Is This Now The Anthropocene Quotes

We can't go back, though
we're apt to waver even as our wheels spin on. ~ Brook Emery

In the nearer term, the likeliest source of risk is a conflict between China and the U.S. These are now the two largest economies in the world, and the combination of their economic interdependence, the sharp differences in their political and economic values, and the growing divergence in their interests makes this relationship potentially dangerous for everyone who might be affected by it - which means pretty much everyone. ~ Ian Bremmer

For human beings. We almost went extinct fighting one another before. Now our numbers are even fewer. Our conditions more tenuous. Is this really what we want to do? Kill ourselves off completely? In the hopes that - what? Some decent species will inherit the smoking remains of the earth?" "I ~ Suzanne Collins

With the disappearance of the future, the only thing that remains in your hands is now. Then you can go deep into this now - whatsoever you are doing. You can be eating or dancing or making love to a woman or singing or digging a hole in the ground - whatsoever you are doing. This is the only time you have, why not do it totally? Why not celebrate it? Celebration and being total mean the same thing. You celebrate only when you are total in something, and when you are total in something you celebrate it. ~ Rajneesh

My great great grandparents were slaves. And now I'm running for president of the United States. Is this a great country or what?! ~ Herman Cain

Pavel interrupted him. "I'll explain what the Talmund is to you, with an example. Now listen carefully: Two chimneysweeps fall down the flue of a chimney; one comes out all covered with soot, the other comes out clean: which of the two goes to wash himself?"
Suspecting a trap, Piotr looked around, as if seeking help. Then he plucked up his courage and answered: "The one who's dirty goes to wash."
"Wrong," Pavel said. "The one who's dirty sees the other man's face, and it's clean, so he thinks he's clean, too. Instead, the clean one see shte soot on the other one's face, believes he's dirty himself, and goes to wash. You understand?"
"I understand. That makes sense."
"But wait; I haven't finished the example. Now I'll ask you a second question. Those two chimneysweeps fall a second time down the same flue, and again one is dirty and one isn't. Which one goes to wash?"
"I told you I understand. The clean one goes to wash."
"Wrong," Pavel said mercilessly. "When he washed after the first fall, the clean man saw that the water in his basin didn't get dirty, and the dirty man realized why the clean man had gone to wash. So, this time, the dirty chimneysweep went and washed."
Piotr listened to this, with his mouth open, half in fright and half in curiosity.
"And now the third question. The pair falls down the flue a third time. Which of the two goes to wash?"
"From now on, the dirty one will go and wash,"
"Wrong again. Did ~ Primo Levi

Now we see Christendom likewise sinking. But the true point is this: that Christ's kingdom remains. Indeed, it can be seen more clearly and appreciated more sharply by contrast with the darkness and depravity of the contemporary scene. (...) A wonderful sign (...) is the amazing renewal of the Christian faith in its purest possible form in, of all places, the countries that have been most drastically subjected to the oppression and brainwashing and general influence of the first overtly atheistic and materialistic regime to exist on earth. (...) Soviet citizens had no access to the Gospels, few religious services available, no literature of the mystics, no devotional works, no religious music, and an education brutally atheistic and secular. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

For there is no joy in continuity, in the perpetual. We desire it only because the present is empty. A person who is trying to eat money is always hungry. When someone says, "Time to stop now!" he is in a panic because he has had nothing to eat yet, and wants more and more time to go on eating money, ever hopeful of satisfaction around the corner. We do not really want continuity, but rather a present experience of total happiness. The thought of wanting such an experience to go on and on is a result of being self-conscious in the experience, and thus incompletely aware of it. So long as there is the feeling of an "I" having this experience, the moment is not all. Eternal life is realized when the last trace of difference between "I" and "now" has vanished - when there is just this "now" and nothing else.
By contrast, hell or "everlasting damnation" is not the everlastingness of time going on forever, but of the unbroken circle, the continuity and frustration of going round and round in pursuit of something which can never be attained. Hell is the fatuity, the everlasting impossibility, of self-love, self-consciousness, and self-possession. It is trying to see one´s own eyes, hear one´s own ears, and kiss one´s own lips. ~ Alan W. Watts

From Vergil's Tenth Eclogue

Verses 1-26.

