Matta El Meskeen Quotes

In Mexico City they somehow wandered into an exhibition of paintings by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios Varo: in the central painting of a triptych, titled "Bordando el Manto Terrestre," were a number of frail girls with heart-shaped faces, huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in the tapestry, and the tapestry was the world. Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried. No one had noticed; she wore dark green bubble shades. For a moment she'd wondered if the seal around her sockets were tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the entire lens space and never dry. She could carry the sadness of the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet unfound varied in important ways from cry to cry. She had looked down at her feet and known, then, because of a painting, that what she stood on had only been woven together a couple thousand miles away in her own tower, was only by accident known as Mexico, and so Pierce had take her away from nothing, there'd been no escape. What did she so desire escape from? Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and arch ~ Thomas Pynchon

What I am telling you is that Matta had a way of making you feel comfortable and that's probably why he had nine wives because he made them feel comfortable and then uncomfortable later. ~ Robert Barnes

Our ascent, of course, does not end the possibility for new accomplishments on El Capitan. The day will probably come when this climb will be done in five days, perhaps less; and a younger generation will make a new route on the west face. ~ Royal Robbins

Contrary to the rumors you have heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-El, to save the planet Earth. ~ Barack Obama

The heart can be a mysterious organ, the heart and its movements. Dark, the Spanish call it. The dark heart, el oscuro cotazón. Are you sure you are not just a little dark-hearted, Paul, despite your many good intentions? ~ J.M. Coetzee

But the visible deludes us when, in fact, the invisible controls the visible itself. ~ Noha Alaa El-Din

When we forget where we've been, we can't marvel at where we're going! HS/el ~ Evinda Lepins

I'm sorry, Sarat."
"Why'd you do it?" she asked me.
"I just wanted to know."
"Don't ever apologize for that," she said. "That's all there is to life, is wanting to know. ~ Omar El Akkad

Any failure we could suffer throughout our lives, will turn into little successes if we take the right path, keep walking. ~ Miguel El Portugues

Katrina hated to see the widows in black. They struck her as relics of their own making, frozen in permanent deference to reckless or foolish or simply unfortunate men who were nonetheless dead and sealed away in the earth forever.

Husbands never wore black. Husbands were never confined to that kind of passive declaration, were never compelled to sulk across the world for the remainder of their lives, walking signposts of mourning. Husbands were permitted rage, permitted wrath, permitted to avenge their loss by marching out and inflecting on others the very same carnage once inflicted on them. It seemed to Karina further proof that wartime was the only time the world became as simple and carnivorously liberating as it must exist at all times in men's minds. Some of the women she met never used their own names again - she knew them only as Widow This or Widow That - but she'd never met a Widower Anything. ~ Omar El Akkad

It became the country's official language in the 13th century under the reign of Alfonso X el Sabio (the wise one) as he tried to unify a country that was housing a number of languages, including arabic, hebrew and latin. ~ Pilar Orti

Falling in love is when your emotional, physical and spiritual well-being is wrapped up in another person and identity of self is lost. EL ~ Evinda Lepins

I'm a pretty intense person. And I don't know if intense is fun. I put myself through the wringer. That's just how I work. ~ El-P

One of the main privileges of being a writer is that you go around and about. Then, you translate those scenes you capture in mind into words powered by your spicy imagination. Translators translate what's already been translated. ~ Noha Alaa El-Din

Falling in lover leads us to conditional love! EL ~ Evinda Lepins

I'm not like other writers. I'm not hung up on using my own songs. In fact, my sister Bunny always tells me I sing other people's songs better than my own. She says I loosen up and give the songs a different feel. ~ El DeBarge

If we really believe that He who begun the work will be faithful to complete it, why do we put a time limit on Him? EL ~ Evinda Lepins

Today's reports confirm that, unfortunately, post-crisis America is still not back to its good economic self. ~ Mohamed El-Erian

