Kitajima Mai Quotes

Classification, broadly defined, is the process of organizing knowledge into some systematic order. It has been considered the most fundamental activity of the human mind. ~ Lois Mai Chan

An aria in an opera - Handel's 'Ombra mai fu,' for example - gets along with an incredibly small number of words and ideas and a large amount of variation and repetition. That's the beauty of it. It's not taxing to the listener's intelligence because if you haven't heard it the first time round, it'll come around again. ~ James Fenton

Their conflicting sounds oppose one another, outdo one another, and fight to be better than one another. The crescendo of the heart being ripped to shreds, loves ... . ~ Mai Nishikata

As long as I have my voice, I am still alive. ~ Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

Everybody thinks that once you reach the top, you can lie back on a divan with a goddamn mai tai. No. Wrong. Success is not a mountain climb. Success is a treadmill. ~ Susan Jane Gilman

Charlie Ledley and Jamie Mai, whose entire investment strategy was based on FUD: they placed bets that had limited downside, but would pay off handsomely if dramatic but unexpected changes occurred in the market. ~ Susan Cain

Also, although the great majority of the letters I've received from Hmong readers have been positive, most of the negative ones have criticized me for telling a story that was not mine to tell. I am no lover of identity politics; I believe that anyone should be allowed to write about anyone. Still, I would have harbored the same proprietary resentment had I been they. It was exactly how I felt thirty years ago, when women's voices were harder to hear because men were drowning them out. Now that young Hmong writers are starting to publish - including Mai Neng Moua, who edited a landmark literary anthology called Bamboo Among the Oaks, and Kao Kalia Yang, who wrote a fierce, sad memoir called The Latehomecomer - I am happy to shut up and listen. I hope The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is settling into its proper place not as the book about the Hmong but as a book about communication and miscommunication across cultures. ~ Anne Fadiman

Words don't kill; humans do. ~ Mai Ghoussoub

Meredith was good, so incredibly good, and Charles had fallen, without fireworks, for that goodness. But goodness did not transfer. Being with someone good does not make you good. This it would take years for Charles to comprehend. ~ Mai Al-Nakib

First there was just my home. Now I have to deal with the whole world. ~ Mukhtar Ma'i

All women should feel as Sex Subjects if they want and choose so without fear of repressions, condemnations and put down and without the need to pay them for that.

Being freely a sexy and seductive woman is allowed only for few privileged professions: actresses, dancers, models, singers, prostitutes. They all do it for work. You can pay for them being sexy.

If a sexy woman is openly adored by a man, the woman remains as a woman, she is not turning into a table, a cup or a bill of money. She is still the Subject who knows her power. ~ Mai Loog

Can I drink more than one mai tai without taking on the aroma of an aroused butterly? ~ Tom Robbins

Sam was about to travel to Asia with her boyfriend and she was fretting about what her backers would think if she released some of her new songs while she was 'on vacation'. She was worried that posting pictures of herself sipping a Mai Tai was going to make her look like an asshole.

What does it matter? I asked her, where you are whether you're drinking a coffee, a Mai Tai or a bottle of water? I mean, aren't they paying for your songs so that you can... live? Doesn't living include wandering and collecting emotions and drinking a Mai Tai, not just sitting in a room writing songs without ever leaving the house?

I told Sam about another songwriter friend of mine, Kim Boekbinder, who runs her own direct support website through which her fans pay her monthly at levels from $5 to $1,000. She also has a running online wishlist of musical gear and costumes kindof like a wedding registry, to which her fans can contribute money anytime they want.

Kim had told me a few days before that she doesn't mind charging her backers during what she calls her 'staring at the wall time'. She thinks this is essential before she can write a new batch of songs. And her fans don't complain, they trust her process.

These are new forms of patronage, there are no rules and it's messy, the artists and the patrons they are making the rules as they go along, but whether these artists are using crowdfunding (which is basically, front me some money so I can ma ~ Amanda Palmer

In science, time is the real obstacle. Given unlimited time, everyone can learn all the secrets of the universe. ~ Mai Jia

Lost into a sea of pages is an escape so blissful. ~ Mary Imbruglia (MAI)

I flew north to Chiang Mai, near the Burmese border, and went for a walk round town and within thirty seconds a young man appeared in front of me. 'You wanna fuck my sister?' he asked. I said no. 'You wanna fuck me?' I said no, but ~ Richard Coles

Guarda il cielo. Non troverai mai un arcobaleno se stai guardando per terra.
Look up to the sky. You'll never find rainbows if you're looking down. ~ Charlie Chaplin

Let the sheep bleat. Their own noises soothe them. ~ Leah Raeder

Mai wasn't a bad driver, exactly. Her foot just had a high lead content. ~ Hailey Edwards

Decebel looked over at Fane. "A face tu fiecare a lua ce ei say?(Do you ever get what they say?)"
Fane smiled at his Beta. "Nu mai incerce sa, (No longer try)."
"Good call." Decebel nodded.
Jen looked over at Decebel, her eyes narrowing. "No talking in foreign tongue when around the Americans."
Decebel leaned towards her, the gleam in his eyes causing Jen to tremble. "But Jennifer, I thought you spoke Romanian." He looked around at Sally and Jacque. "Weren't you two under the impression that she spoke Romanian?"
Jacque and Sally nodded despite the daggers Jen was staring their way.
"That was thoroughly impressed upon us, wouldn't you say, Sally?" Jacque turned to look at her.
"Wait. Uh yeah, I distinctly remember a bar...vodka...and I'm almost positive Jen speaking in Romanian to the hot bartender."
Sally was grinning from ear to ear as Jen's face grew red.
"I hope you two aren't attached to your undergarments because I just got the sudden urge to have a bonfire," Jen growled out.
"Note to self: hide underwear."
"Or you could just solve that problem by not wearing any." Jacque heard Fane's voice through their bond. Her jaw dropped open and her face turned bright red as she turned to look at her mate.
Jen looked at Sally. "Looks like Fane had a suggestion about the princess' undergarments. If I had my guess, I'd say he told her I couldn't burn them if she didn't own any."
If Jacque could've turned any redder she ~ Quinn Loftis

We were thirteen when they piled us into a ship, out in the sea breeze for a day, at a time in our lives when a day was really worth something. ~ Mai Al-Nakib

I am fighting a fight against oppression where the poor and women are being violated ~ Mukhtar Ma'i

Mai tu sarie amn, tu hae'si, tu kii'rna dae.

There is nothing as painful, or as simple, as doing what is right. ~ Amie Kaufman

L.A.'s a pretty, warm, easy, breezy place. You can sunbathe, get a Mai Tai, and wake up five months later. And it's still sunny. And they're still serving Mai Tais. ~ Chris Pine

Ah, I do so love this charmingly rustic, elvin kingdom!-Baozhai ~ Mar Mai

It was a fruit we had never seen before, larger than an apple, about the size of a grapefruit. It was round and yellow like the leaves of a neglected book. ~ Mai Al-Nakib

It is a precise thing, a scripted act as deliberate as Jo No Mai, each move choreographed, a worship of scarcity. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

Qui donc t'a donne la mission s'annoncer au peuple que la divinite n'existe pas? Quel avantage trouves-tu a persuader a l'homme qu'une force aveugle preside a ses destinees et frappe au hasard le crime et la vertu? (Who then invested you with the mission to announce to the people that there is no God? What advantage find you in persuading man that nothing but blind force presides over his destinies, and strikes haphazard both crime and virtue?) - ROBESPIERRE, "DISCOURS," MAI 7, 1794. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton

[In China at that time:] The penalty for adultery is death by strangulation. Mai-da's mother has added the following note to this section; 'Adultery is a feminine vice. Copulation on the man's part is not his wife's concern, unless he sires a child. Then she must accept the child as one of his homestead. ~ Nora Waln

Susannah realized, with dawning bitterness, that she could now give the perfect definition of a ka-mai: one who has been given hope but no choices. Like giving a motorcycle to a blindman, she thought. Richard ~ Stephen King

Being a mother is never easy... It's about failing, learning, and then failing again. ~ Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

In quiet crevices, life is born over and over again, without witness, without recognition. It happens, feverishly or serenely, fast or slow, and the guardians or propriety remain laughably ignorant. ~ Mai Al-Nakib

Now that young girls like my twelve-year-old friend Mai are being exposed to modern Western women like me through crowds of tourists, they're experiencing those first critical moments of cultural hesitation. I call this the "Wait-a-Minute Moment" - that pivotal instant when girls from traditional cultures start pondering what's in it for them, exactly, to be getting married at the age of thirteen and starting to have babies not long after. They start wondering if they might prefer to make different choices for themselves, or any choices, for that matter. Once girls from closed societies start thinking such thoughts, all hell breaks loose. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Shadows of villages that bordered the horizon looked like women whose backs were bent with the burdens of life. My mother had had to bear hers, and it was now my turn. ~ Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

Zuko: For so long I thought that if my dad accepted me, I'd be happy. I'm back home now, my dad talks to me. Ha! He even thinks I'm a hero. Everything should be perfect, right? I should be happy now, but I'm not. I'm angrier than ever and I don't know why!
Azula: There's a simple question you need to answer, then. Who are you angry at?
Zuko: No one. I'm just angry.
Mai: Yeah, who are you angry at, Zuko?
Zuko: Everyone. I don't know.
Azula: Is it Dad?
Zuko: No, no.
Ty Lee: Your uncle?
Azula: Me?
Zuko: No, no, n-no, no!
Mai: Then who? Who are you angry at?
Azula: Answer the question, Zuko.
Ty Lee: Talk to us.
Mai: Come on, answer the question.
Azula: Come on, answer it.
Zuko: I'm angry at myself! ~ Katie Mattila

Look for a wave shaped like an A.

An A.

Hmm.

I saw Zs and H's and Vs. I saw the Hindi alphabet and the Thai alphabet. I saw Arabic script. I saw no As.

Finally I gave up, and chose the next wave that would have me, which turned out to be a poor move.

There is a moment, shortly after one accepts the imminence of one's demise, when it occurs that you could be elsewhere: that if you simply left the house a little later, or lingered over a Mai Tai, you would not be here now confronting your mortality. This moment occurred just as I encountered a very large (from my perspective), rare and surprising wave. A wave that was pitching and howling, and it really had no business being where it was - underneath me.

The demon wave picked me up, and after that I have only a a vague recollection of spinning limbs, a weaponized surf board, and chaotic white water, churning together over a reef.

I decided surfing was not for me. I generally no longer engage in adrenaline rush activities that carry with them a strong likely hood of life-altering injury. (p. 138)
~ J. Maarten Troost

I picked up an old microscope at a flea market in Verona. In the long evenings, in my imitation of life science, I set up in the courtyard and examined local specimens. Pointless pleasure, stripped of ends. The ancient contadino from across the road, long since convinced that we were mad, could not resist coming over for a look.
I showed him where to put his eye. I watched him, thinking, this is how we attach to existence. We look through awareness's tube and see the swarm at the end of the scope, taking what we come upon there for the full field of sight itself.
The old man lifted his eye from the microscope lens, crying.
Signore, ho ottantotto anni e non ho mai Saputo prima che cosa ci fosse in una goccia d'acqua. I'm eighty-eight years old and I never knew what was in a droplet of water. ~ Richard Powers

Mai grins at Mycroft. 'You know that's slightly ridiculous, don't you?'
He smiled. 'Why?'
'Because. . . because you're teenagers.' Mai's expression says it should be obvious. 'Mycroft, this isn't like figuring out who spray-painted some guy's car. This is murder.'
'The principles are the same' he insists.
'But you're both minors. And you have no access to police information, no experience, no forensics lab, no authority. . . '
'Mai, are you trying to bring me down or something?'
Gus, who usually only gets emotive about things like soccer, suddenly leans forward. 'I think you should do it.' He glances at me and Mycroft in turn. 'This homeless guy, it's not like his death is going to be a major priority, is it? The police won't bend over backwards to bring his killer to justice or anything. He was a derelict with no family. So you two are the only ones who even care. ~ Ellie Marney