300 Quotes

Anger, resentment and jealousy doesn't change the heart of others-- it only changes yours.

I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

I've got a bad case of the 3:00 am guilts - you know, when you lie in bed awake and replay all those things you didn't do right? Because, as we all know, nothing solves insomnia like a nice warm glass of regret, depression and self-loathing.

I like to change liquor stores frequently because the clerks got to know your habits if you went in night and day and bought huge quantities. I could feel them wondering why I wasn't dead yet and it made me uncomfortable. They probably weren't thinking any such thing, but then a man gets paranoid when he has 300 hangovers a year.

I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.

There are approximately 1,010,300 words in the English language, but I could never string enough words together to properly express how much I want to hit you with a chair." (Alexander Hamilton, to Thomas Jefferson)

If he can't handle you at your worst then he does not deserve you at your best. Real love means seeing beyond the words spoken out of pain, and instead seeing a person's soul.

Beef had hit $300 a kilo. Not that he could recall the last time he’d tasted real beef.

What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?

November 20. Andrius's birthday. I had counted the days carefully. I wished him a happy birthday when I woke and thought about him while hauling logs during the day. At night, I sat by the light of the stove, reading Dombey and Son. Krasivaya. I still hadn't found the word. Maybe I'd find it if I jumped ahead. I flipped through some of the pages. A marking caught my eye. I leafed backward. Something was written in pencil in the margin of 278. Hello, Lina. You've gotten to page 278. That's pretty good! I gasped, then pretened I was engrossed in the book. I looked at Andrius's handwritting. I ran my finger over this elongated letters in my name. Were there more? I knew I should read onward. I couldn't wait. I turned though the pages carefully, scanning the margins. Page 300: Are you really on page 300 or are you skipping ahead now? I had to stifle my laughter. Page 322: Dombey and Son is boring. Admit it. Page 364: I'm thinking of you. Page 412: Are you maybe thinking of me? I closed my eyes. Yes, I'm thinking of you. Happy birthday, Andrius.

When the clock reads 3:00, I don’t call it three o’clock, I call it three hundred, and I remember the Spartans. At 3:01, however, I remember what I was doing at 2:59, and I get back to it.


When you can’t reach the standards of another’s heart you must ask yourself, "What value do I put on my soul that I would subject myself to such rejection?

The greatest thing a father can do for his children is to respect the woman that gave birth to his children. It is because of her that you have the greatest treasures in your life. You may have moved on, but your children have not. If you can’t be her soulmate, then at least be thoughtful. Whom your children love should always be someone that you acknowledge with kindness. Your children notice everything and will follow your example.

Thank you,” I whisper. Words I never thought I would say to her. They unsettle us both.” “You want to thank me, Barrow?” she mutters, kicking away the last of my bindings. “Then keep your word. And let this fucking place burn.” (300)

The drug war is a total scam, prescription drugs kill 300K a year, while marijuana kills no one, but they spend billions/year 'fighting' it, because pot heads make for good little slaves to put into private prisons, owned by the banks who launder the drug money, and it's ALL DOCUMENTED.

Cox shrugged. "if that's what it takes to get laid, then I'm a fuckinin'poet. Other times I'm a fuckin' accountant. Or a plumber. Sometime's a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

Spartans... tonight we dine in Hell!

In the 300 years of the crucifixion of Christ to the conversion of Emperor Constantine, polytheistic Roman emperors initiated no more than four general persecutions of Christians. Local administrators and governors incited some anti-Christian violence of their own. Still, if we combine all the victims of all these persecutions, it turns out that in these three centuries the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians. In contrast, over the course, of the next 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions, to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion.

The saying in China is "If you're one in a million, there's still 1,300 people just like you.

It is the apathetic person that sees the cause while the charitable person sees the need.

I rather be a stupid person wanting clarification and answers, in order to be wiser, than be a stupid person that blindly believes the lies they are told, without question.

without any assistance or guidance from you i have loved you assiduously for 8 months 2 wks & a day i have been stood up four times i've left 7 packages on yr doorstep forty poems 2 plants & 3 handmade notecards i left town so i cd send to you have been no help to me on my job you call at 3:00 in the mornin on weekdays so i cd drive 27 1/2 miles cross the bay before i go to work charmin charmin but you are of no assistance i want you to know this waz an experiment to see how selifsh i cd be if i wd really carry on to snare a possible lover if i waz capable of debasin my self for the love of another if i cd stand not being wanted when i wanted to be wanted & i cannot so with no further assistance & no guidance from you i am endin this affair this note is attached to a plant i've been waterin since the day i met you you may water it yr damn self

All death reminds us that nothing is promised, only that life was worth it.

It is not what you leave to your children that matters, but what you leave in them.

A significant number of people believe tribal people still live and dress as they did 300 years ago. During my tenure as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, national news agencies requesting interviews sometimes asked if they could film a tribal dance or if I would wear traditional tribal clothing for the interview. I doubt they asked the president of the United States to dress like a pilgrim for an interview.

i prefer to die on my feet,than live on my knees

Passion is not a reaction to an external event. It is the left over emotions from the internal battles you have won that propels you forward.

His fee was $300 an hour, and for clients who couldn’t afford that, he had a sliding scale that was never less than $250— except for crying old ladies facing terminal diagnoses.

Not every person wants the prettiest, smartest, talented or spiritually uplifting person to build a life with. Sometimes we just want that special someone that makes sense, puts up with us, has patience, comes without drama, gives us focus and is willing to run with our half-baked ideas.

I'm not bloody well going to have it, understand?" Vimes shouted, shaking the ape back and forth. "Oook," the Librarian pointed out, patiently. "What? Oh. Sorry." Vimes lowered the ape, who wisely didn't make an issue out of it because a man angry enough to lift 300 pounds of orangutan without noticing is a man with too much on his mind.