Weezer's 'El Scorcho.' I'm in a '90s cover band called 'Straight 2 Video' with members of the crew from 'The Vampire Diaries,' and we played this song at our wrap party. I grin from ear to ear every time I scream this song in my car. ~ Candice Accola

She held the woman's hand but the hand was now simply weight. She listened as the men returned north toward the gate from which they'd first entered. They passed close to her tent. It seemed an endless procession, thousands strong. She imagined them not as men, not even as human, but as a dark, daylong season: a primal winter. ~ Omar El Akkad

Fawcett agreed that El Dorado, with its plethora of gold, was an "exaggerated romance," but he was not ready to dismiss the chronicles altogether ~ David Grann

To the Nightingale


On what secret night in England

Or by the incalculable constant Rhine,

Lost among all the nights of my nights,

Carried to my unknowing ear

Your voice, burdened with mythology,

Nightingale of Virgil, of the Persians?

Perhaps I never heard you, yet my life

I bound to your life, inseparably.

A wandering spirit is your symbol

In a book of enigmas. El Marino

Named you the siren of the woods

And you sing through Juliet's night

And in the intricate Latin pages

And from the pine-trees of that other,

Nightingale of Germany and Judea,

Heine, mocking, burning, mourning.

Keats heard you for all, everywhere.

There's not one of the bright names

The people of the earth have given you

That does not yearn to match your music,

Nightingale of shadows. The Muslim

Dreamed you drunk with ecstasy

His breast trans-pierced by the thorn

Of the sung rose that you redden

With your last blood. Assiduously

I plot these lines in twilight emptiness,

Nightingale of the shores and seas,

Who in exaltation, memory and fable

Burn with love and die melodiously. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

The V-2's directional system was notoriously erratic. In May 1947, a V-2 launched from White Sands Proving Ground headed south instead of north, missing downtown Juarez, Mexico, by 3 miles. The Mexican government's response to the American bombing was admirably laid back. General Enrique Diaz Gonzales and Consul General Raul Michel met with United States officials, who issued apologies and an invitation to come to "the next rocket shoot" at White Sands. The Mexican citizenry was similarly nonchalant. "Bomb Blast Fails to Halt Spring Fiesta," said the El Paso Times headline, noting that "many thought the explosion was a cannon fired for the opening of the fiesta. ~ Mary Roach

I'm a fan of some of the hyphy stuff. Hyphy has been going on a lot longer than the press has been recognizing it. ~ El-P

Being a star is depressing.
It twinkles but is distant and cold.

I'd rather be the moon,
Shine in your glory and go around you forever! ~ Avinash Matta

This is a collection of dexterous, loving, beautifully optimistic work that left me breathless and delighted ... Hannu Rajaniemi's magnificent science fiction - as is paradoxically appropriate - is pure magic. ~ Amal El-Mohtar

Juarez had become a failed city. The mayor of Juarez lived in El Paso. Not only did he not live in his own city, he didn't live in his own country. You had all these kids out of school who didn't want to work because they saw their mothers toiling in jobs for hardly any cash. ~ Beto O'Rourke

You are to my soul what God is to a mother praying for her child at the altar. ~ Malak El Halabi

You possess only what will not be lost in a shipwreck. ~ El Ghazali

When I fish, I stop thinking about anything else. But truth be told, if you want to declare victories, I can tell you the fish have won a lot more than I have. It's interesting that something with a brain the size of a fish's can outsmart us humans, who think we are el supremo. ~ Norman Schwarzkopf

A female feline named Katta
Is getting fatta and fatta
But she's pretty and purry
And funny and furry
So what does an ounce or two matta? ~ Lilian Jackson Braun

God has been God in my life ever since I can remember. ~ El DeBarge

I think many thinkers and activists, even in the Islamist parties like the Muslim Brotherhood, and the people who left the Muslim Brotherhood to follow Abou el-Fatouh, these people do have an understanding that the relationship between religion and the state must be re-thought and re-assessed. They're not going to use the concept of secularism in any straightforward way, because the concept of secularism is still far too loaded in that part of the world. ~ Tariq Ramadan