Published by Rossetti, "Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.", 1870, from the Boscombe manuscripts now in the Bodleian. Mr. Locock ("Examination", etc., 1903, pages 47-50), as the result of his collation of the same manuscripts, gives a revised and expanded version which we print below.
Melodious Arethusa, o'er my verse
Shed thou once more the spirit of thy stream:
Who denies verse to Gallus? So, when thou
Glidest beneath the green and purple gleam
Of Syracusan waters, mayst thou flow
Unmingled with the bitter Doric dew!
Begin, and, whilst the goats are browsing now
The soft leaves, in our way let us pursue
The melancholy loves of Gallus. List!
We sing not to the dead: the wild woods knew
His sufferings, and their echoes...
Young Naiads,...in what far woodlands wild
Wandered ye when unworthy love possessed
Your Gallus? Not where Pindus is up-piled,
Nor where Parnassus' sacred mount, nor where
Aonian Aganippe expands...
The laurels and the myrtle-copses dim.
The pine-encircled mountain, Maenalus,
The cold crags of Lycaeus, weep for him;
And Sylvan, crowned with rustic coronals,
Came shaking in his speed the budding wands
And heavy lilies which he bore: we knew
Pan the Arcadian.

...

'What madness is this, Gallus? Thy heart's care
With willing steps pursues another there ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

I've thought of myself a girl on several occasions because I like to polish shoes and find household tasks amusing. There was once even a time when I insisted on mending a torn suit with my own hands. And in winter I always light the heating stoves myself, as though this were the natural course of things. But of course I'm not a real girl. Please give me a moment to consider all this would entail. The first thing that comes to mind is the question of whether I might possibly be a girl has never, never, not for a single moment, troubled me, rattled my bourgeois composure or made me unhappy. An absolutely by no means unhappy person stands before you, I'd like to put quite special emphasis on this, for I have never experienced sexual torment or distress, for I was never at a loss for quite simple methods of freeing myself from pressures. A rather curious, that is to say, important discovery for me was that it filled me with the most delightful gaiety to imagine myself someone's servant.... My nature, then, merely inclines me to treat people well, to be helpful and so forth. Not long ago I carried with flabbergasting zeal a shopping bag full of new potatoes for a petit bourgeoise. She's have been perfectly able to tote it herself. Now my situation is this: my particular nature also sometimes seeks, I've discovered, a mother, a teacher, that is, to express myself better, an unapproachable entity, a sort of goddess. At times I find the goddess in an instant, whereas at others it ta ~ Robert Walser

Now, I'm not going to deny that I was aware of your beauty. But the point is, this has nothing to do with your beauty. As I got to know you, I began to realise that beauty was the least of your qualities. I became fascinated by your goodness. I was drawn in by it. I didn't understand what was happening to me. And it was only when I began to feel actual, physical pain every time you left the room that it finally dawned on me: I was in love, for the first time in my life. I knew it was hopeless, but that didn't matter to me. And it's not that I want to have you. All I want is to deserve you. Tell me what to do. Show me how to behave. I'll do anything you say. ~ Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos

The common denominator of all jokes is a path of expectation that is diverted by an unexpected twist necessitating a complete reinterpretation of all the previous facts - the punch-line…Reinterpretation alone is insufficient. The new model must be inconsequential. For example, a portly gentleman walking toward his car slips on a banana peel and falls. If he breaks his head and blood spills out, obviously you are not going to laugh. You are going to rush to the telephone and call an ambulance. But if he simply wipes off the goo from his face, looks around him, and then gets up, you start laughing. The reason is, I suggest, because now you know it's inconsequential, no real harm has been done. I would argue that laughter is nature's way of signaling that "it's a false alarm." Why is this useful from an evolutionary standpoint? I suggest that the rhythmic staccato sound of laughter evolved to inform our kin who share our genes; don't waste your precious resources on this situation; it's a false alarm. Laughter is nature's OK signal. ~ V.S. Ramachandran

Our world is moving so fast and we are apt to miss so much of what is happening "right now." If we can put down our smart phones for one moment and be present to what is around us, I believe these incidental meetings and strangers who come into our lives can give us unexpected fortitude, perspective and even wisdom just when we need them the most - if we are just awake, aware and open to these new insights. ~ Kristin S. Kaufman

Consider now the Milky Way. Here also we see an innumerable dust, only the grains of this dust are no longer atoms but stars; these grains also move with great velocities, they act at a distance one upon another, but this action is so slight at great distances that their trajectories are rectilineal; nevertheless, from time to time, two of them may come near enough together to be deviated from their course, like a comet that passed too close to Jupiter. In a word, in the eyes of a giant, to whom our Suns were what our atoms are to us, the Milky Way would only look like a bubble of gas. ~ Henri Poincare

Achilles was looking at me. "Your hair never quite lies flat, here." He touched my head, just behind my ear. "I don't think I've ever told you how I like it."
My scalp prickled where his fingers had been. "You haven't," I said.
"I should have." His hand drifted down to the vee at the base of my throat, drew softly across the pulse. "What about this? Have I told you what I think of this, just here?"
"No," I said.
"This surely then." His hand moved across the muscles of my chest; my skin warmed beneath it. "Have I told you of this?"
"That you have told me." My breath caught a little as I spoke.
"And what of this?" His hand lingered over my hips, drew down the line of my thigh. "Have I spoken of it?"
"You have."
"And this? Surely I would not have forgotten this." His cat's smile. "Tell me I did not."
"You did not."
"There is this too." His hand was ceaseless now. "I know I have told you of this."
I closed my eyes. "Tell me again," I said. ~ Madeline Miller

Byron, as he burns on, sees more and more of this pattern. He learns how to make contact with other kinds of electric appliances, in homes, in factories and out in the streets. Each has something to tell him. The pattern gathers in his soul (Seele, as the core of the earlier carbon filament was known in Germany), and the grander and clearer it grows, the more desperate Byron gets. Someday he will know everything, and still be as impotent as before. His youthful dreams of organizing all the bulbs in the world seem impossible now - the Grid is wide open, all messages can be overheard, and there are more than enough traitors out on the line. Prophets traditionally don't last long - they are either killed outright, or given an accident serious enough to make them stop and think, and most often they do pull back. But on Byron has been visited an even better fate. He is condemned to go on forever, knowing the truth and powerless to change anything. No longer will he seek to get off the wheel. His anger and frustration will grow without limit, and he will find himself, poor perverse bulb, enjoying it. ~ Thomas Pynchon

The Western States nervous under the beginning change.
Texas and Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, New Mexico,
Arizona, California. A single family moved from the land.
Pa borrowed money from the bank, and now the bank wants
the land. The land company--that's the bank when it has land
--wants tractors, not families on the land. Is a tractor bad? Is
the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If this tractor
were ours it would be good--not mine, but ours. If our tractor
turned the long furrows of our land, it would be good.
Not my land, but ours. We could love that tractor then as
we have loved this land when it was ours. But the tractor
does two things--it turns the land and turns us off the land.
There is little difference between this tractor and a tank.
The people are driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think
about this.

One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car
creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a
single tractor took my land. I am alone and bewildered.
And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another
family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat
on their hams and the women and children listen. Here is the
node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these
two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each
other. Here is the anlarge of the thing you fear. This is the
zygote ~ John Steinbeck

Tom carried with him a glass full of wine, which clearly hadn't been his first of the evening. He swaggered and swayed as he started to speak, and his eyes, while not quite at half mast, were certainly well on their way.
"In my mind," Tom began, "this is what love is all about."
Sounded good. A little slurred, but it was nice and simple.
"And…and…and in my mind," Tom continued, "in my mind, I know this is all about…this is all love here."
Oh dear. Oh no.
"And all I can say is that in my mind," he went on, "it's just so great to know that true love is possible right now in this time."
Crickets. Tap-tap. Is this thing on?
"I've known this guy for a long, long time," he resumed, pointing to Marlboro Man, who was sitting and listening respectfully. "And…in my mind, all I have to say is that's a long…long time."
Tom was dead serious. This was not a joke toast. This was not a ribbing toast. This was what was "in his mind." He made that clear over and over.
"I just want to finish by saying…that in my mind, love is…love is…everything," he continued.
People around the room began to snicker. At the large table where Marlboro Man and I sat with our friends, people began to crack up.
Everyone except Marlboro Man. Instead of snickering and laughing at his friend--whom he'd known since they were boys and who, he knew, had recently gone through a rough couple of years--Marlboro Man quietly motioned to everyone at our table with a tactfu ~ Ree Drummond

