes

The Press will not be free to tell lies. That is not freedom for the people, but a tyranny over their minds and souls. Much humbug is talked on this subject. What is press freedom? In practice it means the right of a dew millionaires to corner newspaper shares on the stock exchange and to voice their own opinions and interests, irrespective of the truth or of the national interest. ~ Oswald Mosley

There have been at least three other cases in which federal agencies have succeeded in placing fake news reports on television during the Bush presidency. It was a really good tour. It seemed maybe about a week too long. ~ Frank Rich

Start believing in conspiracies, because those who have the power conspire, and they keep their power by having people not believing in conspiracies. ~ Maria Karvouni

My life is a series of Hollywood orgies and Kabbalah center brunches with the cast of Friends. At least that's what my handlers tell me. I'm actually too valuable to live my own life and spend most of my days in a vegetable crisper to remain fake news anchor fresh. ~ Jon Stewart

An unquestioned assertion is as good as a truth. ~ Steve Shahbazian

Fake News has become an art form. ~ A.E. Samaan

The term POTUS used to be viewed around the world with a degree of respect. Unfortunately the current US president has junked any last remnant of that image. Instead he seems only too happy to trash the environment; to scrap age old alliances promoting peace and prosperity; to discard internationally binding treaties; to toss aside like garbage hard won civil liberties. Maybe DETRITUS is a more fitting acronym for the current occupant of the White House - 'Deranged egotistical tyrant ruining & isolating the U.S. ~ Alex Morritt

I had been the victim of fake news despite being the candidate of the genuine story ~ P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

I never said that 'Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.' It is fake news. Instead, one could say that 'The perception of reality not being real is an illusion, albeit a persistent one.' Reality is as real as it gets in this life time. Go out in nature and you will find that reality is the ultimate manifestation of Love. Reality is you and all of nature's kind. It is very real. It is true Love. Because all of nature is a manifestation of Love. And that includes You. ~ Albert Einstein

You can only blame fake news so many times before the truth starts to emerge from the newsprint. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

Separate text from context and all that remains is a con. ~ Stewart Stafford

Fake news engenders fake debates, and fake debates result in fake politics. It is a means to take the focus far away from the real problems that affect people. ~ Ravish Kumar

You should never reward stupidity, unless, of course, it was staged in the first place. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

Since in the age of the internet we are all publishers, each of us bears some private responsibility for the public's sense of truth. If we are serious about seeking the facts, we can each make a small revolution in the way the internet works. If you are verifying information for yourself, you will not send on fake news to others. If you choose to follow reporters whom you have reason to trust, you can also transmit what they have learned to others. If you retweet only the work of humans who have followed journalistic protocols, you are less likely to debase your brain interacting with bots and trolls. We ~ Timothy Snyder

A cursory look at history reveals that propaganda and disinformation are nothing new, and even the habit of denying entire nations and creating fake countries has a long pedigree. In 1931 the Japanese army staged mock attacks on itself to justify its invasion of China, and then created the fake country of Manchukuo to legitimise its conquests. China itself has long denied that Tibet ever existed as an independent country. British settlement in Australia was justified by the legal doctrine of terra nullius ('nobody's land'), which effectively erased 50,000 years of Aboriginal history.
In the early twentieth century a favourite Zionist slogan spoke of the return of 'a people without a land [the Jews] to a land without a people [Palestine]'. The existence of the local Arab population was conveniently ignored. In 1969 Israeli prime minister Golda Meir famously said that there is no Palestinian people and never was. Such views are very common in Israel even today, despite decades of armed conflicts against something that doesn't exist. For example, in February 2016 MP Anat Berko gave a speech in the Israeli Parliament in which she doubted the reality and history of the Palestinian people. Her proof? The letter 'p' does not even exist in Arabic, so how can there be a Palestinian people? (In Arabic, 'f' stands for 'p', and the Arabic name for Palestine is Falastin.) ~ Yuval Noah Harari

I will never know, because I will never be able to be in the position to witness those things. And I don't care to know something I myself cannot confirm. No one should care about this. ~ Maria Karvouni

In this era of fake news and paid news artificial intelligence is more and more used as a political tool to manipulate and dictate common people, through big data, biometric data, and AI analysis of online profiles and behaviors in social media and smart phones. But the days are not far when AI will also control the politicians and the media too. ~ Amit Ray

Our show is obviously at a disadvantage with any of the other news shows we're competing against. For one thing, we are fake. They are not. So in terms of credibility, we are ... well, oddly enough we're about even. ~ Jon Stewart