أعرف.. أعرف أن وقتا كافيا قد مر لأنسى وأتناسى.. أعرف أن القصة تآكلت كفيلم هندي رخيص مدته أربع ساعات.. أعرف أن أفضل علاج لقلب محطم أن يتحطم مرة أخرى.. اصمت .. أكتب ما سأمليه عليك بلا ورقة أو قلم : ضيق الخلق , متبلد الإحساس , جانح للوحدة ، فاقد للثقة فيمن حولي ، نابذ للارتباط ، مذعور من المسؤولية تجاه أي شخص أو كائن "ولا استثناء للنبات" كسول، يائس بإيجابية، أضيق كثيرا بمن يحاول قراءتي رغم ولعي بقراءة الآخرين ، إدماني للقمار توغل حتى الغدة النخامية ولن يفيده علاج كيماوي ، أقلعت عن الكحول منذ شهرين .. كانت تلك أسو نصف ساعة في حياتي ؛ لكني على أي حال أشرب في حالتين فقط : حين أكون عطشا وحين لا أكون ! فقد اتضح أن الماء ليس جيدا كما ظننت .. ألا يُصدأ المواسير ! أوقفت تمارين البطن وأنهار حلمي في بناء مربعات العضلات التي شاهدتها في فيلم "300 إسبارطي" .. اكتفى بشفطه حيت أمر بأنثى جميله ، واكتشفت مؤخرا أني مطرب سيئالصوت ينوح صمتا على فراق حبيبه رحلت لحبيب أخلد .. ذلك أنا الآن والسنوات العشر القادمة إن لم أسقط في غيبوبة سكر أو ينفجر مخي من تخمة كحول.

I'll take Classic 69 and semen-swapping for $300

I like to change liquor stores frequently because the clerks got to know your habits if you went in night and day and bought huge quantities. I could feel them wondering why I wasn't dead yet and it made me feel uncomfortable. They probably weren't thinking any such thing, but then a man gets paranoid when he has 300 hangovers a year.

The most important quality in the man you decide to marry should be the ability to make you laugh. Beauty fades, careers end, money comes and goes, religions change, children grow up and move away, spouses get sick, struggles happen, family members die, senility sets in when your older, but the ability to make you giggle every day is the most precious gift God can give you to get through all of it.

I had no desire to share the fate of Galileo, with whom I feel a strong sense of identity, partly because of the coincidence of having been born exactly 300 years after his death!

اعرف أن وقتا كافيا قد مر لأنسي وأتناسي أعرف أن القصة تآكلت كفيلم هندي رخيص مدته أربع ساعات. أعرف أن أفضل علاج لقلب محطم.. هو أن يتحطم مرة أخرى اصمُت.. اكتب ما سأمليه عليك بدون ورقه ولا قلم: ضَيق الخُلق، مُتبلد الإحساس،جانح للوحدة، فاقد للثقة فيمن حولي، نابذ للارتباط، مذعور من المسؤليه تجاه أي شخصا أو كائن "ولا استثناء للنباتات"، كسول، يائس بإيجابية، أضيق كثيرا بمن يحاول قراءتي رغم ولعي بقراءة الآخرين، إدماني للقمار توغل حتي الغدة النخامية ولن يفيده علاج كيماوي، أقلعت عن الكحول منذ شهرين، كانت تلك أسوأ نصف ساعة في حياتي! لكني على أي حال اشرب في حالتين فقط، حين أكون عطشاً، وحين لا أكون! فقد اتضح أن الماء ليس جيدا كما ظننت، ألا يُصَدأ المواسير، أوقفت تمارين البطن وانهار حلمي في بناء مربعات العضلات التي شاهدتها في فيلم "300 سبارطي" ، اكتفي بشفطه حين أمر بأنثى جميله ،كما اكتشفت مؤخرا أني مطرب سيئ الصوت ينوح صمتا علي حبيبه رحلت إلى حبيب اخلد... ذلك أنا الآن، والعشر سنوات القادمة ، إن لم أسقط في غيبوبة سُكر أو ينفجر مخي من تخمه كحول.

I am merely at the midway point in the novel of my own life. On around page 250 of a 500-page tale and, given future medical advances, maybe even 200. There’s no reason why the next 250, 300, or even 350 pages will not be far more exciting than the first half.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

The trouble with letting people see you at your worst isn't that they'll remember; it's that you'll remember.

But who would build the roads if there were no government? You mean to tell me that 300 million people in this country and 7 billion people on the planet would just sit around in their houses and think “Gee, I’d like to go visit Fred, but I can't because there isn’t a flat thing outside for me to drive on, and I don’t know how to build it and the other 300 million or 7 billion people can’t possibly do it because there aren’t any politicians and tax collectors. If they were here then we could do it. If they were here to boss us around and steal our money and really inefficiently build the flat places, then we would be set. Then I would be comfortable and confident that I could get places. But I can’t go to Fred’s house or the market because we can’t possibly build a flat space from A to B. We can make these really small devices that enable us to contact people from all over the word that fits in our pockets; we can make machines that we drive around in, but no, we can’t possibly build a flat space.

Today, your cell phone has more computer power than all of NASA back in 1969, when it placed two astronauts on the moon. Video games, which consume enormous amounts of computer power to simulate 3-D situations, use more computer power than mainframe computers of the previous decade. The Sony PlayStation of today, which costs $300, has the power of a military supercomputer of 1997, which cost millions of dollars.

Over the last decade our country has lost an average of 300 farms a week. Large or small, each of those was the lifes work of a real person or family, people who built their lives around a promise and watched it break.

You realize, of course, the Omegans nearly lost this Earth. They had everything yet let it disintegrate through their rampant carelessness. Two hundred years past they possessed the rudimentary beginnings of the NET to bring them together. They called it the Internet. Yet they treated it like a toy, tribalized themselves, and thus nearly lost the planet. “Nationalist wars, self serving ideologies, competing religions . . . more significant, though not to the Omegans, was climate change itself, which mattered more than any petty dogma, but they ignored it until too late. It has ultimately determined our lives, managed now by the CORPORATE, using the only possible tools to survive. There were billions of Humans then. There is now but a fraction of that: some 300 million we know in the MEGS and, of course, the uncounted MASSes.