Music really helps me. It's like a best friend. ~ El DeBarge

Why we cannot build a system like El Al to be proactive. Why do we have only to react? The shoe bomber - reaction? Take off your shoes. The Nigerian - the body scanner is a result of the Nigerian guy. ~ Isaac Yeffet

Art can no longer be merely a mirror, it must act as the organizer of the people's consciousness ... No form of representation is so readily comprehensible to the masses as photography. ~ El Lissitzky

Sufre mas el que espera siempre
que aquel que nunca espero a nadie?
Does he who is always waiting suffer more than he who's never waited for anyone? ~ Pablo Neruda

I would feel pretty embarrassed if I was doing what I do and I wasn't at least attempting the eloquent translation of the human experience in some way. ~ El-P

Now my hope is right before my eyes and I am not to let it evaporate. ~ Noha Alaa El-Din

Fear and hatred are the legacy of Ronald Reagan. America's vision of peace and freedom [is being] blasted by the guns of the U.S. Navy in Lebanon, the guns of U.S. paratroopers in Grenada, and the guns of U.S. helicopters in Honduras and El Salvador. ~ Alan Cranston

YOU
You are that song that plays rarely on the radio,
But when it does I have to sing it out loud…
You are the water that formed a puddle on a rainy day,that I played in,
When I was only eight years old.
You are the first snowfall of the season,
And the reason I like the morning...
You're a single seashell that washed up onto the shore.
You are my set of old medals
Hidden deep in a drawer…
You are the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the planets.
You are the first breath of a baby just born.

Eres una dandelion que encuentro,
I pull, make a wish, then blow.
You are the sunrise that I tried to paint
after I woke up in Eilat.
You give the nights its meaning…
to dream, while others just sleep.
You are my 3rd grade valentine,
Read, frayed and loved a thousand times.
Eres perfección envuelto en humildad…

Eres oro, plata, y diamantes…
Eres mi querido viejito Pooh, que nunca lo abandonare.
You are my first time driving my brother's Impala,
When I was just fourteen.
You are the name hidden deep inside my name…
And I'm the fingers interlaced with yours.
Eres el PS: I love you at the end la carta,
Y yo soy el PS: I love you too.
Somos el principio, el medio y la ultima palabra
De mi libro final.

Eternamente nosotros, nosotros, nosotros…
Porque nosotros siempre es mejor
Que solamente… yo…
YOU ~ Jose N Harris

All these old men want it to be like it was when they were young. But it'll never be like that again, and they'll never be young again, no matter what they do. ~ Omar El Akkad

Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself. ~ Nawal El Saadawi

It seemed sensible to crave safety, to crave shelter from the bombs and the Birds and the daily depravity of war. But somewhere deep in her mind an idea had begun to fester-perhaps the longing for safety was itself just another kind of violence-a violence of cowardice, silence, submission. What was safety, anyway, but the sound of a bomb falling on someone else's home? ~ Omar El Akkad

They make their fortune who are stout and wise,
Wit rules the heavens, discretion guides the skies.
[Lat., Che sovente addivien che'l saggio e'l forte.
Fabro a se stesso e di beata sorte.] ~ Torquato Tasso

Worry acts like a squatter, sneaks in and tries to stay without paying rent! EL. ~ Evlinda Lepins

What were he and his friends doing, really, other than hanging from a branch, sticking their tongues out to catch the sweetness? He thought about the people he knew, with their excellent young bodies, their summerhouses, their cool clothes, their potent drugs, their liberalism, their orgasms, their haircuts. Everything they did was either pleasurable in itself or engineered to bring pleasure down the line. Even the people he knew who were "political" and who protested the war in El Salvador did so largely in order to bathe themselves in an attractively crusading light. And the artists were the worst, the painters and the writers, because they believed they were living for art when they were really feeding their narcissism. Mitchell had always prided himself on his discipline. He studied harder than anyone he knew. But that was just his way of tightening his grip on the branch. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides