One Room Schoolhouse Quotes

The earth is like a one-room schoolhouse in which students of different grade levels are assembled together: ~ Brian L. Weiss

What's the matter?" asked the teacher, seeing her bewildered fact.

"Why - why," said Elizabeth Ann, "I don't know what I am at all. If I'm second-grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and third-grade spelling, what grade am I?"

The teacher laughed at the turn of her phrase. "you aren't any grade at all, no matter where you are in school. You're just yourself, aren't you? What difference does it make what grade you're in! And what's the use of your reading little baby things too easy for you just because you don't know your multiplication table? ~ Dorothy Canfield

The first important [step] one was going to school. There was an advantage as there was a one-room schoolhouse that was within walking distance of my home. I went there being very shy, but I fit in quickly, and I was nurtured by a very dedicated and caring teacher, Magdalen George, who we referred to as Miss George. She was my teacher for a full seven years. ~ Paul Smith

I'm so old school I'm like a one-room schoolhouse - with no bathroom. I always keep it classy. ~ Jarod Kintz

She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade and he could do anything. ~ Flannery O'Connor

She'd just had the best sex of her life, with an ex-boyfriend she'd spent the last decade pretending didn't exist, in his adorable half-finished, renovating-by-himself one room schoolhouse. Unsettled wouldn't even begin to describe how Laney should be feeling, and it didn't matter, because how she actually felt was pretty damn good. ~ Zoe York

I shouldn't like to monopolize your time- surely you should be receiving your guests."
Devlin took her to a corner of the drawing room, taking a glass of wine from the tray of a passing servant. He gave the glass to Amanda and lowered his head to murmur in her ear. "There's only one guest who matters to me."
Amanda felt a prickling blush rise in her cheeks. She felt as if she were in a dream. This couldn't be happening to Amanda Briars, the spinster from Windsor... the sweet music, the lovely surroundings, the handsome man whispering seductive nonsense in her ear. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The emptiness of the narcissist often means that they are only focused on whatever is useful or interesting to them at the moment. If at that moment it is interesting for them to tell you they love you, they do. It's not really a long game to them, and when the next interesting issue comes up, they attend to that. The objectification of others - viewing other people as objects useful to his needs - can also play a role. When you are the only thing in the room, or the most interesting thing in the room, then the narcissist's charisma and charm can leave you convinced that you are his everything. The problem is that this is typically superficial regard, and that superficiality results in inconsistency, and emotions for the narcissistic person range from intense to detached on a regular basis. This vacillation between intensity and detachment can be observed in the narcissist's relationships with people (acquaintances, friends, family, and partners), work, and experiences. A healthy relationship should feel like a safe harbor in your life. Life throws us enough curve balls in the shape of money problems, work issues, medical issues, household issues, and even the weather. Sadly, a relationship with a narcissist can be one more source of chaos in your life, rather than a place of comfort and consistency. ~ Ramani Durvasula

One may enter the literary parlor via just about any door, be it the prison door, the madhouse door, or the brothel door. There is but one door one may not enter it through, which is the child room door. The critics will never forgive you such. The great Rudyard Kipling is one of a number of people to have suffered from this. I keep wondering to myself what this peculiar contempt towards anything related to childhood is all about. ~ Michael Ende

1
One went to the door of the Beloved and knocked.
A voice asked: "Who is there?" He answered: "It is I."
The voice said: "There is no room here for me and thee."
The door was shut.
After a year of solitude and deprivation
this man returned to the door of the Beloved.
He knocked.
A voice from within asked: "Who is there?"
The man said: "It is Thou."
The door was opened for him.
2
The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,
they're in each other all along.
3
Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity.
The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death.
Tomorrow, when resurrection comes,
The heart that is not in love will fail the test.
4
When your chest is free of your limiting ego,
Then you will see the ageless Beloved.
You can not see yourself without a mirror;
Look at the Beloved, He is the brightest mirror.
5
Your love lifts my soul from the body to the sky
And you lift me up out of the two worlds.
I want your sun to reach my raindrops,
So your heat can raise my soul upward like a cloud.
6
There is a candle in the heart of man, waiting to be kindled.
In separation from the Friend, there is a cut waiting to be
stitched.
O, you who are ignorant of endurance and the burning
fire of l ~ Rumi

WHO'S GOT A TAMPON? I JUST GOT MY PERIOD, I will announce loudly to nobody in particular in a women's bathroom in a San Francisco restaurant, or to a co-ed dressing room of a music festival in Prague, or to the unsuspecting gatherers in a kitchen at a party in Sydney, Munich, or Cincinnati. Invariably, across the world, I have seen and heard the rustling of female hands through backpacks and purses, until the triumphant moment when a stranger fishes one out with a kind smile. No money is ever exchanged. The unspoken universal understanding is: Today, it is my turn to take the tampon. Tomorrow, it shall be yours. There is a constant, karmic tampon circle. It also exists, I've found, with Kleenex, cigarettes, and ballpoint pens. ~ Amanda Palmer

One more victim sucked in by John. You get into the room with him and you just fall into a warm pool of beer and video games and penis jokes, staring at the universe with him and saying, Do you believe this shit? ~ David Wong

For the last several days I've had the sudden and general urge to buy a new book. I've stopped off at a few bookstores around the city, and while I've looked at hundreds and hundreds of books in that time, I have not found the one book that will satisfy my urge. It's not as if I don't have anything to read; there's a tower of perfectly good unread books next to my bed, not to mention the shelves of books in the living room I've been meaning to reread. I find myself, maddeningly, hungry for the next one, as yet unknown. I no longer try to analyze this hunger; I capitulated long ago to the book lust that's afflicted me most of my life. I know enough about the course of the disease to know I'll discover something soon. ~ Lewis Buzbee

The Pension Dressler stood in a side street and had, at first glance, the air rather of a farm than of a hotel. Frau Dressler's pig, tethered by one hind trotter to the jamb of the front door, roamed the yard and disputed the kitchen scraps with the poultry. He was a prodigious beast. Frau Dressler's guests prodded him appreciatively on the way to the dining-room, speculating on how soon he would be ripe for killing. The milch-goat was allowed a narrower radius; those who kept strictly to the causeway were safe, but she never reconciled herself to this limitation and, day in, day out, essayed a series of meteoric onslaughts on the passers-by, ending, at the end of her rope, with a jerk which would have been death to an animal of any other species. One day the rope would break; she knew it, and so did Frau Dressler's guests. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Cade stood midfield, waiting for Zach to take his place at the line of scrimmage.

"When's the last time you threw a football?" Zach asked worriedly.

Aside from the few times Cade had tossed one around casually with friends, a long time. "About twelve years."

Zach threw him a panicked look.

"I won't push it," Cade said. It wasn't as if his shoulder was entirely unusable; in fact, on a daily basis it didn't bother him at all. His rotator cuff simply couldn't withstand the repetitive stress of competitive football. "I just want to see what I can do." He pointed emphatically. "And if the answer is 'not much,' you better not tell a soul. I've got a reputation to uphold here."

Zach smiled, loosening up. "All right. I don't want to stand in the way of you reliving your glory days or whatever."

"Good. But in case this all goes south, my car keys are in the outside pocket of my duffle bag. When you drive me to the emergency room, if I'm too busy mumbling incoherently from the pain, just tell them I've got Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance."

Zach's eyes went wide.

"I'm kidding, Zach. Now get moving. ~ Julie James

When you are in a room with Kurtis, whether its one or a hundred he is the only person that matters. ~ Dee Remy

I reached out my hands to them, suddenly: I put out my hand to Sergey on one side, and to Stepon on the other, and they put out their hands to me, and to each other, and we held tight, tight; we made a circle together, my brothers and me, around the food that we had been given, and there was no wolf in the room. ~ Naomi Novik

They knew so well how it felt, that they kept one bed in the boys' room, and any man who came at dusk got his supper, to sleep there, and his breakfast, and there never was anything to pay. The girls always scolded dreadfully about the extra washing, but mother said she slept on sheets when she came out, and some one washed them. ~ Gene Stratton-Porter

Speaking two languages may seem a relative affluence, but more often it entails the problems of maintaining a second establishment even though your body can be in one place at a time. When I return to Urdu, I feel shocked at my own neglect of a space so intimate to me: like relearning the proportions of a once-familiar room, it takes me by surprise to recollect that I need not feel grief, I can eat grief; that I need not bury my mother but instead can offer her into the earth, for I am in Urdu now. ~ Sara Suleri

I know you worry about getting older, about not being the prettiest guy in the room anymore."

And I worried about aging, but not how he thought. I had never presumed I was prettiest, just one of many. My only concern now was that Sam Kage thought I was hot.

"But there will never come a time when that will be the case," he said, pressing soft kisses to the side of my neck. I leaned my head back so he could reach more of my throat. "To me, Jory," he said, "you're more beautiful now than you ever have been, and I can't wait to see what you're gonna look like at forty and fifty and sixty, and God willing a lot more numbers after that."

"Many after that," I assured him as my eyes drifted open so I could look up into his smoky-blue ones.

"The most important thing is that you're mine, you belong to me," he said, his hands pressing me closer before he kissed me. ~ Mary Calmes

Daniel." Luce gripped his shoulder. "What about the library you took me to? Remember?" She closed her eyes. She wasn't thinking so much as feeling her way through a memory buried shallowly in her brain. "We came to Vienna for the weekend…I don't remember when, but we went to see Mozart conduct The Magic Flute…at the Theater an der Wien? You wanted to see this friend of yours who worked at some old library, his name was-"
She broke off, because when she opened her eyes, the others were staring at her, incredulous. No one, least of all Luce, had expected her to be the one to know where they would find the desideratum.
Daniel recovered first. He flashed her a funny smile Luce knew was full of pride. But Arriane, Roland, and Annabelle continued to gape at her as if they'd suddenly learned she spoke Chinese. Which, come to think of it, she did.
Arriane wiggled a finger around inside her ear. "Do I need to ease up on the psychedelics, did LP just recall one of her past lives unprompted at the most crucial juncture ever?"
"You're a genius," Daniel said, leaning forward and kissing her deeply.
Luce blushed and leaned in to extend the kiss a little longer, but then heard a cough.
"Seriously, you two," Annabelle said. "There will be time enough for snogs if we pull this off."
"I'd say 'get a room' but I'm afraid we'd never see you again," Arriane added, which caused them all to laugh.
When Luce opened her eyes, Daniel had spread his wings wide. T ~ Lauren Kate

You were just a boy on a bed in a room, like a kaleidoscope is a tube full of bits of broken glass. But the way I saw you was pieces refracting the light, shifting into an infinite universe of flowers and rainbows and insects and planets, magical dividing cells, pictures no one else knew ... ~ Francesca Lia Block

When I think of antiquity, the detail that frightens me is that those hundreds of millions of slaves on whose backs civilization rested generation after generation have left behind them no record whatever. We do not even know their names. In the whole of Greek and Roman history, how many slaves' names are known to you? I can think of two, or possibly three. One is Spartacus and the other is Epictetus. Also, in the Roman room at the British Museum there is a glass jar with the maker's name inscribed on the bottom, 'FELIX FECIT'. I have a mental picture of poor Felix (a Gaul with red hair and a metal collar round his neck), but in fact he may not have been a slave; so there are only two slaves whose names I definitely know, and probably few people can remember more. The rest have gone down into utter silence. ~ George Orwell

Imagine you are a member of a tour visiting Greece. The group goes to the Parthenon. It is a bore. Few people even bother to look - it looked better in the brochure. So people take half a look, mostly take pictures, remark on serious erosion by acid rain. You are puzzled. Why should one of the glories and fonts of Western civilization, viewed under pleasant conditions - good weather, good hotel room, good food, good guide - be a bore?
Now imagine under what set of circumstances a viewing of the Parthenon would not be a bore. For example, you are a NATO colonel defending Greece against a Soviet assault. You are in a bunker in downtown Athens, binoculars propped up on sandbags. It is dawn. A medium-range missile attack is under way. Half a million Greeks are dead. Two missiles bracket the Parthenon. The next will surely be a hit. Between columns of smoke, a ray of golden light catches the portico.
Are you bored? Can you see the Parthenon?
Explain. ~ Walker Percy

I love everything about you, Emma. I love the way I can recognize your footsteps in the hallway outside my room even when I didn't know you were coming. No one else walks or breathes or moves like you do. I love the way you gasp when you're asleep like your dreams have surprised you. I love the way when we stay together on the beach our shadows blend into one person. I love the way you can write on my skin with your fingers and I can understand it better than I could understand someone else shouting in my ear. I didn't want to love you like this. It's the worst idea in the world that I love you like this. But I can't stop. Believe me, I tried. ~ Cassandra Clare