300 million people turned into jelly by The Wave and Rupert Murdoch wasn't one of them. There is no god.

Turns out that a real-estate agent keeps her own home on the market an average of ten days longer and sells it for an extra 3-plus percent, or $10,000 on a $300,000 house.

A 1-watt laser is an extremely dangerous thing. It’s not just powerful enough to blind you—it’s capable of burning skin and setting things on fire. Obviously, they’re not legal for consumer purchase in the US. Just kidding! You can pick one up for $300. Just do a search for “1-watt handheld laser.” So, suppose we spend the $2 trillion to buy 1-watt green lasers for everyone. (Memo to presidential candidates: This policy would win my vote.)

… what I’m saying is that if we and all the other species on earth are the only life forms in the universe and if there are no gods and let’s face it apart from a few tired scrolls written 300 years after the death of Jesus and his disciples there is no actual proof of a God or gods then we, the humans, who are meant to be at the height of the evolutionary tree, are in fact at the bottom because no other species on this planet is enslaved to the economy. Every other species is born free and lives free. We humans are born into economic slavery and life crippling debt.

My tunes and numbers are here. They have filled my years, the years when I refused to die. And in order to do that I wrote, I wrote, I wrote, at noon or 3:00 A.M. So as not to be dead.

Love makes people crazy. Loss of love makes people crazy.

We are all stars; we all fail and fall, no doubt. But from that failier should shine a new glow.

Give them nothing, but take from them everything.

الأيام تشبه بعضها، الأسابيع، الأشهر والسنوات، الوجوه متشابهة، القصص التي يحكيها الآخرون، لا جديد لا شيء مميز.

God helps everything come to pass. However, he reminds us that nothing comes to stay.

The trouble with setting goals is that you’re constantly working toward what you used to want.

When Maura opened the door of 300 Fox Way, she found the Gray Man standing pensively on the other side. He had brought her two things: a daisy-chain crown, which he somberly placed on her head, and a pink switchblade, which he handed to her. Both had taken some effort to procure. The first because the Gray Man had forgotten how to efficiently link daisies and the second because switchblades were illegal in Virginia, even if they were pink.

In these days before antiseptics, doctors themselves also suffered high mortality rates. Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the Crimean War (1853-1856), watched one particularly inept surgeon cut both himself and, somehow, a bystander while blundering about during an amputation. Both men contracted an infection and died, as did the patient. Nightingale commented that it was the only surgery she'd ever seen with 300 percent mortality.

If 22 bushels (1,300 pounds) of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain are harvested from a quarter acre field, then the field will support five to ten people each investing an average of less than one hour of labour per day. But if the field were turned over to pasturage, or if the grain were fed to cattle, only one person could be supported per quarter acre. Meat becomes a luxury food when its production requires land which could provide food directly for human consumption. This has been shown clearly and definitely. Each person should ponder seriously how much hardship he is causing by indulging in food so expensively produced.

If I read something somebody wrote 300 years ago, and it's me, what I'm going through now in my head, it sends chills down my spine, and I feel like that's what I want to be able to offer — that if I offer myself, there's a chance somebody else will feel connected.

The purpose of any charity is simply to turn people's mirrors into windows. An outward view of the world's needs are vast in comparison to an inward one.

You'll never know what your mother went through.

For me, the last few years of the postmodern era have seemed a bit like the way you feel when you're in high school and your parents go on a trip, and you throw a party. You get all your friends over and throw this wild disgusting fabulous party. For a while it's great, free and freeing, parental authority gone and overthrown, a cat's-away-let's-play Dionysian revel. But then time passes and the party gets louder and louder, and you run out of drugs, and nobody's got any money for more drugs, and things get broken and spilled, and there's cigarette burn on the couch, and you're the host and it's your house too, and you gradually start wishing your parents would come back and restore some fucking order in your house. It's not a perfect analogy, but the sense I get of my generation of writers and intellectuals or whatever is that it's 3:00 A.M. and the couch has several burn-holes and somebody's thrown up in the umbrella stand and we're wishing the revel would end. The postmodern founders' patricidal work was great, but patricide produces orphans, and no amount of revelry can make up for the fact that writers my age have been literary orphans throughout our formative years. We're kind of wishing some parents would come back. And of course we're uneasy about the fact that we wish they'd come back--I mean, what's wrong with us? Are we total pussies? Is there something about authority and limits we actually need? And then the uneasiest feeling of all, as we start gradually to realize that parents in fact aren't ever coming back--which means we're going to have to be the parents.

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Difficulty becomes familiar, at least, if no less difficult.

As long as there has been knitting there have been battles about it. There are self-declared "yarn snobs," who frown on using anything but natural fibers; "gauge snobs", who wouldn't be caught dead with chunky yarn; and "experience snobs", who claim you can't declare yourself a real knitter until you abandon novelty yarns. The truth is that the knitting world is a tiny metaphor for the real world. It takes all kinds. I will not allow myself to feel bad if someone disapproves of my knitting. I will also resist the urge to stuff his mailbox full of chunky acrylic fun fur at 3:00 am.

Remember us, Should any free soul come across this place, In all the countless centuries yet to be, May our voices whisper to you from the ageless stones, Go tell the Spartans, passerby: That here by Spartan law, we lie.

This morning on planet Earth, there are 1,686 enhanced, gifted, or otherwise superpowered persons. 678 use their powers to fight crime, while 441 use their powers to commit them. 44 are currently confined in Special Containment Facilities for enhanced criminals. Of these last, it is interesting to note that an unusually high proportion have IQs of 300 or more -- eighteen to be exact. Including me. You really have to wonder why we all end up in jail.

