Brenda Quotes

Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.

I am strong, but I am tired, Stephen, tired of always having to be the strong one, of always having to do the right thing.

Thomas: Is it [my brain] fixed? Brenda: It worked, judging from the fact that you're not trying to kill us anymore...

Resentment is often a woman's inner signal that she has been ignoring an important God-given responsibility - that of making choices.

The imagination needs moodling,--long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering.

Honey, I've watched a lot of 90210. The parents weren't even on the show once Brandon and Brenda went to college. This is your time - you're supposed to going to frat parties and getting back together with Dylan." "Why does everybody want me to go to frat parties?" "Who wants you to go to frat parties? I was just kidding. Don't hang out with frat guys, Cath, they're terrible. All they do is get drunk and watch 90210.

Claire was going to hate me. Our son was sucked into the pits of hell while I was watching General Hospital. God damn you Brenda and Sonny for making me lose focus.

False hope," she said. "Guess that's better then no hope at all.

Has it ever occurred to you that you might be delusional?' That's what the psychiatrist said, but I think he's wrong. There's an evil flying pizza out there, and it's got Brenda's name on it.

I learned...that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.

Be Sure To Notice When You're Happy

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.

Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his *true* self and not from the self he thinks he *should* be.

Okay, Shane," Agnes said as Brenda's clock gonged midnight. "I got Joey in the kitchen, a cop in the front hall, a dead body in the basement, and you in my bedroom. Where do you want to start?

Right. Lack of opportunities," Daddy says. "Corporate America don't bring jobs to our communities, and they damn sure ain't quick to hire us. Then, shit, even if you do have a high school diploma, so many of the schools in our neighborhoods don't prepare us well enough. That's why when your momma talked about sending you and your brothers to Williamson, I agreed. Our schools don't get the resources to equip you like Williamson does. It's easier to find some crack that it is the find a good school around here. "Now, think 'bout this," he says. "How did the drugs even get in our neighborhood? This is a multibillion-dollar industry we talking 'bout, baby. That shit is flown into our communities, but I don't know anybody with a private jet. Do you?" "No." "Exactly. Drugs come from somewhere, and they're destroying our community," he says. "You got folks like Brenda, who think they need them survive, and then you got the Khalils, who think they need to sell them to survive. The Brendas can't get jobs unless they're clean, and they can't pay for rehab unless they got jobs. When the Khalils get arrested for selling drugs, they either spend most of their life in prison, another billion-dollar industry, or they have a hard time getting a real job and probably start selling drugs again. That's the hate they're giving us, baby, a system designed against us. That's Thug Life.

The girl leaned forward and kissed Thomas on the cheek. “You’re sweet. I really hope we don’t end up killing you, at least.

The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny; whose attitude is: "Tell me more. Tell me all you can. I want to understand more about everything you feel and know and all the changes inside and out of you. Let more come out." And if you have no such friend,--and you want to write,--well, then you must imagine one.

No writing is a waste of time – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good.

Ishte teper e veshtire te futeshe brenda zemres saj.Ishte plot mure te larta akulli dhe rrethuar me mosbesim.Por nese arrije te futeshe,nuk dilje kurre prej aty.

no matter how big you think your problems are, someone else's problems could always be bigger, which makes yours relatively small!

Would I like this boy?" I bit my lip to keep from smiling. "Yeah. I think so. He's nice." "So I imagine you'll need a dress?" "Yeah, probably." "And I'll need a gun." "Dad!

in due time you'll learn there is life after a lost love!