If you read a book set in Kars and put me in it, I'd like to tell your readers not to believe anything you say about me, anything you say about any of us. No one could understand us from so far away."
"But not one believes in that way what he reads in a novel," I said.
"Oh, yes, they do," he cried. "If only to see themselves as wise and superior and humanistic, they need to think of us as sweet and funny, and convince themselves that they sympathize with the way we are and even love us. But if you would put in what I've just said, at least your readers will keep a little room for doubt in their minds. ~ Orhan Pamuk

Lou, honey, I'll buy you a new pair of shoes if you'll stop flashing your panties at everyone sitting across the room from us. You are wearing panties, right?
I glance up and across at Stefan. His words register a moment later and my head swivels toward the other side of the room. There are a number of people staring at me. One of them is Detective Terry Shay. Or I think it is. He's not looking directly at me. He's looking up my skirt ~ Ronda Thompson

Walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the same street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show; nobody talking; silence in the yards; dogs barking at you because you pass on human feet instead of wheels. ~ Geoff Nicholson

Our teacher, Mr. Stratton, was way distracting with his angular face and broad shoulders. The dark-rimmed glasses he wore had caused many a breathy sigh from his students when he'd adjusted them on his face.
One time he'd bitten his lip, pulling it between his teeth in a totally sexy way and I swear, I could smell the estrogen surge in the room. ~ Katrina Abbott

that younger people are so used to text-based communications, where they have time to gather their thoughts and precisely plan what they are going to say, that they are losing their ability to have spontaneous conversation. She argues that the muscles in our brain that help us with spontaneous conversation are getting less exercise in the text-filled world, so our skills are declining. When we did the large focus group where we split the room by generation - kids on the left, parents on the right - a strange thing happened. Before the show started, we noticed that the parents' side of the room was full of chatter. People were talking to one another and asking how they had ended up at the event and getting to know people. On the kids' side, everyone was buried in their phones and not talking to anyone around them. ~ Aziz Ansari

A meeting moves at the speed of the slowest mind in the room. (In other words, all but one participant will be bored, all but one mind underused.) ~ Dale Dauten

Yet she is happy -- is it happiness she feels? -- as she places her things in the cupboards and drawers. Her quills, stockings, shoes. The room is dotted by porcelain figures. Punctuated, she thinks. She picks one up, puts it down. The former wife's collection? Then opens a window to London bells and that green-silk scent of spring. And she sees now, here in this room, how badly she'd needed to leave. ~ Danielle Dutton

The night following the reading, Gansey woke up to a completely unfamiliar sound and fumbled for his glasses. It sounded a little like one of his roommates was being killed by a possum, or possibly the final moments of a fatal cat fight. He wasn't certain of the specifics, but he was sure death was involved.
Noah stood in the doorway to his room, his face pathetic and long-suffering. "Make it stop," he said.
Ronan's room was sacred, and yet here Gansey was, twice in the same weak, pushing the door open. He found the lamp on and Ronan hunched on the bed, wearing only boxers. Six months before, Ronan had gotten the intricate black tattoo that covered most of his back and snaked up his neck, and now the monochromatic lines of it were stark in the claustrophobic lamplight, more real than anything else in the room. It was a peculiar tattoo, both vicious and lovely, and every time Gansey saw it, he saw something different in the pattern. Tonight, nestled in an inked glen of wicked, beautiful flowers, was a beak where before he'd seen a scythe.
The ragged sound cut through the apartment again.
"What fresh hell is this?" Gansey asked pleasantly. Ronan was wearing headphones as usual, so Gansey stretched forward far enough to tug them down around his neck. Music wailed faintly into the air.
Ronan lifted his head. As he did, the wicked flowers on his back shifted and hid behind his sharp shoulder blades. In his lap was the half-formed raven, its head tilted bac ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Then when I'd thought nothing else could possibly startle or surprise me, the Lord Master had taken one look at Barrons - and walked away.
That worried me. A lot. If the Lord Master walked away from Barrons, how much danger was I in on a daily basis? I'd been feeling invincible up until those last few moments in the cave. Until one man in the room with me had stripped away my will with mere words, and the other man in the room with me had apparently intimidated that one into leaving. Bad and badder.
I glanced across the front seat at badder. I opened my mouth. He looked at me. I closed it.
I don't know how he continued driving, because we stared at each other for a long time. The night whizzed by, the air inside the speeding car pregnant with all the things we weren't saying. We didn't even have one of our wordless conversations this time; neither of us was willing to betray a single thought or feeling.
We looked at each other like two too-intimate strangers who've woken after the lovemaking and don't know quite what to say to each other, so they say nothing at all and go their separate ways, promising, of course, that they'll call, but each time they look at the phone over the next few days, the discomfort and mild embarrassment of having taken off their clothing in front of someone they didn't really even know rises up, and the phone call never gets made.
Barrons and I had taken our skins off around each other tonight. Shared too many secrets, and n ~ Karen Marie Moning