His helmet was stifling, it narrowed his vision. And he must see far. His shield was heavy. It threw him off balance. And his target is far away.

I don't really care if people forget me. My legacy wasn't about me. It was about everything I could do for another. When that sinks in...well you try a little harder. You dream a little broader. Your heart stretches a little farther and you find that you can't go back to the same place and make it fit. You become a person of ideas and seek out your own kind. And then it happens: One day you discover that staying the same is scary and changing has become your new home.

There is always the chance that something else is influencing the data, causing the link. Between 1993 and 2008 the police in Germany were searching for the mysterious ‘phantom of Heilbronn’, a woman who had been linked to forty crimes, including six murders; her DNA had been found at all the crime scenes. Tens of thousands of police hours were spent looking for Germany’s ‘most dangerous woman’ and there was a €300,000 bounty on her head. It turns out she was a woman who worked in the factory that made the cotton swabs used to collect DNA evidence.

People in the West like to shoot things. When they first got to the West they shot buffalo. Once there were 70 million buffalo on the plains and then the people of the West started blasting away at them. Buffalo are just cows with big heads. If you've ever looked a cow in the face and seen the unutterable depths of trust and stupidity that lie within, you will be able to guess how difficult it must have been for people in the West to track down buffalo and shoot them to pieces. By 1895, there were only 800 buffalo left, mostly in zoos and touring Wild West shows. With no buffalo left to kill, Westerners started shooting Indians. Between 1850 and 1890 they reduced the number of Indians in America from two million to 90,000. Nowadays, thank goodness, both have made a recovery. Today there are 30,000 buffalo and 300,000 Indiands, and of course you are not allowed to shoot either, so all the Westerners have left to shoot at are road signs and each other, both of which they do rather a lot. There you have a capsule history of the West.

The brain has millions of local processors making important decisions. It is a highly specialized system with critical networks distributed throughout the 1,300 grams of tissue. There is no one boss in the brain. You are certainly not the boss of the brain. Have you ever succeeded in telling your brain to shut up already and go to sleep?

Will you go outside on the 28th and watch the meteor shower? I know what you're thinking: 3:00am? But I think it will be beautiful. Besides, it will be cool to know that you're watching the sky at the same exact time as me. ~Lila

We made love like Tuesday at noon, even though it was Thursday at 3:00, and then again at 3:03. (I have the stamina of a water lily).

I hope that if love hurts, it teaches you something about yourself or about someone else.

Despair... It hides away propagates, expands, and finally explodes

Some people will punish you merely for witnessing their weakness. Even if they sought you out and asked for help. Even if you helped. Especially if you helped.

Only a fire can teach you what survives a fire. No, it teaches you what can survive that fire.

Hydarnes: When we attack today, our arrows will blot out the sun! Leonidas: Good; then we will fight in the shade.

Go now, run along and tell your Xerxes that he faces free men here, not slaves

Thousands of babies were stolen from their parents during the Franco dictatorship in Spain, but the story was suppressed for decades. Now, the first stolen-baby case has gone to court. The trial is expected to last months. As Lucía Benavides reports from Spain, it’s a dark part of Spanish history that is finally getting more recognition. Between 1939 and the late 1980s, it is alleged that over 300,000 babies were stolen from their birth mothers and sold into adoption. —LUCÍA BENAVIDES

More recently, during a debate in the House of Lords in 1978 one of the members said: "If there is a more hideous language on the face of the earth than the American form of English, I should like to know what it is." (We should perhaps bear in mind that the House of Lords is a largely powerless, nonelective institution. It is an arresting fact of British political life that a Briton can enjoy a national platform and exalted status because he is the residue of an illicit coupling 300 years before between a monarch and an orange seller.)

The Declaration of Independence . . . is much more than a political document. It constitutes a spiritual manifesto—revelation, if you will—declaring not for this nation only, but for all nations, the source of man's rights. Nephi, a Book of Mormon prophet, foresaw over 2,300 years ago that this event would transpire. The colonies he saw would break with Great Britain and that 'the power of the Lord was with [the colonists],' that they 'were delivered by the power of God out of the hands of all other nations' (1 Nephi 13:16, 19). "The Declaration of Independence was to set forth the moral justification of a rebellion against a long-recognized political tradition—the divine right of kings. At issue was the fundamental question of whether men's rights were God-given or whether these rights were to be dispensed by governments to their subjects. This document proclaimed that all men have certain inalienable rights. In other words, these rights came from God.

I've written about 2,000 short stories; I've only published 300 and I feel I'm still learning. Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer. Ray Bradbury, 1967 interview (Doing the Math - that means for every story he sold, he wrote six "un-publishable" ones. Keep typing!)

I owned a Ferrari, a Range Rover, a Mercedes 560SL convertible, a Jeep Cherokee and a Nissan 300ZX. I can't remember the intricate decision tree I had to climb in order to determine which one to drive to work on any given day - it probably had something to do with the weather, or which car had more gas in the tank, or upholstery that best matched whatever shirt I happened to throw on that morning.