The question is not, "Do you know you are a sinner?" the question is this, "As you have heard me preach the Gospel, has God so worked in your life that the sin you once loved you now hate?" ~ Paul Washer

The question that arises is this: had father hated the people on the ship, just as she now hates the motorcyclist and the man who mocked her because she covered her ears? No, Agnes cannot imagine that Father was capable of hatred. Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary. This is the obscenity of war: the intimacy of mutually shed blood, the lascivious proximity of two soldiers who, eye to eye, bayonet each other. Agnes was sure: it was precisely this kind of intimacy that her father found repugnant. The melee on the ship filled him with such disgust that he preferred to drown. ~ Milan Kundera

We have phosphate on our DNA. Aluminum attaches itself to it and messes up our genetic coding process. While the aluminum is inside a cell, some of its particles attach to adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The ATP is in charge of our cell's energy production. So, in this manner the aluminum can affect our energy level. We have enzymes (proteins) within our cells that depend on attaching themselves to calcium (Ca) or magnesium (Mg) to function properly. Once our enzymes have attached to the Ca and Mg, they can carry on with their functions. Because the aluminum has such a strong positive charge, it's able to break the bond between our enzymes and Ca or Mg. These enzymes are now no longer attached to Ca or Mg. They have become neutralized and are unable to carry out their responsibilities. We need these enzymes for efficient metabolism, but now the aluminum is attached to the enzymes instead. The protein molecules all look a little different because their shape reflects what they are designed to do. Aluminum disturbs their individual tasks and clumps them together so they are now misshapen and no longer functioning. Aluminum also messes with the cell surface, the membrane, the outer layer of the cell. With a dysfunctional cell membrane, everything inside the cell becomes compromised and it is no longer able to properly communicate with the environment surrounding the cell about what needs to be done[96]. ~ James Morcan

All you need to understand right now is this: the world isn't what it used to be ~ Cixin Liu

He lied to you too, Sophie"

"I know," I said softly.

"You're risking that adorable little neck of yours for an asshole."

"I am," I admitted. The fountain was now a blur as the wind played with the carefully structured pattern of the water. "But here's the thing...he's my asshole."

"Is this about ownership?" Marcus asked incredulously, "Or is it about love?"

"It's about love," I whispered. "Marcus I...I love my asshole, okay? I love him so much. ~ Kyra Davis

Is this all we've got now? No priests to say yes son, your suffering meant something, no kings on the battlefield to say yes soldier, your suffering meant something. ~ Sarah Ruhl

On the other hand, maybe what attracts us aren't the stories of falling apart so much as the stories of self-creation. The falling apart stuff is just a byproduct, a hazard of the trade. Maybe what I loved about Camille Claudel was what she created out of what she smashed to bits. How did a bourgeois girl become an artist and a woman? What was the female equivalent of the Great Man? If it didn't exist, why not? Who said it didn't? Who said it couldn't? What were the conditions that made it so hard? Rodin was the image Claudel identified with and against which she defined herself. Scott was this image for Zelda. A woman could not be a great artist and have a traditional marriage - not unless her husband was a Leonard Woolf. One boyfriend I had in college used to joke, 'Only one artist in the family,' meaning not me. I didn't get it then, but I get it now. There was always something self-annihilating in the act of loving, for a girl with creative aspirations - always - but far more then than now. The message, invariably, was that youthful passions lead to middle-age breakdowns, so choose your institution wisely. Marriage or the nuthouse. One or the other. It started to dawn on me that it wasn't that I was attracted to stories about girls who went mad, I was attracted to stories about girls with ambitions who wound up institutionalized. Getting locked up was not the result of adventure, it was the price you paid for adventure, it was your punishment. I had mistaken correlation f ~ Carina Chocano

There's one fundamental law that all of nature obeys that mankind breaks every day. Now, this is a law that's evolved over billions of years, and the law is this: Nothing in nature takes more than it needs. ~ Tom Shadyac

He was just a small church parson when the
war broke out, and he
Looked and dressed and acted like all parsons
that we see.
He wore the cleric's broadcloth and he hooked
his vest behind.
But he had a man's religion and he had a stong
man's mind.
And he heard the call to duty, and he quit his
church and went.
And he bravely tramped right with 'em every-
where the boys were sent.