In fact that is why the lives of most women are so vaguely unsatisfactory. They are always doing secondary and menial things (that do not require all their gifts and ability) for others and never anything for themselves. Society and husbands praise them for it (when they get too miserable or have nervous breakdowns) though always a little perplexedly and half-heartedly and just to be consoling. The poor wives are reminded that that is just why wives are so splendid -- because they are so unselfish and self-sacrificing and that is the wonderful thing about them! But inwardly women know that something is wrong. They sense that if you are always doing something for others, like a servant or nurse, and never anything for yourself, you cannot do others any good. You make them physically more comfortable. But you cannot affect them spiritually in any way at all. For to teach, encourage, cheer up, console, amuse, stimulate or advise a husband or children or friends, you have to be something yourself. [...]"If you would shut your door against the children for an hour a day and say; 'Mother is working on her five-act tragedy in blank verse!' you would be surprised how they would respect you. They would probably all become playwrights.

Miss Edmunds was one of his secrets. He was in love with her. Not the kind of silly stuff Ellie and Brenda giggled about on the telephone. This was too real and too deep to talk about, even to think about very much.

as imperfect human beings, any of us, all of us, are subject at some time or another to make mistakes!

...at last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had.

Don't always be appraising yourself, wondering if you are better or worse than other writers. "I will not Reason and Compare," said Blake; "my business is to Create." Besides, since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of Time, you are incomparable.

Movement from Brenda grabbed Thomas's attention. He looked to see her drop the knife away from Minho and step back, absently wiping the small trace of blood there on her pants. "I really would've killed you, ya know," she said in a slightly scratchy voice. Almost husky. "Charge Jorge again and I'll sever an artery." Minho wiped at his small wound with his thumb, then looked at the bright red smear. "That's one sharp knife. Makes me like you more.

If I did not wear torn pants, orthopedic shoes, frantic disheveled hair, that is to say, if I did not tone down my beauty, people would go mad. Married men would run amuck.

Work freely and rollickingly as though you were talking to a friend who loves you. Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters.

...writing is not a performance but a generosity.

You love me?" "Of course I do." My shoulders dropped. "I knew it the day I wanted to punch that idiot's face when he had his hands all over you.

Like water, be gentle and strong. Be gentle enough to follow the natural paths of the earth and strong enough to rise up and reshape the world

My mother’s dress bears the stains of her life: blueberries, blood, bleach, and breast milk; She cradles in her arms a lifetime of love and sorrow; Its brilliance nearly blinds me.

When Van Gogh was a young man in his early twenties, he was in London studying to be a clergyman. He had no thought of being an artist at all. he sat in his cheap little room writing a letter to his younger brother in Holland, whom he loved very much. He looked out his window at a watery twilight, a thin lampost, a star, and he said in his letter something like this: "it is so beautiful I must show you how it looks." And then on his cheap ruled note paper, he made the most beautiful, tender, little drawing of it. When I read this letter of Van Gogh's it comforted me very much and seemed to throw a clear light on the whole road of Art. Before, I thought that to produce a work of painting or literature, you scowled and thought long and ponderously and weighed everything solemnly and learned everything that all artists had ever done aforetime, and what their influences and schools were, and you were extremely careful about *design* and *balance* and getting *interesting planes* into your painting, and avoided, with the most astringent severity, showing the faintest *acedemical* tendency, and were strictly modern. And so on and so on. But the moment I read Van Gogh's letter I knew what art was, and the creative impulse. It is a feeling of love and enthusiasm for something, and in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty in things to others, by drawing it. And Van Gogh's little drawing on the cheap note paper was a work of art because he loved the sky and the frail lamppost against it so seriously that he made the drawing with the most exquisite conscientiousness and care.

Why would a man need both a wife and a mistress? A smart man would seek out and fall in love with a woman who can play both.

Creative power flourishes only when I am living in the present.

Brenda descended the great staircase step by step through alternations of dusk and rainbow.

Several minutes passed. Several more. Nothing but silence and darkness. "I think they're gone," Brenda whispered. She flicked on her torch. "Hello, noses!" a hideous voice yelled from the room. Then a bloody hand reached through the doorway and grabbed Thomas by the shirt.

Inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly and all the time.

You ever want me to show you what it's like to have a man in your bed, you know where to find me.

If you are lost, I will find you. If you are in danger, I will protect you," he said seriously. "It's what a gentleman does, Elysse." ~Alexi de Warenne to Elysse O'Neil

Her good weight was 150 pounds, and 178 pounds was her top. Consequently, Brenda had three different sets of clothes hanging in her closet, labeled GOOD, MEDIUM and FAT AS A HOG.

Little booooooy," the man said, a taunting and creepy call. Definitely him - Thomas couldn't forget that voice. "Little girrrrrrrrl. Come out come out make a sound make sound. I want your noses.

Yeah, but I want to take a look at your little peashooter. It's kinda cute." "It's a gun," Brenda said. Lula pulled her Glock out of her bag and aimed it at Brenda. "Bitch, this is a gun. It could put a hole in you big enough to drive a truck through.

This land pulses with life. It breathes in me; it breathes around me; it breathes in spite of me. When I walk on this land, I am walking on the heartbeat of the past and the future. And that’s only one of the reasons I am a farmer.

If we can write or sing or create in some way, even when we are dealing with difficulties or pain, then it becomes something bigger than ourselves — and often beautiful.

Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands.

Sometimes, people have a tendency not to notice someone who's always there, even if that person's the best thing for them.

Even more reason to do what the note says,” Thomas said. Brenda’s face showed doubt. “I really think we should

The upshot was that she lost her religion - with a vengeance - and walked out on him, taking these three daughters with her. Faith, Hope and Brenda.

I love you," I murmured. "Only because I give good head," he murmured back. "Gross! Oh my god. Stop." Brenda's voice cried out from the row behind us. "So gross. You're eighty-five years old, for the love of god.

This is the prize I want,” he said. “Let me spend tonight with your heart instead of your head.

Everyone is talented, original and has something important to say.

Everyone knows how people who laugh easily create us by their laughter,--making us think of funnier and funnier things.

They could argue for hours on almost any subject; they usually agreed on broad conclusions, but disagreed on almost every detail.

When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.

The first group I went to, there were introductions: this is Alice, this is Brenda, this is Dover. Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head.

Hapësirën njeriu e ka brenda vetes. Edhe lirinë, apo mungesën e lirisë. Mund të them se unë sot gjej lirinë time vetjake. Kaq.

DeWarenne men love forever

Taste good?” Brenda asked as she dug into her own food. “Please. I’d push my own mom down the stairs to eat this stuff,” Thomas said. “I’d kill your mother for something fresh out of a garden. A nice salad.” “Guess my mom doesn’t have much of a chance if she’s ever standing between us and a grocery store.” “Guess not.

Me faltan kilos, me sobran ropa, personas, horas. ¿En qué momento me darán ganas de ir y tirarme por la ventana? Quizá deba admitir que la tristeza me acomoda porque soy egoísta.

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

We walked through night until there was a poem.

A writer is never just looking out of a window or staring into space. They are building a universe to share with the world

The sound of shuffling pages filled the room like a delicate rainstorm falling on dried leaves.

...the best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it. And what is the purpose of existence Here or Yonder but to discover truth and beauty and express it, i.e., share it with others?

The only way to write well, so that people believe what we say and are interested or touched by it, is to slough off all pretentiousness and attitudinizing.

Tampoco se puede ser humano si cargas los fantasmas que no te corresponden, se llama individualidad

Brenda, do you know God loves you? He really does. To Him, you're perfect, absolutely perfect. You always have been.

If there was one thing Brenda Dyerson was good at, she knew it, was cooking up the scraps destiny had laid out on its plates for her.

It is never too late to go quietly to our lakes, rivers, oceans, even our small streams, and say to the sea gulls, the great blue herons, the bald eagles, the salmon, that we are sorry.

If Ronnie Clarke knew about Brenda and myself I had probably told him a bit more, but I didn't really care. He was a very old friend now, and there are some things that a friend ought to know.