چرا کار و بار «لوس بازی» سکه شده؟ چرا همه مثل هم حرف می‌زنند: «اون اتفاق باحاله»، «می دونی آدما»، «ای جانم»، «ازت راضی ام» و ... چرا زنان و دختران ادای نوزادان را در می‌آورند و مردان و پسران فقط لودگی می‌کنند؟ چرا هیچ کس شخصیت منحصر به فردی ندارد؟ چرا می‌ترسند مبادا با کسی بحث‌شان شود؟ چرا وقتی به جوانی بیست و چند ساله می‌گویی «احمق»، به جای آنکه جوابت را دهد، می‌گوید :«وقت به خیر» چرا همه «پالت» و «پرتقال من کجایی» گوش می‌دهند؟ چرا هیچ کس دیگر کله شقی نمی‌کند و در یک نبرد عاشقانه، رقیب را به «دوئل» فرانمی‌خواند؟ چرا همه عاشق فوتبال و تیم «بارسا» و «یووه» شده‌اند؟ چرا همه فقط گرافیک و بازاریابی و هنرهای تجسمی می‌خوانند؟ چرا از میز شام و گربه و پای لاک‌زده عکس می‌گیرند؟ چرا وقتی یک شب عادی با دوستانشان جایی می‌روند، از این اتفاق ساده ده‌ها بار عکس سلفی و دستجمعی می‌گیرند؟ چه اتفاقی برای‌شان می‌افتد که از دیدن برنامه «خندوانه» یا طنزهای بینمک لذت می‌برند؟ چرا همه سیبیل‌های دسته موتوری دارند و پیراهن چهارخانه و عینک‌های پت و پهن و مانتوهای چادرگل گلی و شلوارهای قرمز و سبز و کانورس و کوله می‌پوشند؟ چرا همه چیز اینقدر گل گلی و عروسکی و ملوس شده است؟ چرا هرکس را که می‌بینی، هفته بعدش نمایشگاه یا کارگاه متن‌خوانی یا رونمایی از کتاب دارد؟ چرا همه داستان کوتاه می‌نویسند و شعر می‌گویند؟ چرا اینقدر عکاس و «کارگردان اولی» زیاد شده است؟ چرا هیچ کس رمان نمی‌نویسد؟ چرا هر کس که بعد از مدتی کافه نشینی، احساس می‌کند که باید یا مجله ادبی-هنری تاسیس کند یا مترجم و مدرس شود؟ چرا هیچکس نمی‌تواند چند دقیقه بدون مسخره بازی یا تقلید تکه کلام‌های باب روز، درباره هر موضوعی حرف بزند؟ چرا سر و ته همه چیز با دو تا تحلیل و یک کاریکاتور هم می‌آید؟ چرا همه بازاریاب و ایده‌پرداز تبلیغات شده‌اند؟ چرا همه فکر می‌کنند کانت و هگل و افلاطون یکسری حرف‌های نامفهوم زده‌اند؟ چرا آداب معاشرت را در حد جمع کردن حواس و نیاستادن بر سر راه دیگران و بلند بلند قهقهه نزدن در محیط عمومی، بلد نیستند؟ چرا هیچکس، هیچ موضوعی را تا انتها پیگیری نمی‌کند؟ چرا هیچ کس گله‌ای از رنگ قهوه‌ای وخاکستری آسمان ندارد؟ چرا فکر می‌کنند پل طبیعت و برج میلاد آثار معماری ارزشمندی هستند؟ چرا وقتی سگ و گربه می‌بینند، به نشانه هیجان، حرکات عجیب و اصوات نامفهوم از خودشان در می‌آورند؟ چرا نگرانند مبادا «جدی و خشک» جلوه کنند؟ چرا مدام احساس می‌کنند که باید به شکل اغراق شده‌ای بخندند و خوشمزه‌گی کنند؟ چرا از واژگانی چون «شرم»، «فروتنی»،«شرافت» و ... خنده‌شان می‌گیرد؟ چرا همه می‌ترسند کسی برنجد و ناچار خود را در گرداب خاله زنکی غرق می‌کنند؟ چرا وحشت از «توهین»، کار را به تایید کلاشان و شارلتان‌ها انداخته است؟ چرا اینهمه مراسم بزرگداشت این و آن برگزار می‌شود؟ چرا همه کودک صفت شده‌اند و مدام عکس‌های چند ماهگی و کاراکترهای عروسکی و کارتونی را مرور می‌کنند؟ چرا همه به میانجی خیریه‌ها و شیادها، با رنج‌های بشری مواجه می‌شوند؟ چرا به شکل بیمارگونه‌ای قربان صدقه هم می‌روند؟ چرا تیراژ کتاب‌ها 300 نسخه است؟ چرا همه در شکستن گردن روشنفکران از حکومت سبقت می‌گیرند؟ چرا نمی‌توانند خودفروختگی را محکوم کنند؟ چرا هیچ موضعی ندارند؟ و در نهایت چرا فکر می‌کنند خیلی باهوش، شریف، تاج سر بشریت و ملتی برگزیده هستند؟

Happiness is not marriage; it is what you build in one another through the hardest times.

But as incentives go, commissions are tricky. First of all, a 6 percent real-estate commission is typically split between the seller’s agent and the buyer’s. Each agent then kicks back roughly half of her take to the agency. Which means that only 1.5 percent of the purchase price goes directly into your agent’s pocket. So on the sale of your $300,000 house, her personal take of the $18,000 commission is $4,500. Still not bad, you say. But what if the house was actually worth more than $300,000? What if, with a little more effort and patience and a few more newspaper ads, she could have sold it for $310,000? After the commission, that puts an additional $9,400 in your pocket. But the agent’s additional share—her personal 1.5 percent of the extra $10,000—is a mere $150. If you earn $9,400 while she earns only $150, maybe your incentives aren’t aligned after all.

The trouble with comparing yourself to others is that there are too many others. Using all others as your control group, all your worst fears and all your fondest hopes are at once true. You are good; you are bad; you are abnormal; you are just like everyone else.

The American woods have been unnerving people for 300 years. The inestimably priggish and tiresome Henry David Thoreau thought nature was splendid, splendid indeed, so long as he could stroll to town for cakes and barley wine, but when he experienced real wilderness, on a vist to Katahdin in 1846, he was unnerved to the cored. This wasn't the tame world of overgrown orchards and sun-dappled paths that passed for wilderness in suburban Concord, Massachusetts, but a forbiggind, oppressive, primeval country that was "grim and wild . . .savage and dreary," fit only for "men nearer of kin to the rocks and wild animals than we." The experience left him, in the words of one biographer, "near hysterical.

It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted…secretly, it was being dictated instead by the needs of technology…by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying, “Money be damned, the very life of [insert name of Nation] is at stake,” but meaning, most likely, dawn is nearly here, I need my night’s blood, my funding, funding, ahh more, more…The real crises were crises of allocation and priority, not among firms—it was only staged to look that way—but among the different Technologies, Plastics, Electronics, Aircraft, and their needs which are understood only by the ruling elite… Yes but Technology only responds (how often this argument has been iterated, dogged, humorless as a Gaussian reduction, among the younger Schwarzkommando especially), “All very well to talk about having a monster by the tail, but do you think we’d’ve had the Rocket if someone, some specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn’t wanted to chuck a ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilians? Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it’ll make you feel less responsible—but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they are—” We have to look for power sources here, and distribution networks we were never taught, routes of power our teachers never imagined, or were encouraged to avoid…we have to find meters whose scales are unknown in the world, draw our own schematics, getting feedback, making connections, reducing the error, trying to learn the real function…zeroing in on what incalculable plot? Up here, on the surface, coal-tars, hydrogenation, synthesis were always phony, dummy functions to hide the real, the planetary mission yes perhaps centuries in the unrolling…this ruinous plant, waiting for its Kabbalists and new alchemists to discover the Key, teach the mysteries to others…

But did he go to heaven?" Katherine persisted. "That's between him and God, not him and history," JB said. Alex started, jerking so spastically that he kicked the basketball and would have sent it spinning out into the street if Chip hadn't caught it. Amazingly, Chip still seemed to have a swordsman's quick reflexes. "YOU believe in God?" Alex asked JB incredulously. "But you know how to travel through time. You're a scientist." He hesitated. "Aren't you?" JB rolled his eyes. "It amazes me how people of your time set up such a false dichotomy between science and religion. Fortunately, that only lasts for another... well, I can't tell you that," he said, stopping himself just in time. "But I assure you, the more I travel through time, the more I witness, the more I realize that there are things that are both strange and wonderful, far beyond human comprehension." (pgs 299-300)

Ришар Лафарг крачеше бавно по застланата с чакъл алея, която водеше до мъничко езеро сред горичката край оградата на вилата. Нощното небе беше ясно в юлската вечер, осеяно с млечнобели трепкащи искрици. Двата лебеда тънеха в спокоен сън зад разстланите водни лилии, извили шии под крилете си, дребната женска ласкаво се бе сгушила до по-внушителното тяло на самеца. Лафарг откъсна една роза и вдъхна за миг сладникавия, почти отблъскващ аромат, преди да се върне назад. Зад липите край алеята се издигаше плътният и лишен от всякакво изящество силует на ниската къща. На приземния етаж бе кухненското помещение, където Лин, камериерката, навярно се хранеше. Отдяснобеше по-светло и се носеше приглушено бръмчене: там беше гаражът, където шофьорът Роже се занимаваше с двигателя на мерцедеса. И най-сетне – просторният хол, през чиито тъмни завеси се процеждаха само няколко лъча светлина. Лафарг вдигна очи към първия етаж и погледът му се спря върху прозорците на обиталището на Ева. През открехнатите капаци мъждееше сияние и се носеха нотите на плаха мелодия на пиано: първите тактове на The Man I Love… Лафарг потисна раздразнението си, влезе с бързи крачки във вилата, затръшна вратата, почти изтича до стълбището и го изкачи на един дъх. Когато стигна на етажа, замахна с юмрук, но после се овладя и се задоволи да почука със свит показалец. Отлости трите резета, запречващи отвън вратата на апартамента с обитателката, която упорито оставаше глуха за неговия зов. Затвори безшумно вратата и влезе в будоара. Помещението тънеше в мрак, единствено лампата с абажур на пианото хвърляше приглушена светлина. В дъното на спалнята, в съседство с будоара, рязко неоново бяло петно от банята открояваше ярко края на апартамента. Насочи се в полумрака към уредбата и спря звука, прекъсвайки първите ноти на музиката от плочата с The Man I Love. Овладя гнева си, преди да промърмори с равен, лишен от упрек тон една все пак кисела забележка относно разумния срок за гримиране, избор на рокля и подбор на подходящи бижута, съобразени с вечерята, на която той и Ева бяха канени. После отиде до банята и сподави ругатнята си, когато видя младата жена, потънала в гъст пашкул от синкава пяна. Въздъхна. Ева пресрещна погледа му; стори му се, че съзира предизвикателство, и това го накара да се ухили. Поклати глава, почти развеселен от подобна детинщина, и напусна апартамента… Когато се върна в салона на партера, си наля скоч от бара до камината и го изпи наведнъж. Алкохолът опари стомаха му и лицето му се сви в болезнена гримаса. Отиде до интерфона, свързан с апартамента на Ева, натисна бутона и се прокашля, след което изрева, притиснал устни до пластмасовата решетка: – Умолявам те, побързай, боклук такъв! Ева подскочи стреснато, когато двете колонки от 300 вата, скрити в преградите на будоара, възпроизведоха с пълна мощ рева на Ришар. Тя потръпна, преди да излезе бавно от огромната кръгла вана и да навлече хавлията. Седна пред тоалетната масичка и започна да се гримира с бързи и резки движения. Управляваният от Роже мерцедес напусна вилата във Везине и се насочи към Сен-Жермен. Ришар наблюдаваше отпуснатата до него Ева. Тя пушеше небрежно, поднасяйки от време на време цигарето от слонова кост до тънките си устни. Уличните лампи осветяваха на равни интервали купето на колата и хвърляха мимолетни отблясъци по плътно прилепналата рокля от черна коприна. Ева седеше с отметната назад глава и Ришар не можеше да види лицето ѝ, озарено само от краткото припламване на цигарата.