He put aside his broadcloth and he put the
khaki on;
Said he'd come to be a soldier and was going
to live like one.
Then he'd refereed the prize fights that the boys
pulled off at night,
And if no one else was handy he'd put on the
gloves and fight.
He wasn't there a fortnight ere he saw the sol-
diers' needs,
And he said: "I'm done with preaching; this
is now the time for deeds."

He learned the sound of shrapnel, he could tell
the size of shell
From the shriek it make above him, and he knew
just where it fell.
In the front line trench he laboured, and he knew
the feel of mud,
And he didn't run from danger and he wasn't
scared of blood.
He wrote letters for the wounded, and he cheered
them with his jokes,
And he never made a visit without passing round
the smokes.

Then one day a bullet got him, as he knelt be-
side a lad
Who was "going west" right speedy, and they
both seemed mighty glad,
Edgar A. Guest

Hey guys!" Hey Boom. "Oooh, is this the introduction?" Yes. Now clear off. You're in the spotlight. "Oh come on! I wanna be in the story too." "Clear off Boom! Leave this part to the famous people." "Famous? Are you kidding? There is no one more famous than the mighty Dr. Boom!" Dude, it's been what, four books since we last saw you? Our first readers have probably died from old age by now. "LET ME HAVE THE SPOTLIGHT!" NEVER! ON WITH THE STORY! "NOOOOOOOOOOO! ~ Minecrafters

If it is true that there are books written to escape from the present moment, and its meanness and its sordidity, it is certainly true that readers are familiar with a corresponding mood. To draw the blinds and shut the door, to muffle the noises of the street and shade the glare and flicker of its lights - that is our desire. There is then a charm even in the look of the great volumes that have sunk, like the "Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia", as if by their own weight down to the very bottom of the shelf. We like to feel that the present is not all; that other hands have been before us, smoothing the leather until the corners are rounded and blunt, turning the pages until they are yellow and dog's-eared. We like to summon before us the ghosts of those old readers who have read their Arcadia from this very copy - Richard Porter, reading with the splendours of the Elizabethans in his eyes; Lucy Baxter, reading in the licentious days of the Restoration; Thos. Hake, still reading, though now the eighteenth century has dawned with a distinction that shows itself in the upright elegance of his signature. Each has read differently, with the insight and the blindness of his own generation. Our reading will be equally partial. In 1930 we shall miss a great deal that was obvious to 1655; we shall see some things that the eighteenth century ignored. But let us keep up the long succession of readers; let us in our turn bring the insight and the blindness of our own generation to bear up ~ Virginia Woolf

We have a civil rights photo collection in our house, a big, beautiful coffee table book with images so vivid they cause jaws to drop. When my daughters and their friends pick it up to look at the young Black boys and girls in the middle of a dangerous struggle, I remind them that our eyes are trained to look at the Black faces and their determination as they walk to school. But I tell them also to look at the white faces in the background: the young, jeering faces shouting slurs and throwing things. "All of those folks are now around your granddad's age," I tell my daughters. They're still with us, and those people now walk around, every day, living with what they did, and either trying to rectify it in their brains, through penance, or voting for Donald Trump and passing that hatred down to their children's children. That is this country. Them. We cannot afford to pretend they don't live among us. ~ Michael Bennett

Love casts out fear; but conversely fear casts out love. And not only love. Fear also casts out intelligence, casts out goodness, casts out all thought of beauty and truth. What remains in the bum or studiedly jocular desperation of one who is aware of the obscene Presence in the corner of the room and knows that the door is locked, that there aren't any windows. And now the thing bears down on him. He feels a hand on his sleeve, smells a stinking breath, as the executioner's assistant leans almost amorously toward him. "Your turn next, brother. Kindly step this way." And in an instant his quiet terror is transmuted into a frenzy as violent as it is futile. There is no longer a man among his fellow men, no longer a rational being speaking articulately to other rational beings; there is only a lacerated animal, screaming and struggling in the trap. For in the end fear casts out even a man's humanity. And fear, my good friends, fear is the very basis and foundation of modern life. Fear of the much touted technology which, while it raises out standard of living, increases the probability of our violently dying. Fear of the science which takes away the one hand even more than what it so profusely gives with the other. Fear of the demonstrably fatal institutions for while, in our suicidal loyalty, we are ready to kill and die. Fear of the Great Men whom we have raised, and by popular acclaim, to a power which they use, inevitably, to murder and enslave us. Fear of the war we don't ~ Aldous Huxley

