Jerold Optical Downtown Quotes

Each day as I travel through downtown Tucson, I am amazed at how quickly the most ancient of human behaviors have changed. For as long as there have been Homo sapiens - roughly 200,000 years - people have filled their lives principally with two activities: talking directly with other people, and doing physical things. ~ Andrew Weil

Look, girls know when they're cute," he said. "You don't have to tell them. All they need to do is look in the mirror. I have one friend out in New York, an attorney. She moved out there after the school year to take the bar. She doesn't have a job. I was like, 'How are you going to get a job there in this market?' And she's like, 'I'll wink and I'll smile.' She's a pretty girl. Whether that works despite her poor grades is yet to be seen. ~ Daniel Amory

Limitations are nothing more than optical illusions, created by our own self-doubt. ~ Robert M. Hensel

The theologian Paul Tillich wrote that "loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude." Because the borderline finds solitude so difficult to tolerate, she is trapped in a relentless metaphysical loneliness from which the the only relief comes from of the physical presence of others. So she will often rush to singles bars or with crowded haunts, often with disappointing--or even violent--results. ~ Jerold J. Kreisman

I've officially turned into a loser," she whispered cynically. "I'm looking forward to going home and having cereal for dinner and walking Mitchell and studying a little and then going to sleep. I've had my 'going out and having fun' quota for the year, I guess, and it's June. ~ Daniel Amory

At the end of the 1960s, I was part of the downtown theatrical movement in New York that was making work in alleyways, garages, gyms, churches, non-traditional spaces. The idea was to get away from the illusion of the conventional theatre. But then I thought, what's wrong with illusion? ~ Robert Wilson

McGahern still lives on and works a farm in Leitrim, and friends say that even though he has held high profile academic posts round the world as a visiting professor he remains essentially a countryman.

Last term he taught in an upstate New York college, but seeing him in the soulless urban grid of downtown Syracuse wearing an old tweed flat cap and long black overcoat, he could have been in an Irish agricultural town on market day as he casually engaged strangers on the street to ask for advice on finding a decent restaurant. Friends say he has extraordinary confidence in who he is and where he's from - he behaves pretty much the same way wherever is and whoever he is with. ~ John McGahern

Peace and beauty? You think Indians are so worried about peace and beauty? ... If Wovoka came back to life, he'd be so pissed off. If the real Pocahontas came back, you think she'd be happy about being a cartoon? If Crazy Horse, or Geronimo, or Sitting Bull came back, they'd see what you white people have done to Indians, and they'd start a war. They'd see the homeless Indians staggering around downtown. They'd see fetal-alcohol-syndrome babies. They'd see the sorry-ass reservations. They'd learn about Indian suicides and infant mortality rates. They'd listen to some dumb-ass Disney song and feel like hurting somebody. They'd read books by assholes like Wilson, and they would start killing themselves some white people, and then kill some asshole Indians too.

Dr. Mather, if the Ghost Dance worked, there would be no exceptions. All you white people would disappear. All of you. If those dead Indians came back to life ,they wouldn't crawl into a sweathouse with you. They wouldn't smoke the pipe with you. They wouldn't go to the movies and munch popcorn with you. They'd kill you. They'd gut you and eat your heart. ~ Sherman Alexie

This is critical to the region. Every other major city has public transportation going downtown. We have a world-class airport now, and this could be an important additional piece to the airport development. This is a significant investment and one that should be seen as a significant long-term commitment to making this a reality. ~ Debbie Stabenow

If I learned anything Downtown, it's this: the only real difference between an enemy and a friend is the day of the week. ~ Richard Kadrey

Maybe there is a way to climb above everything, some special ladder or insight, some optical vantage point that allows a clear, unobstructed view of things. ~ Emily Fridlund

At this moment, in this place, the shifting action potential in my neurons cascade into certain arrangements, patterns, thoughts; they flow down my spine, branch into my arms, my fingers, until muscles twitch and thought is translated into motion; mechanical levers are pressed; electrons are rearranged; marks are made on paper.

At another time, in another place, light strikes the marks, reflects into a pair of high-precision optical instruments sculpted by nature after billions of years of random mutations; upside-down images are formed against two screens made up of millions of light-sensitive cells, which translate light into electrical pulses that go up the optic nerves, cross the chiasm, down the optic tracts, and into the visual cortex, where the pulses are reassembled into letters, punctuation marks, words, sentences, vehicles, tenors, thoughts.