But even when Facebook isn't deliberately exploiting its users, it is exploiting its users - its business model requires it. Even if you distance yourself from Facebook, you still live in the world that Facebook is shaping. Facebook, using our native narcissism and our desire to connect with other people, captured our attention and our behavioral data; it used this attention and data to manipulate our behavior, to the point that nearly half of America began relying on Facebook for news. Then, with the media both reliant on Facebook as a way of reaching readers and powerless against the platform's ability to suck up digital advertising revenue - it was like a paperboy who pocketed all the subscription money - Facebook bent the media's economic model to match its own practices: publications needed to capture attention quickly and consistently trigger high emotional responses to be seen at all. The result, in 2016, was an unending stream of Trump stories, both from the mainstream news and from the fringe outlets that were buoyed by Facebook's algorithm. What began as a way for Zuckerberg to harness collegiate misogyny and self-interest has become the fuel for our whole contemporary nightmare, for a world that fundamentally and systematically misrepresents human needs. ~ Jia Tolentino

There's a nice clear difference between real protection (wash your hands, or wear a condom) and the fake protection offered by institutions which often come, finally and sadly, to be much too interested first of all in protecting their own power. ~ Laura Mullen

No, I don't think I've been defiled. But I haven't been saved, either. There's nobody who can save me right now, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. The world looks totally empty to me. Everything I see around me looks fake. The only thing thay isn't fake is that gooshy thing inside me. ~ Haruki Murakami

A significant number of people believe tribal people still live and dress as they did 300 years ago. During my tenure as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, national news agencies requesting interviews sometimes asked if they could film a tribal dance or if I would wear traditional tribal clothing for the interview. I doubt they asked the president of the United States to dress like a pilgrim for an interview. ~ Wilma Mankiller

When it comes to fake food, I'm like Samuel Johnson, who remarked, "Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult." In other words, I can give something up altogether, but I can't indulge occasionally. ~ Gretchen Rubin

Mr. Landowsky was eighty-two and somehow his chest had shrunk over the years, and now he was forced to hike his pants up under his armpits.
"Oi," he said. "This heat! I can't breathe. Somebody should do something."
I assumed he was talking about God.
"That weatherman on the morning news. He should be shot. How can I go out in weather like this? And then when it gets so hot they keep the supermarkets too cold. Hot, cold. Hot, cold. It gives me the runs."
I was glad I owned a gun, because when I got as old as Mr. Landowsky I was going to eat a bullet. The first time I got the runs in the supermarket, that was it. BANG! It would all be over. ~ Janet Evanovich

Stay a little and news will find you. ~ George Herbert

I would appear on Fox News more easily than I would NPR. ~ Noam Chomsky

Children. Pay close attention to them. They grow up to be adults. The really heinous people we see on the news? The serial killers, murderers, rapists, and complete ass-hats of society? Yeah, they were children once. And no one paid attention. ~ Scott Hildreth

As an actor it's always easier to shave or cut your hair for a role, but it's hard to put fake hair on or grow hair for a role. ~ Chris Pratt

If ever I create a website, I'll call it Two-Face Book, and I'll invite everyone to it, it will be a game board, of a whitewash chalkboard.
A social network, with reserved intentions, where we can fall into our cliques and circle of friends. We can dis who we want and accept who appeals to our discretion. Where the users will keep abusing, and abusers keep using, where the computer bullies will keep swinging and the J-birds that fly by will die; where the lonely will keep seeking and the needy still go desperate, where the envious will keep hating, and the lustful will keep flashing. Where those that think ignoring, will keep one down and the wannabes will foolishly think themselves greater by the number of "likes" that pours caffeine into their coffee. We can jump on the bandwagon of likes, or reserve not to show we care. Where the scorners, scammers and stalkers lay wait to take hold of the innocent and fragile, and my pockets will get fatter as more and more will join up, where being fake is accepted. As a mirror that stares at a different face. It will be my two-face epilogue, in a 3-world dimension, of a twofold war. I will build an empire of contagious hooks, and still we will live, happily-ever disastrous. ~ Anthony Liccione

When the news you don't want to hear is looming before you like Everest, two things can happen. Tragedy can run you through like a sword, or it can become your backbone. Either you fall apart and sob, or you say, 'Right. What's next? ~ Jodi Picoult

I had my bad times. But the good news is that every time this has happened I've taken full responsibility for it. I don't try to duck it, I don't try to dodge it, I don't try to bullshit about it. Truth crushed to the ground will rise again. And that's what my life has been about. ~ Marion Barry

The very people who burst with proofs of exuberant vitality could easily be taken for prepared corpses, from whom the news of their not-quite-successful decease has been withheld for reasons of population policy. Underlying the prevalent health is death. All the movements of health resemble the reflex-movements of beings whose hearts have stopped beating. ~ Theodor Adorno

My son wants to be Batman and he wants the Batman costume that comes in the mail. It has fake muscles in it, which is very disconcerting on a four-year-old. ~ Matthew Broderick

Most Americans may not realize that the news they consume is driven in part by the media mantra, 'if it bleeds, it leads.' ~ John Prendergast

People always - I think were surprised about me connecting with folks in small town Iowa. And the reason I did was - first of all, I had the benefit that at the time nobody expected me to win. And so I wasn't viewed through this prism of Fox News and conservative media making me scary. At the time, I didn't think seem scary, other than just having a funny name. I seemed young. ~ Barack Obama

I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead. ~ Jean Cocteau

The next day's call would be vital.
Then at 12:02 P.M., the radio came to life.
"Bear at camp two, it's Neil. All okay?"
I heard the voice loud and clear.
"Hungry for news," I replied, smiling. He knew exactly what I meant.
"Now listen, I've got a forecast and an e-mail that's come through for you from your family. Do you want to hear the good news or the bad news first?"
"Go on, then, let's get the bad news over with," I replied.
"Well, the weather's still lousy. The typhoon is now on the move again, and heading this way. If it's still on course tomorrow you've got to get down, and fast. Sorry."
"And the good news?" I asked hopefully.
"Your mother sent a message via the weather guys. She says all the animals at home are well."
Click.
"Well, go on, that can't be it. What else?"
"Well, they think you're still at base camp. Probably best that way. I'll speak to you tomorrow."
"Thanks, buddy. Oh, and pray for change. It will be our last chance."
"Roger that, Bear. Don't start talking to yourself. Out."
I had another twenty-four hours to wait. It was hell. Knowingly feeling my body get weaker and weaker in the vain hope of a shot at the top.
I was beginning to doubt both myself and my decision to stay so high.
I crept outside long before dawn. It was 4:30 A.M. I sat huddled, waiting for the sun to rise while sitting in the porch of my tent.
My mind wandered to being up there--up higher on th ~ Bear Grylls

However a man who was honest and clever was always, ALWAYS more difficult to scam than someone who was both dishonest and clever.
Sincerity. It was so difficult , by definition, to fake. ~ Brandon Sanderson

There are many benefits to a sports entity breaking news directly to their recipients: the entity has full control over the message and how it is shared versus previously relying on a media outlets to translate or distribute as they choose. Also, there's no quicker place for valuable information to spread than Twitter. ~ Amy Jo Martin

The tears I gratified him with were fake ones. Ones that set off my green eyes the way diamonds set off emeralds. And it worked. If you dazzled a man with green eyes, he will be so hypnotized that he won't notice there is someone inside the eyes spying on him. – Vida Winters Page 268 ~ Diane Setterfield

But he'd also gotten a personal prickly chill all over from his own thinking. He could do the dextral pain the same way: Abiding. No one single instant of it was unendurable. Here was a second right here: he endured it. What was undealable-with was the thought of all the instants all lined up and stretching ahead, glittering. And the projected future fear of the A.D.A., whoever was out there in a hat eating Third World fast food; the fear of getting convicted of Nuckslaughter, of V.I.P.-suffocation; of a lifetime on the edge of his bunk in M.C.I. Walpole, remembering. It's too much to think about. To Abide there. But none of it's as of now real. What's real is the tube and Noxzema and pain. And this could be done just like the Old Cold Bird. He could just hunker down in the space between each heartbeat and make each heartbeat a wall and live in there. Not let his head look over. What's unendurable is what his own head could make of it all. What his head could report to him, looking over and ahead and reporting. But he could choose not to listen; he could treat his head like G. Day or R. Lenz: clueless noise. He hadn't quite gotten this before now, how it wasn't just the matter of riding out the cravings for a Substance: everything unendurable was in the head, was the head not Abiding in the Present but hopping the wall and doing a recon and then returning with unendurable news you then somehow believed. ~ David Foster Wallace

Could it be that Christians, eager to point out how good we are, neglect the basic fact that the gospel sounds like good news only to bad people? ~ Philip Yancey

No. You got home and changed into a shirt that had more ruffles on it than anything I've ever seen." "It's cute," I retorted, worried he didn't think the same. "It is. So are you. It is you. My Butterfly in her wings. What it isn't is what a floozy would wear to lure her man to fuck her on her couch in front of the news. ~ Kristen Ashley

For years I'd been awaiting that overriding urge I'd always heard about, the narcotic pining that draws childless women ineluctably to strangers' strollers in parks. I wanted to be drowned by the hormonal imperative, to wake one day and throw my arms around your neck, reach down for you, and pray that while that black flower bloomed behind my eyes you had just left me with child. (With child: There's a lovely warm sound to that expression, an archaic but tender acknowledgement that for nine months you have company wherever you go. Pregnant, by contrast, is heavy and bulging and always sounds to my ear like bad news: "I'm pregnant." I instinctively picture a sixteen-year-old at the dinner table- pale, unwell, with a scoundrel of a boyfriend- forcing herself to blurt out her mother's deepest fear.) (27) ~ Lionel Shriver

We've been to the Moon nine times. Why would we fake it nine times, if we faked it? ~ Charles Duke

I had that Restylane stuff. It looked fake to me. I didn't like that. But it went away in, like, four months. My lips are back to what they were. Thank God! ~ Jessica Simpson

Lucius paused, turning on his heel to face me. "I grow weary of your ignorance." He moved closer to me, leaning down and peering into my eyes. "Because your parents refuse to inform you, I will deliver the news myself,and I shall make this simple for you." He pointed to his chest and announced, as though talking to a child, "I am a vampire." He pointed to my chest. "You are a vampire. And we are to be married, the moment you come of age. This has been decreed since our births."
I couldn't even process the "getting married" part, or the thing about "decreed." He'd lost me at "vampire."
Nuts. Lucius Vladescu is completely nuts. And I'm alone with him, in an empty barn.
So I did what any sane person would do. I jammed the pitchfork in the general direction of his foot and ran like hell for the house, ignoring his yowl of pain. ~ Beth Fantaskey

Following Christ in the power of the Spirit means bringing to our world the shape of the gospel: forgiveness, the best news that anyone can ever hear, for all who yearn for it, and judgment for all who insist on dehumanizing themselves and others by their continuing pride, injustice, and greed. ~ N.T. Wright

Incessant smiling is one of the deadly tools used by someone whose intent is to make others cry. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

If the pursuit of happiness pulls us all back into childishness, then fake freedom conspires to keep us there. Because freedom is not having more brands of cereal to choose from, or more beach vacations to take selfies on, or more satellite channels to fall asleep to. That is variety. And in a vacuum, variety is meaningless. If you are trapped by insecurity, stymied by doubt, and hamstrung by intolerance, you can have all the variety in the world. But you are not free. ~ Mark Manson

LONDON. TRINITY TERM one week old. Implacable June weather. Fiona Maye, a High Court judge, at home on Sunday evening, supine on a chaise longue, staring past her stockinged feet toward the end of the room, toward a partial view of recessed bookshelves by the fireplace and, to one side, by a tall window, a tiny Renoir lithograph of a bather, bought by her thirty years ago for fifty pounds. Probably a fake. Below it, centered on a round walnut table, a blue vase. No memory of how she came by it. Nor when she last put flowers in it. The fireplace not lit in a year. Blackened raindrops falling irregularly into the grate with a ticking sound against balled-up yellowing newsprint. A Bokhara rug spread on wide polished floorboards. Looming at the edge of vision, a baby grand piano bearing silver-framed family photos on its deep black shine. On the floor by the chaise longue, within her reach, the draft of a judgment. ~ Ian McEwan

I think in politics, in Congress, you often do things that are Republican, or you do things because you're a Democrat. Sometimes that's good, obviously, and sometimes that's obviously bad. But in the news business, there's no such thing as Republican or Democratic news. News is news. ~ J. C. Watts

The sun rises bright and beautiful as if it feels no pain.
It must not see, it must not hear, it can't possibly or it would not be able to overcome so defiantly.
My bed creaks and whines when I leave it behind.
I don't know why it tries so hard to hold onto me but yet I continue to try and overcome.
I put on my shirt, my pants that fit me, find my socks and glue my heel back to my boot.
My gloves are lost, my coat is torn but my scarf still keeps me warm and so I continue to try and overcome.
Work has no pride, no place for me but I have no other place to be.
My broken dreams continue to rise, my hopes continue to fade but still I try to overcome.
A broken window and a gas tank on E, it's not Friday so I have to walk each day for at least another three.
And so I walk while the world cries and pleas and tries to swallow me but still I continue and try to overcome.
My lock on my door only turns halfway, but I don't have anything to steal anyway.
My fridge is bare but my cabinet still holds three so I continue to try and overcome.
The news haunts me, the weather threatens to rain down on me but another day has gone by.
And I have overcome, I have overcome … I have overcome - the sun has nothing on me. ~ Jennifer Loren