But until then, and right now, the sun is bright, the air is cool, my head is clear, there's a whole day ahead of us, we're almost to the mountains, it's a good day to be alive. It's this thinner air that does it. You always feel like this when you start getting into higher altitudes. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

I'm a Christian now. The things that drove me crazy growing up was how everyone works at fault-finding with different religions. The people I don't understand are atheists. I go surfing and snow boarding and I'm always around nature. I look at everything and think, 'Who couldn't believe there's a God? Is all this a mistake?' It just blows me away, ~ Paul Walker

For now the world keeps turning and I keep breathing, in and out, in and out. I breathe in the life that is all around me, in this garden, in this city, in the fields beyond it, in the seas beyond them and the shores on the other side; life that reaches out towards the unreachable, unknowable space that is beyond all of us and the stars that burn there. ~ Clare Furniss

Scientific Religion is compatible with Science and in fact, they enrich each other. That's because scientific religion is simply the realization of divinity within one's heart. Therefore, Science and Scientific Religion smoothen each other's path of progress. While on the contrary, far from being compatible with Science, Theoretical Religion consistently tries to impede the development of human society. Moreover, being rigidly based on bookish doctrines, it keeps making efforts to drag the human society back to the Stone Age.
I am afraid, if you don't act now, the relentless battle between Theoretical Religions will turn this beautiful planet which we call home, into a barren wasteland. ~ Abhijit Naskar

True translation is not a binary affair between two languages but a triangular affair. The third point of the triangle being what lay behind the words of the original text before it was written. True translation demands a return to the pre-verbal. One reads and rereads the words of the original text in order to penetrate through them to reach, to touch, the vision or experience that prompted them. One then gathers up what one has found there and takes this quivering almost wordless "thing" and places it behind the language it needs to be translated into. And now the principal task is to persuade the host language to take in and welcome the "thing" that is waiting to be articulated. ~ John Berger

The leaves on our little maple, all taken together, weigh thirty-five pounds. Every ounce therein must be pulled from the air or mined from the soil - and quickly - over the course of a few short months. From the atmosphere, a plant gains carbon dioxide, which it will make into sugar and pith. Thirty-five pounds of maple leaves may not taste sweet to you and me, but they actually contain enough sucrose to make three pecan pies, which is the sweetest thing that I can think of right now. The pithy skeleton within the leaves contains enough cellulose to make almost three hundred sheets of paper, which is about the number that I used to print out the manuscript for this book. Our ~ Hope Jahren

The greatest act of judgment that God can pour out on a people is being poured out on America, and it is this: He's taken away the knowledge of God, and He's closed the mouth of those who are supposed to be speaking for Him. So that little boys lead us with their silly little ideas and we like it that way, because we really do want our best life now. ~ Paul Washer

When a young pianist hits a wrong note, we don't say he is not worthy to keep practicing. We don't expect him to be flawless. We just expect him to keep trying. Perfection may be his ultimate goal, but for now we can be content with progress in the right direction. Why is this perspective so easy to see in the context of learning piano but so hard to see in the context of learning heaven? ~ Brad Wilcox

I thought, there is nowhere else in the universe I would rather be at this moment ... There is nowhere else I could imagine wanting to be besides here in this car, with this girl, on this road, listening to this song. If she breaks my heart, no matter what hell she puts me through, I can say it was worth it, just because of right now. Out the window is a blur and all I can really hear is this girl's hair flapping in the wind, and maybe if we drive fast enough the universe will lose track of us and forget to stick us somewhere else. ~ Rob Sheffield

I thought I should ask of thee---but I dared not---the rose wreath thou hadst on thy neck. Thus I waited for the morning, when thou didst depart, to find a few fragments on the bed. And like a beggar I searched in the dawn only for a stray petal or two.

Ah me, what is it I find? What token left of thy love? It is no flower, no spices, no vase of perfumed water. It is thy mighty sword, flashing as a flame, heavy as a bolt of thunder. The young light of morning comes through the window and spread itself upon thy bed. The morning bird twitters and asks, `Woman, what hast thou got?' No, it is no flower, nor spices, nor vase of perfumed water---it is thy dreadful sword.

I sit and muse in wonder, what gift is this of thine. I can find no place to hide it. I am ashamed to wear it, frail as I am, and it hurts me when press it to my bosom. Yet shall I bear in my heart this honour of the burden of pain, this gift of thine.

From now there shall be no fear left for me in this world, and thou shalt be victorious in all my strife. Thou hast left death for my companion and I shall crown him with my life. Thy sword is with me to cut asunder my bonds, and there shall be no fear left for me in the world.

From now I leave off all petty decorations. Lord of my heart, no more shall there be for me waiting and weeping in corners, no more coyness and sweetness of demeanour. Thou hast given me thy sword for adornment. No more doll's decorations for me! ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Looking back now, what I experienced in the wake of the Goldman piece was a lesson in the subtle truth about class politics in this country. Which is this: you can pick on the rich in an ironic, Arrested Development sort of way, you can muss Donald Trump's hair, you can even talk abstractly about class economics using clinical terms like "income disparity." But in our media you're not allowed to just kick the rich in the balls and use class-warfare language. The taboo isn't so much the subject matter, the taboo is the tone. ~ Matt Taibbi

Now, the world is more than it seems to be. You know this, of course, because you read stories. You understand that there is the surface and then there are all the things that glimmer and shift underneath it. And you know that not everyone believes in those things, that there are people - a great many people - who believe the world cannot be any more than what they can see with their eyes. But we know better. ~ Anne Ursu

One gains courage from the one in front of her and moves forward a few steps, passing her by just a little. Now the one farthest back gains courage from the one in front and moves forward until she, in turn, is the leader. And so in this way, taking courage from one another, they advance, as a group, towards the strange thing in front of them. ~ Lydia Davis

I've lived on the equator all my life and we never had to change clocks. Now they're telling me time goes forward an hour after midnight? What is this, Narnia? ~ Joyce Rachelle

Is this the bit where my whole life passes in front of my eyes?" He said.
NO, THAT WAS THE BIT JUST NOW.
"Which bit?"
THE BIT, said Death, BETWEEN YOU BEING BORN AND YOU DYING. NO THIS ... MR. TULIP, THIS IS YOUR WHOLE LIFE AS IT PASSED BEFORE OTHER PEOPLE'S EYES ... ~ Terry Pratchett

Why are you crying?'
'How can I possibly look good to you? I'm pregnant! I'm really, really pregnant!'
'Of course you are. Why are you crying?'
'Because I'm going to Hawai'i!'
'Yes, you're going to Hawai'i. Come on now, pull yourself together.'
I kept crying.
Darren looked frantic. He stepped back and fumbled for his roguish smirk. 'So, is this a hormone thing?'
'No, it's not a hormone thing! I'm old, Darren! I'm old and pregnant, and I'm going to Hawai'i. Can you understand how that makes me feel?'
He could not.
How could I possibly expect my husband to understand all the bizarre things that happen to a woman in spirit and flesh when a friendly alien takes over her body? He still couldn't figure out why Laurie and I wanted to fly all the way to Hawai'i just to spend a week lounging around the pool, comparing underarm flab, when we could stay home and have the same conversation over the phone for a lot less money. ~ Robin Jones Gunn

While I am opposed to all orthodox creeds, I have a creed myself; and my creed is this. Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. This creed is somewhat short, but it is long enough for this life, strong enough for this world. If there is another world, when we get there we can make another creed. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

How is this happening? It'd been so long, and for years he'd deliberately chosen not to remember. But now, a flood of details storming back into his mind in an incredibly intimate wave. And her, looking even more beautiful than he had been able to remember. The love of his life, though he hadn't known it back in this moment, twenty-one long years ago. If he'd had any idea, he was convinced he wouldn't have given up so goddamn easily. ~ Keith C. Meyer