The entire system seems fragile, preposterous, science fictional. ~ Ken Liu

This morning when I looked out the roof window
before dawn and a few stars were still caught
in the fragile weft of ebony night
I was overwhelmed. I sang the song Louis taught me:
a song to call the deer in Creek, when hunting,
and I am certainly hunting something as magic as deer
in this city far from the hammock of my mother's belly.
It works, of course, and deer came into this room
and wondered at finding themselves
in a house near downtown Denver.
Now the deer and I are trying to figure out a song
to get them back, to get all of us back,
because if it works I'm going with them.
And it's too early to call Louis
and nearly too late to go home.
[from poem, "Song for the Deer and Myself to Return On"] ~ Joy Harjo

Cheesy waffles, I was thinking, taste like love without the fear of love's dissolution, and as we came to the 90-degree curve Sunrise Avenue takes before heading straight downtown, I could almost taste them. ~ John Green

She likes that and I like it too because to/make a thing true all you've/got to do is believe ~ Charles Bukowski

We are part of the whole which we call the universe, but it is an optical delusion of our mind that we think we are separate. This separateness is like a prison for us. Our job is to widen the circle of our compassion so we feel connected with all people and situations. ~ Albert Einstein

I became interested in film as a viewer when I was a teenager. I would spend entire afternoons in an arthouse theater in downtown Santiago. I didn't really expect to be a filmmaker back then. But it was clearly an interest. ~ Omar Zuniga

For me, growing up in Harlem and then migrating down to SoHo and the Lower East Side and chillin' down there and making that my stomping ground ... That was a big thing, because I'm from Harlem, and downtown is more artsy and also more open-minded. So I got the best of both worlds. ~ ASAP Rocky

If I can say one thing for my pictures, it is a certain craftsmanship. A thought which has gone into every angle. There is nothing there without an optical reason. ~ Douglas Sirk

If someone's got a fear of heights, they'd probably say, well, hanging off a helicopter at 3,000 feet above downtown L.A. would be the scariest. For me, that's a day's work, something I was very happy to do. ~ Jason Statham

Downtown is before them, as high and bright as the aurora borealis rising from the black water of the Bering Sea. ~ Neal Stephenson

Something new is blowing. On a downtown Kingston wall: IMF - Is Manley Fault. General election called for October 30, 1980. Somebody is driving you through Bavaria, near the Austrian border. A hospital sprouting out of the forest like magic. Hills in the background tipped with snow like cake icing. You meet the tall and frosty Bavarian, the man who helps the hopeless. He smiles but his eyes are set too far back and they vanish in the shadow of his brow. Cancer is a red alert that the whole body is in danger, he says. Thank God the food he forbids, Rastafari had forbidden long time. A sunrise is a promise. Something new is blowing. November 1980. A new party wins the general election and the man who killed me steps up to the podium with his brothers to take over the country. He has been waiting for so long he leaps up the stairs and trips. ~ Marlon James

There was a sudden sunburst in my head. And then black night. That blackness was sublime. I felt distributed through space and time: One foot upon a mountaintop, one hand 150 Under the pebbles of a panting strand, One ear in Italy, one eye in Spain, In caves, my blood, and in the stars, my brain. There were dull throbs in my Triassic; green Optical spots in Upper Pleistocene, An icy shiver down my Age of Stone, And all tomorrows in my funnybone. During ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Adam lived in an apartment located above the office of St. Agnes Catholic Church, a fortuitous combination that focused most of the objects of Ronan's worship into one downtown block. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

The whole point of bike-sharing is to give New Yorkers another way to commute. A lot of folks in Bay Ridge work in downtown Brooklyn or other parts of the borough. For them, it would make more sense to hop on a Citi Bike than to wait for a train or a bus. ~ Sal Albanese

In the end nobody knows how it's done - how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can. ~ David Hockney

The newspaper is a marvelous medium. It is extraordinarily convenient and cheap. Let's see. This one cost 75 cents. Now that's a little high. I bought it when I was downtown this morning. ~ Harrison Salisbury

Her stomach twisted into a vicious knot every time she remembered the phone call from the police last month, after her sweet-natured employee, Molly, had been attacked by homeless guys in downtown Denver. Poor Molly had defined introverted even before the incident; the attack had pushed her further into her shell. So when Molly asked Amery to accompany her to a women's self-defense class, Amery had agreed. ~ Lorelei James

Quantum wall creates the time, temperature and space - kind of optical delusion of quantum consciousness. ~ Amit Ray

Its true that we learn a lot from science about how we function but there's a danger in thinking knowledge of how we function is the full account of what we are. If you're a chemist who is really interested in the optical properties of certain pigments you could analyse the Mona Lisa and describe it completely but you would never have mentioned the face, which is the meaning of this thing. In that way a neuroscientist can put together an enormously impressively picture of the brain but he would not have described what goes on when we react to another person. ~ Roger Scruton

Well you wave your hand and they scatter like crows
They have nothing that will ever capture your heart
They're just thorns without the rose
Be careful of them in the dark
Oh, if I was the one you chose to be your only one
Oh baby can't you hear me now, can't you hear me now
Will I see you tonight on a downtown train
Every night it's just the same, you leave me lonely now ~ Tom Waits

The German astronomer Johannes Kepler coined the term "camera obscura" in the early seventeenth century, but by then the phenomenon had been known for millennia; in fact, it is perhaps the oldest known optical illusion. Some form of camera obscura was most likely behind a popular illusion performed in ancient Greece and Rome, in which spectral images were cast upon the smoke of burning incense by performers using concave metal mirrors - hence the expression "smoke and mirrors. ~ Jennifer Ouellette

Clerks in downtown hotels were said to be asking guests whether they wished the room for sleeping or jumping. Two men jumped hand-in-hand from a high window in the Ritz. They had a joint account. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

He may attempt suicide, often not with the intent to die but to feel something, to confirm he is alive. ~ Jerold J. Kreisman

Life is a wheel. The more you give, the more you get back. ~ Jerold Panas

Long periods of peace and quiet favor certain optical illusions. Among them is the assumption that the invulnerability of the home is founded upon the constitution and safeguarded by it. In reality, it rests upon the father of the family who, accompanied by his sons, appears with the ax on the threshold of his dwelling. ~ Ernst Junger

Art first of all is optical. That's where the material of our art is: in what our eyes think. ~ Paul Cezanne

For me, hipsterism is for one to appropriate the codes of a social class or another milieu that wasn't theirs originally, in order to define their personality through something different and unique. Which is why a lot of hipsters live downtown, and they're dressed as farmers. Then you have the Oscar Wilde hipster: the dandy. ~ Xavier Dolan

He could swear he did not look back, could not - by any optical chance, or in any prism - have seen her physically as he walked away; and yet, with dreadful distinction, he retained forever a composite picture of her standing where he left her. The picture - which penetrated him, through an eye in the back of his head, through his vitreous spinal canal, and could never be lived down, never - consisted of a selection and blend of such random images and expressions of hers that had affected him with a pang of intolerable remorse at various moments in the past. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The first thing we have to do," I told Luke the next day, "is find a nice place we can rent or sublet. Should we focus on the downtown area? Montrose? Or would you be open to finding something close by in Sugar Land? We could always go to Austin, but we'd have to take care to avoid you-know-who. And it's a lot more expensive to rent in Austin."
Luke looked contemplative, sucking slowly on the bottle as if he were mulling the possibilities.
"Are you thinking it over?" I asked him. "Or are you working on another dirty diaper?"
-Ella & Luke ~ Lisa Kleypas

Of course, if we were lucky, we wouldn't be getting chased by an army of zombies through the quarantine area that used to be downtown Santa Cruz. We'd be somewhere safer, like Bikini Atoll just before the bomb testing kicked off. ~ Mira Grant

Seeing the road show of 'A Chorus Line' in 1977 at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Memphis was a life-changing event for me: there were gay people, on the stage, and they all lived in New York. ~ Ira Sachs

It never occurred to me before, but there could have easily been a world with no buses, no horns honking, no red lights, no shopping carts, no gum stick to the bottom of benches downtown. For that matter I guess there also could have been no sun, no trees, and no ocean. None of those things had to exist, I guess. It makes me feel lucky that they do. ~ Jodi Lynn Anderson

When we come into this life, we don't really own anything. And we own nothing when we leave. It is only a lease we have during our lifetime, and it is up to us to make the most of it. ~ Jerold Panas

In LA, you can't do anything unless you drive. Now I can't do anything unless I drink. And the drink-drive combination, it really isn't possible out there. If you so much as loosen your seatbelt or drop your ash or pick your nose, then it's an Alcatraz autopsy with the questions asked later. Any indiscipline, you feel, any variation, and there's a bullhorn, a set of scope sights, and a coptered pig drawing a bead on your rug.
So what can a poor boy do? You come out of the hotel, the Vraimont. Over boiling Watts the downtown skyline carries a smear of God's green snot. You walk left, you walk right, you are a bank rat on a busy river. This restaurant serves no drink, this one serves no meat, this one serves no heterosexuals. You can get your chimp shampooed, you can get your dick tattooed, twenty-four hour, but can you get lunch? And should you see a sign on the far side of the street flashing BEEF-BOOZE – NO STRINGS, then you can forget it. The only way to get across the road is to be born there. All the ped-xing signs say DON'T WALK, all of them, all the time. That is the message, the content of Los Angeles: don't walk. Stay inside. Don't walk. Drive. Don't walk. Run! ~ Martin Amis

That evening I rode downtown on an unaccountably empty bus, sitting in the last row. At the front I saw a thin cloud of smoke rising around the driver's head. 'Hey, bus driver,' I said. 'Can I smoke?' 'May I,' said the bus driver. 'I love you,' I said. ~ Michael Chabon

When I'm in New York I love to stay at the Mercer Hotel, and the C. Wonder store was so part of my New York experience from staying downtown. What I love the most about the brand is the enthusiasm that the customer has for it. ~ Brad Goreski

By the mid 1970s, the great downtown bookstores had begun to disappear as their customers migrated from city to suburb where population density was too thin to support major backlist retailers. ~ Jason Epstein