The 20th century merits the name "The Century of Murder." 1915 Turks slaughtered 2 million Armenians. 1933 to 1954 the Soviet government encompassed the death of 20 to 65 million citizens. 1933 to 1945 Nazi Germany murdered more than 25 million people. 1948 Hindus and Muslims engaged in racial and religious strife that claimed more lives than could be reported. 1970 3 million Bangladesh were killed. 1971 Uganda managed the death of 300,000 people. 1975 Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and murdered up to 3 million people. In recent times more than half a million of Rwanda's 6 million people have been murdered. At present times genocidal strife is underway in Bosnia, Somalia, Burundi and elsewhere. The people of the world have demonstrated themselves to be so capable of forgetting the murderous frenzies in which their fellows have participated that it is essential that one, at least, be remembered and the world be regularly reminded of it. _Consequences of the Holocaust

Every person that has lived with purpose has at one time or another answered these questions: Do you remember who you were before the world, and it's evil stole your hope? Do you remember who you wanted to be before a religion, culture or organization told you to be something you were not? Do you remember what your dream was before they told you that it was unachievable? Do you remember the moments God kept taking you back to the one thing you were best at (but you kept denying it)? Do you remember the moments He handed you the opportunity and you walked away, instead? Do you remember the moments He kept closing the doors on the one thing you wanted because it wouldn't help you? Do you remember it was all going to be okay if you simply believed, but you gave up? For every bad moment, we blamed others, kept score, got even and forgot to live. When you remember your "true self", then you can begin to walk forward once again down the road to discovery, childhood dreams and your life purpose. (Writer's Conference, 2012)

Since the dawn of time, several billion human (or humanlike) beings have lived, each contributing a little genetic variability to the total human stock. Out of this vast number, the whole of our understanding of human prehistory is based on the remains, often exceedingly fragmentary, of perhaps five thousand individuals. You could fit it all into the back of a pickup truck if you didn't mind how much you jumbled everything up, Ian Tattersall, the bearded and friendly curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, replied when I asked him the size of the total world archive of hominid and early human bones. The shortage wouldn't be so bad if the bones were distributed evenly through time and space, but of course they are not. They appear randomly, often in the most tantalizing fashion. Homo erectus walked the Earth for well over a million years and inhabited territory from the Atlantic edge of Europe to the Pacific side of China, yet if you brought back to life every Homo erectus individual whose existence we can vouch for, they wouldn't fill a school bus. Homo habilis consists of even less: just two partial skeletons and a number of isolated limb bones. Something as short-lived as our own civilization would almost certainly not be known from the fossil record at all. In Europe, Tattersall offers by way of illustration, you've got hominid skulls in Georgia dated to about 1.7 million years ago, but then you have a gap of almost a million years before the next remains turn up in Spain, right on the other side of the continent, and then you've got another 300,000-year gap before you get a Homo heidelbergensis in Germany and none of them looks terribly much like any of the others. He smiled. It's from these kinds of fragmentary pieces that you're trying to work out the histories of entire species. It's quite a tall order. We really have very little idea of the relationships between many ancient species which led to us and which were evolutionary dead ends. Some probably don't deserve to be regarded as separate species at all.

The temporary alliance between the elite and the mob rested largely on this genuine delight with which the former watched the latter destroy respectability. This could be achieved when the German steel barons were forced to deal with and to receive socially Hitler's the housepainter and self-admitted former derelict, as it could be with the crude and vulgar forgeries perpetrated by the totalitarian movements in all fields of intellectual life, insofar as they gathered all the subterranean, nonrespectable elements of European history into one consistent picture. From this viewpoint it was rather gratifying to see that Bolshevism and Nazism began even to eliminate those sources of their own ideologies which had already won some recognition in academic or other official quarters. Not Marx's dialectical materialism, but the conspiracy of 300 families; not the pompous scientificality of Gobineau and Chamberlain, but the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"; not the traceable influence of the Catholic Church and the role played by anti-clericalism in Latin countries, but the backstairs literature about the Jesuits and the Freemasons became the inspiration for the rewriters of history. The object of the most varied and variable constructions was always to reveal history as a joke, to demonstrate a sphere of secret influences of which the visible, traceable, and known historical reality was only the outward façade erected explicitly to fool the people. To this aversion of the intellectual elite for official historiography, to its conviction that history, which was a forgery anyway, might as well be the playground of crackpots, must be added the terrible, demoralizing fascination in the possibility that gigantic lies and monstrous falsehoods can eventually be established as unquestioned facts, that man may be free to change his own past at will, and that the difference between truth and falsehood may cease to be objective and become a mere matter of power and cleverness, of pressure and infinite repetition. Not Stalin’s and Hitler's skill in the art of lying but the fact that they were able to organize the masses into a collective unit to back up their lies with impressive magnificence, exerted the fascination. Simple forgeries from the viewpoint of scholarship appeared to receive the sanction of history itself when the whole marching reality of the movements stood behind them and pretended to draw from them the necessary inspiration for action.

These ideas can be made more concrete with a parable, which I borrow from John Fowles’s wonderful novel, The Magus. Conchis, the principle character in the novel, finds himself Mayor of his home town in Greece when the Nazi occupation begins. One day, three Communist partisans who recently killed some German soldiers are caught. The Nazi commandant gives Conchis, as Mayor, a choice — either Conchis will execute the three partisans himself to set an example of loyalty to the new regime, or the Nazis will execute every male in the town. Should Conchis act as a collaborator with the Nazis and take on himself the direct guilt of killing three men? Or should he refuse and, by default, be responsible for the killing of over 300 men? I often use this moral riddle to determine the degree to which people are hypnotized by Ideology. The totally hypnotized, of course, have an answer at once; they know beyond doubt what is correct, because they have memorized the Rule Book. It doesn’t matter whose Rule Book they rely on — Ayn Rand’s or Joan Baez’s or the Pope’s or Lenin’s or Elephant Doody Comix — the hypnosis is indicated by lack of pause for thought, feeling and evaluation. The response is immediate because it is because mechanical. Those who are not totally hypnotized—those who have some awareness of concrete events of sensory space-time, outside their heads— find the problem terrible and terrifying and admit they don’t know any 'correct' answer. I don’t know the 'correct' answer either, and I doubt that there is one. The universe may not contain 'right' and 'wrong' answers to everything just because Ideologists want to have 'right' and 'wrong' answers in all cases, anymore than it provides hot and cold running water before humans start tinkering with it. I feel sure that, for those awakened from hypnosis, every hour of every day presents choices that are just as puzzling (although fortunately not as monstrous) as this parable. That is why it appears a terrible burden to be aware of who you are, where you are, and what is going on around you, and why most people would prefer to retreat into Ideology, abstraction, myth and self-hypnosis. To come out of our heads, then, also means to come to our senses, literally—to live with awareness of the bottle of beer on the table and the bleeding body in the street. Without polemic intent, I think this involves waking from hypnosis in a very literal sense. Only one individual can do it at a time, and nobody else can do it for you. You have to do it all alone.

1 The summer our marriage failed we picked sage to sweeten our hot dark car. We sat in the yard with heavy glasses of iced tea, talking about which seeds to sow when the soil was cool. Praising our large, smooth spinach leaves, free this year of Fusarium wilt, downy mildew, blue mold. And then we spoke of flowers, and there was a joke, you said, about old florists who were forced to make other arrangements. Delphiniums flared along the back fence. All summer it hurt to look at you. 2 I heard a woman on the bus say, “He and I were going in different directions.” As if it had something to do with a latitude or a pole. Trying to write down how love empties itself from a house, how a view changes, how the sign for infinity turns into a noose for a couple. Trying to say that weather weighed down all the streets we traveled on, that if gravel sinks, it keeps sinking. How can I blame you who kneeled day after day in wet soil, pulling slugs from the seedlings? You who built a ten-foot arch for the beans, who hated a bird feeder left unfilled. You who gave carrots to a gang of girls on bicycles. 3 On our last trip we drove through rain to a town lit with vacancies. We’d come to watch whales. At the dock we met five other couples—all of us fluorescent, waterproof, ready for the pitch and frequency of the motor that would lure these great mammals near. The boat chugged forward—trailing a long, creamy wake. The captain spoke from a loudspeaker: In winter gray whales love Laguna Guerrero; it’s warm and calm, no killer whales gulp down their calves. Today we’ll see them on their way to Alaska. If we get close enough, observe their eyes—they’re bigger than baseballs, but can only look down. Whales can communicate at a distance of 300 miles—but it’s my guess they’re all saying, Can you hear me? His laughter crackled. When he told us Pink Floyd is slang for a whale’s two-foot penis, I stopped listening. The boat rocked, and for two hours our eyes were lost in the waves—but no whales surfaced, blowing or breaching or expelling water through baleen plates. Again and again you patiently wiped the spray from your glasses. We smiled to each other, good troopers used to disappointment. On the way back you pointed at cormorants riding the waves— you knew them by name: the Brants, the Pelagic, the double-breasted. I only said, I’m sure whales were swimming under us by the dozens. 4 Trying to write that I loved the work of an argument, the exhaustion of forgiving, the next morning, washing our handprints off the wineglasses. How I loved sitting with our friends under the plum trees, in the white wire chairs, at the glass table. How you stood by the grill, delicately broiling the fish. How the dill grew tall by the window. Trying to explain how camellias spoil and bloom at the same time, how their perfume makes lovers ache. Trying to describe the ways sex darkens and dies, how two bodies can lie together, entwined, out of habit. Finding themselves later, tired, by a fire, on an old couch that no longer reassures. The night we eloped we drove to the rainforest and found ourselves in fog so thick our lights were useless. There’s no choice, you said, we must have faith in our blindness. How I believed you. Trying to imagine the road beneath us, we inched forward, honking, gently, again and again.

For now, the Simple Daily Practice means doing ONE thing every day. Try any one of these things each day: A) Sleep eight hours. B) Eat two meals instead of three. C) No TV. D) No junk food. E) No complaining for one whole day. F) No gossip. G) Return an e-mail from five years ago. H) Express thanks to a friend. I) Watch a funny movie or a stand-up comic. J) Write down a list of ideas. The ideas can be about anything. K) Read a spiritual text. Any one that is inspirational to you. The Bible, The Tao te Ching, anything you want. L) Say to yourself when you wake up, “I’m going to save a life today.” Keep an eye out for that life you can save. M) Take up a hobby. Don’t say you don’t have time. Learn the piano. Take chess lessons. Do stand-up comedy. Write a novel. Do something that takes you out of your current rhythm. N) Write down your entire schedule. The schedule you do every day. Cross out one item and don’t do that anymore. O) Surprise someone. P) Think of ten people you are grateful for. Q) Forgive someone. You don’t have to tell them. Just write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It turns out this has the same effect in terms of releasing oxytocin in the brain as actually forgiving them in person. R) Take the stairs instead of the elevator. S) I’m going to steal this next one from the 1970s pop psychology book Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No: when you find yourself thinking of that special someone who is causing you grief, think very quietly, “No.” If you think of him and (or?) her again, think loudly, “No!” Again? Whisper, “No!” Again, say it. Louder. Yell it. Louder. And so on. T) Tell someone every day that you love them. U) Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love. V) Shower. Scrub. Clean the toxins off your body. W) Read a chapter in a biography about someone who is an inspiration to you. X) Make plans to spend time with a friend. Y) If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares. You know the ones I’m talking about. Z) Deep breathing. When the vagus nerve is inflamed, your breathing becomes shallower. Your breath becomes quick. It’s fight-or-flight time! You are panicking. Stop it! Breathe deep. Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 B.C., there are 196 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines, ONLY THREE OF THEM refer to physical exercise. It basically reads, “Be able to sit up straight.” That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Claudia always tells me that yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going.