Nobody may come into this room if the door is shut tight (if it is shut not quite latched it is all right) without knocking. The person in this room if he agrees that one shall come in will say "come in," or something like that and if he does not agree to it he will say "Not yet, please," or something like that. The door may be shut if nobody is in the room but if a person wants to come in, knocks and hears no answer that means there is no one in the room and he must not go in.

Reason. If the door is shut tight and a person is in the room the shut door means that the person in the room wishes to be left alone. ~ Barbara Follett

In all actuality, Quincy knew that, when riding in a wagon, your thoughts had plenty of room to wander and move and never bump into those of your companions. But in a carriage, with its confined space, people often felt compelled to speak with one another, even when their companion didn't wish it. And Quincy did not wish it. She thought that the truest test of humanity was riding in a coach and saying absolutely nothing to one's traveling companions. Few, if any, had ever succeeded. ~ Beth Brower

We were her kids, her comrades, the end of her and the beginning. We took turns riding shotgun with her in the car. "Do I love you this much?" she'd ask us, holding her hands farther apart. "No," we'd say, with sly smiles. "Do I love you this much?" she'd ask again, and on and on and on, each time moving her hands farther apart. But she would never get there, no matter how wide she stretched her arms. The amount that she loved us was beyond her reach. It could not be quantified or contained. It was the ten thousand named things in the Tao Te Ching's universe and then ten thousand more. Her love was full-throated and all-encompassing and unadorned. Every day she blew through her entire reserve….She was optimistic and serene, except a few times when she lost her temper and spanked us with a wooden spoon. Or the one time when she screamed FUCK and broke down crying because we wouldn't clean our room. She was kindhearted and forgiving, generous and naïve. She dated men with names like Killer and Doobie and Motercycle Dan… ~ Cheryl Strayed

I was not surprised. Indeed, my only wonder was that he had not already been mixed up in this extraordinary case, which was the one topic of conversation through the length and breadth of England. For a whole day my companion had rambled about the room with his chin upon his chest and his brows knitted, charging and recharging his pipe with the strongest black tobacco, and absolutely deaf to any of my questions or remarks. Fresh editions of every paper had been sent up by our news agent, only to be glanced over and tossed down into a corner. Yet, silent as he was, I knew perfectly well what it was over which he was brooding. There was but one problem before the public which could challenge his powers of analysis, and that was the singular disappearance of the favorite for the Wessex Cup, and the tragic murder of its trainer. When, therefore, he suddenly announced his intention of setting out for the scene of the drama it was only what I had both expected and hoped for. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I'm lecturing my class last week. In the English language, I tell them, a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn't a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative. And I hear a voice from the back of the room: 'Yeah, right.' ~ William Alexander

'Frank's really different from everything I've done. Maybe the one thing that's the same, and the thing that I tend to do, is that I think I can create an intimacy with the characters, like a sense of presence with the people in the film, and that's what I tried to do in 'Room' as well. ~ Lenny Abrahamson

Both described at the same time how it was always March there and always Monday, and then they understood that José Arcadio Buendía was not as crazy as the family said, but that he was the only one who had enough lucidity to sense the truth of the fact that time also stumbled and had accidents and could therefore splinter and leave an eternalized fragment in a room. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It's only sixteen ninety-five," I say with a flutter of my lashes.
"You're serious."
I prop my hands on my waist and stick out a hip, striking a pose worthy of a supermodel. "Look at me. Don't I look serious?"
She collapses into the chair outside the dressing room in a fit of giggles so cute they make my insides fizz. "No! You must be stopped," she says.
"Why?" I strut down an aisle of yellowed lingerie, swiveling my hips, batting bras with flicks of my fingers. "I will be the king of the disco. I will be - " I spin and strike another pose. "An inspiration."
She sniffs and swipes at her eyes. "The real Dylan would die before he'd be seen in public in something like that."
"The real Dylan is boring." I brace my hands on the arms of her chair and lean down until our faces are a whisper apart. "And he's not one fourth the kisser I am."
"Is that right?" Her lips quirk.
"You know it is."
Her smile melts, and her breath comes faster. "Yeah. I do. ~ Stacey Jay

I didn't really want to talk. I'd wanted him there, but I asn't sure why. Maybe just to have someone to drink with. Actually, that sounded pretty good at the moment. I sat on the seat of the chaise and he sat on the foot, and we just drank at each other for a while.
After a few minutes, he leaned back against the railing, like maybe he wanted a backrest, and I shifted my feet over to make room. But I guess I didn't shift far enough, because a large, warm hand covered my right foot, adjusting it slightly. And then it just stayed there, like he'd forgotten to remove it.
I looked at it. Pritkin's hands were oddly refined compared to the rest of him: strong but long fingered, with elegant bones and short-clipped nails. They always looked like they'd wandered off from some fine gentleman, one they'd probably like to get back to, because God knew they weren't getting a manicure while attached to him. ~ Karen Chance

Poem to Be Read at 3:00 A.M.
by Donald Justice

Excepting the diner
On the outskirts
The town of Ladora
at 3 A.M.
Was dark but
For my headlights
And up in
One second-story room
A single light
Where someone
Was sick or
Perhaps reading
As I drove past
At seventy
Not thinking
This poem
Is for whoever
Had the light on ~ Donald Justice

Nobody remembers them, you know ? Nobody. Nobody remebers why they died, why they didnt have a wife and children
and a sun lit room either, nobody, least of all people for whom they fought. There is no and there never will be some pathetic street
in one pathetic village of a shitty country that is named after any of them.
Miralles stopped talking, he took out his handkerchief, wiped the tears, blew his nose, he did so without shame, as if he was not ashamed of crying in public,
as Homers warriors of old did it, as any soldier of Salamis would do. ~ Javier Cercas

Instead of saying "Amanda took one look at the hotel room and recoiled in disgust," describe the room in such a way that the readers feel that disgust for themselves. You don't want to give your readers information. You want to give them experiences. ~ Renni Browne

Suddenly the dressing-room of La Sorelli, one of the principal dancers, was invaded by half-a-dozen young ladies of the ballet, who had come up from the stage after "dancing" Polyeucte. They rushed in amid great confusion, some giving vent to forced and unnatural laughter, others to cries of terror. Sorelli, who wished to be alone for a moment to "run through" the speech which she was to make to the resigning managers, looked around angrily at the mad and tumultuous crowd. It was little Jammes - the girl with the tip-tilted nose, the forget-me-not eyes, the rose-red cheeks and the lily-white neck and shoulders - who gave the explanation in a trembling voice:

"It's the ghost!" And she locked the door.

- Chapter 1: Is it the Ghost? ~ Gaston Leroux

Love can't mature in one room. It has to come out of the full sharing of everything: joys, aspirations, downfalls, all of it. That's the only real path to love. ~ Leon Uris

I remember asking myself one night, while I was curled up in the same old corner of my same old couch in tears yet again over the same old repetition of sorrowful thoughts, 'Is there ANYTHING about this scene you can change, Liz?' And all I could think to do was stand up, whle still sobbing, and try to balance on one foot in the middle of the living room. Just to prove that - while I couldn't stop the tears or change my dismal interior dialogue - I was not yet totally out of control: at least I could cry hysterically while balanced on one foot. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Our system of government is one of checks and balances. It requires compromise.. compromise between the Executive and the Parliament, compromise between one House and another, compromise between the States and the Commonwealth and compromise between groups of persons with legitimate interests and other groups with other legitimate interests. There is room for compromise.. indeed demand for it.. in a system of checks and balances. ~ Peter Costello