Yes, I hate orthodox criticism. I don't mean great criticism, like that of Matthew Arnold and others, but the usual small niggling, fussy-mussy criticism, which thinks it can improve people by telling them where they are wrong, and results only in putting them in straitjackets of hesitancy and self-consciousness, and weazening all vision and bravery. ...I hate it because of all the potentially shining, gentle, gifted people of all ages, that it snuffs out every year. It is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the very first ones to get killed off. It is the brutal egotists that survive.

Don't cry for the horses That life has set free A million white horses Forever to be Don't cry for the horses Now in God's hands As they dance and they prance To a heavenly band They were ours as a gift But never to keep As they close their eyes Forever to sleep Their spirits unbound On silver wings they fly A million white horses Against the blue sky Look up into heaven You'll see them above The horses we lost The horses we loved Manes and tails flowing They Gallop through time They were never yours They were never mine Don't cry for the horses They will be back someday When our time has come They will show us the way

How anyone becomes herself/is a mystery.

Of course, in fairness, I must remind you of this: that we writers are the most lily-livered of all craftsmen. We expect more, for the most peewee efforts, than any other people.

Books were so much easier to relate to than people.

If you fall out of the boat put your feet up, lie back and relax. Your life jacket knows which way is up. Let the river hold you. You won't drown." -Zambezi River Guide.

I think people are very brave and often are a lot more frightened than they're allowed to admit. Life is much harder to live for most people than we want to admit. And so many things take a summoning up of courage. It makes one's own life a little bit easier when you can acknowledge that. -Ursula LeGuin, interviewed by

At least I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had. Not to preach to them, but to give it to them if they cared to hear it.

The plant people have taught me to be generous and not be shy about blossoming, that it is our nature. I think when others see us, it can inspire them to open up and blossom too and we can be a field ablaze with dignity and beauty together.” —Brenda Salgado

I tried, I really tried, to stick with it. I planned to grow old with this man and possibly die in his arms.

We do not choose our fate, we can only choose if we accept it. Fate will take us where it will, whether we will it or not.” (Sister Mira)

Resentments are like swallowing poison and waiting for the other person to die.

We each have an appointment with death. I’d rather die for a cause than die of old age never having done something important.

No matter where I go, I’ll never forget home. I can feel its heartbeat a thousand miles away. Home is the place where I grew my wings.

Brenda’s pouting voice broke in, “Your girl friend’s dead, and Momma thought you was dead, too.

The guitar breathed. It inhaled and exhaled, and music filled the shop as the instrument picked the heartbreak of generations.

Choose right now or they both die!” Thomas opened his eyes and stepped forward. Then he pointed at Brenda and said the two most foul words to ever pass through his lips. “Kill her.

I stared across the crackling fire at Brenda, the glow lighting up her heart-shaped face. My love for her was carved into my bones.

Having fins in the water was useful to travel quickly, but the bulky appendage left much to be desired for exerting dominance. Something about being unable to sit, legs open, left me feeling feminine.” ~Fin

The two of us were bound together by the thread of grief, but it wasn't just our mutual losses that united us. We'd survived them, found each other, and discovered that sometimes, from darkness can come light.

Remember William Blake who said: "Improvement makes straight, straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius." The truth is, life itself, is always startling, strange, unexpected. But when the truth is told about it everybody knows at once that it is life itself and not made up. But in ordinary fiction, movies, etc, everything is smoothed out to seem plausible--villains made bad, heroes splendid, heroines glamorous, and so on, so that no one believes a word

There is that American pastime known as "kidding" - with the result that everyone is ashamed and hangdog about showing the slightest enthusiasm or passion or sincere feeling about anything.

Now today, moment by moment, realize that each person and event that happens is life for you. Life is not somewhere else. See how fully you can accept the life that presents itself to you now.

We have come to think that duty should come first. I disagree. Duty should be a by-product. Writing, the creative effort, the use of the imagination, should come first – at least, for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you use it. You will become happier, more enlightened, alive, impassioned, light-hearted and generous to everybody else. Even your health will improve. Colds will disappear and all the other ailments of discouragement and boredom.

I wanted it back there, where I can’t see it, to remind me that …” He sighed and rubbed his jaw. “Sometimes even though you can’t see someone, they’re always with you.

Selfishness Stops The Flow Of Blessings To You and Others

Where can we go if not to each other, resenting every step?

Are you aware that Jesus Christ can spell? I get so tired of you spelling every slang and cuss word that crosses your mind, as though you are pulling one over on the Lord.

If I say I will protect you, I will." ~Alexi de Warenne to Elysse O'Neill

Todos queremos el futuro porque es una promesa de que en algún momento se te va a quitar la estupidez.

¿Por qué los llaman desaparecidos y no se atreven a llamarlos muertos? Porque los muertos somos los que los buscamos, ellos siempre, siempre seguirán vivos.

But the great artists like Michelangelo and Blake and Tolstoi--like Christ whom Blake called an artist because he had one of the most creative imaginations that ever was on earth--do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. Why, it never occurs to them. "Be not anxious for the morrow," and "which of you being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?" So they dare to be idle, i.e. not to be pressed and duty-driven all the time. They dare to love people even when they are very bad, and they dare not to try and dominate others to show them what they must do for their own good.

Nice to meet you,“ Brenda replied, I’m a Crank. I’m slowly getting crazy. I keep wanting to chew off my own fingers and randomly kill people. Thomas here promised to save me.” Though she was obviously joking, she didn’t even crack a smile. Thomas had to hide a wince. “Funny, Brenda.” “Glad to see you still have a sense of humor about it,” Teresa said. But her face could’ve turned water to ice.

(from A Love Story, Eight Takes) 

8
 As it turns out, there is a wrong way to tell this story.
 I was wrong to tell you how multi-true everything is,

 when it would be truer to say nothing. 
I've invented so much and prevented more.

 But I'd like to talk with you about other things,
 in absolute quiet. In extreme context.

 To see you again, isn't love revision? 
It could have gone so many ways. 

This just one of the ways it went.
 Tell me another.

Ask me about my childhood, and I will tell you to walk to the edge of the woods with a choir of crickets chirping from every direction, a hot, humid breeze brushing through your hair, your feet, bare and callused. Stand there, unmoving, and watch the dance of ten thousand fireflies blinking on and off in the darkness. Inhale the scent of cured tobacco, freshly plowed southern soil, burning leaves, and honeysuckle. Swallow the taste of blackberries, picked straight from the bushes, and lick your teeth, the after-taste still sweet in your mouth. Now, stretch out on the ground and relax all your muscles. Watch nature's festival of flickering lights.

She tugged warningly on his shirt. "I am serious! Are you going to marry me, Sean? Finally?" He smiled, and the light of his smile filled his eyes. "Damn it, Elle! Will you not let me take the lead? Ladies do not propose marriage!" ~Sean O'Neill & Eleanor de Warenne

accepting a situation doesn't mean you have to be okay with it. You can take steps to change things, but then you need to detach from the outcome & accept how things turn out. You keep doing your best & accept reality. If you keep getting upset over things you have no control over, you have no peace

know, but the way I see it, there’s really no pure race. Everybody is mixed with something.

The love of a woman, a good woman, is the greatest gift a man could ever receive.

The future of my child is unknown but I have loved him, supported him, and taught him right from wrong. I will continue to do so...

Would I dance with you? Both forever and rather die. / It would be like dying, yes. Yes I would.

Life is full of surprises" she said softly."It's hardly ever black and white.

Porque engendrar odio es fácil, lo difícil es poder superar eso,

The past can only be accepted. It can’t be forgotten, edited or erased. And it can never be changed. Anonymous

Está muy cabrón eso de vivir para el futuro porque ya te sientes inútil en el presente y miserable en el pasado.

I know this isn't easy for anyone - nothing worth doing is every easy" Brenda to Maisie Dobbs

Nothing - not prestige, power or pride - is worth sacrificing the things that you truly want, the things that you truly love. "Don't be afraid to take time and smell the roses. Don't hesitate in seeking out those things you hold dear. Seeking them out and holding on to them. And don't ever cease standing up for what you believe in, and fighting for those things that you want. Life is too short. Do what makes you happy, regardless of how others might feel.

Cdo gjë mund të kalohet në këtë botë të mallkuar. Ndrydhi të gjitha ndjenjat, vdis nga brenda dhe cdo gjë do të kaloj lehtë. Vdis për së gjalli, ashtu sic bëjnë më të shumtët e njerëzve, në të shumtën e kohës. Besoj se kjo është rruga më e mire.

The guitar poured out its soul, its history, its dreams, its pain, its victories, its secrets. The guitar’s strings purred with blues and ended with a haunting solitary song with no lyrics.

Në çdo humbje që pësonin popujt, gratë dhe vajzat kishin gjithmonë pjesën e tyre. Herë e padukshme, herë gjysmë e tillë, e shpesh e padukshme, vetë drama e femrave kishte një lidhje me atë të artit. Në vitin e fundit të mijëvjeçarit të dytë brenda disa javësh, vajzat dhe gratë e reja të Kosovës do të mbanin mbi pjesët më intime të tyre, gjithë peshen dhe mizorinë e ndoshta një mijë vjetëve. Përdhunime, gjinj të shqyer, dhe buzë të njoma po ashtu.

(about William Blake) As for Blake's happiness--a man who knew him said: "If asked whether I ever knew among the intellectual, a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me." And yet this creative power in Blake did not come from ambition. ...He burned most of his own work. Because he said, "I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy." ...He did not mind death in the least. He said that to him it was just like going into another room. On the day of his death he composed songs to his Maker and sang them for his wife to hear. Just before he died his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened and he burst into singing of the things he saw in heaven.

Contrary to the Harvard Business School model of vocal leadership, the ranks of effective CEOs turn out to be filled with introverts, including Charles Schwab; Bill Gates; Brenda Barnes, CEO of Sara Lee; and James Copeland, former CEO of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.

Then like a bird, he gingerly landed on a protruding rock inside the monstrous cavern. I looked up at the wet walls teaming with sea life and reeled back feeling like I was going to lose my balance when I felt him reach around and carefully lift me off. He placed me so I could stand on the rock in front of him. His strong arms wrapped tightly around me so I wouldn’t fall. We stood in astonishment deafened by the noise of the waves hitting the reef all around us. The warmth of his chest radiated against me. I molded my body up against his, my heart erupting in a flutter that caused my legs to weaken. “What do you think?” he whispered into my ear. I felt his hot breath against the side of my neck, which caused me to be light-headed as my heart raced even harder. “Awesome,” I whispered, which was all I could get out as I slinked into his chest a little bit more.

You are nothing like the others. You aren't like anyone I've ever met. I swear it. Now that I've had a taste of you, no one else will ever be enough for me. I need you...only you. Alex, you have my heart.

All gifts are riddles, all lives/are in the middle of mother-lives.

It's Up to You To Get Your Dreams and Goals Moving

A Truthful Evaluation Of Yourself Gives Feedback For Growth and Success

sometimes the only thing wrong with you is thinking something's wrong with you.

What if all possible pain was only the grief of truth?

A struggle is a preparation for what is yet to come. -Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes

Oh, I forgot to tell you the rest of it —he’s a widower now, so they can ride off together into the sunset, their wedding rings glinting.

We need to remember the past so that we can more clearly see where we are going.

The only way to find your true self is by recklessness and freedom.

Don't blame me, Pongo,' said Lord Ickenham, 'if Lady Constance takes her lorgnette to you. God bless my soul, though, you can't compare the lorgnettes of to-day with the ones I used to know as a boy. I remember walking one day in Grosvenor Square with my aunt Brenda and her pug dog Jabberwocky, and a policeman came up and said the latter ought to be wearing a muzzle. My aunt made no verbal reply. She merely whipped her lorgnette from its holster and looked at the man, who gave one choking gasp and fell back against the railings, without a mark on him but with an awful look of horror in his staring eyes, as if he had seen some dreadful sight. A doctor was sent for, and they managed to bring him round, but he was never the same again. He had to leave the Force, and eventually drifted into the grocery business. And that is how Sir Thomas Lipton got his start.

Why should we all use our creative power …? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money. BRENDA UELAND

I found that many gifted people are so afraid of writing a poor story that they cannot summon the nerve to write a single sentence for months. The thing to say to such people is: "See how *bad* a story you can write. See how dull you can be. Go ahead. That would be fun and interesting. I will give you ten dollars if you can write something thoroughly dull from beginning to end!" And of course, no one can.

I've been melted into something too easy to spill. I make more and more of myself in order to make more and more of the baby. He takes it, this making. And somehow he's made more of me, too.

I pull over a colored guy who’s driving, probably stoned, with his kids in the car! I smell marijuana! Out of the blue, this scumbag tells me he’s got a gun and a license to carry. Why does he tell me that? Does he plan to shoot me? “Show me your hands, I tell him. He ignores me, Brenda! He reaches down into his pocket. Is he reaching for the gun? Why won’t he show me his hands? He’s not ‘the black guy’ or ‘the white guy,’ dammit! He’s the guy with the fucking gun!

A crack of a tree limb and falling foliage forced me to open my eyes. A tree fell right above my head, frightened birds flew out of the leaves and a cackle of laughter echoed across the ravine – extreme happiness mingled with the loathing hate. Selfishly, I prayed the fight would end in my favor and quickly. But then suddenly I heard something that sounded like a sizzling firework and felt someone’s surprise turned into fear… then nothing. The evil vanished. I breathed a sigh of relief too soon as the branch shifted in the earth next to me. “Hurry!” I cried, but it was too late. I screamed as I fell, knowing I was about to die.

Que se acabara todo de una vez y para siempre. Que hubiera un terremoto, una bomba, una guerra, una pistola, unos insurrectos rencorosos, una araña venenosa, un edificio de veinte pisos, una valentía. Nunca he sido valiente, por eso sigo viva.

I know,” he finally responded. “But it was so … vicious. So brutal. I wish I could’ve just shot him from a distance with a gun or something.” “Yeah. Sorry it had to go down that way.” “What if I see his nasty face every night when I go to sleep? What if he’s in my dreams?” He felt a surge of irritation at Brenda for making him stab the Crank—maybe unwarranted when he really considered how desperate they’d been.

...some small part of her had reacted to the passion inside him. Despite his role as a titled gentleman, there seemed to be a facet inside him that society could not tame, something stimulating yet dangerous, like standing at the edge of a cliff and feeling the mysterious, subtle pull to jump.

The dress only means something if you want it to. What is important are the people behind it. When it comes to these things that are handed down from generation to generation, each woman leaves her own mark on it, so that it tells ours story, stitch by stitch.

I am not a twenty-two-year-old boy; I am not a besotted fool. If you think to jilt me, think again. For I will not turn tail and run the other way as he did, oh no. I will find you, and I will drag you to the altar on your back if need be, no matter how you might be screaming. No matter how scandalous it might be.

Change. Unlearning yourself is more important than knowing yourself.

I thought losing Robert was the hardest thing I’d ever been through. But it wasn’t. Moving on from it was.

Friends tell you what you want to hear,” Dani said. “Real friends tell you what you need to hear.

Books are majical. With books we can be anyone, go everywhere, and do anything.

A great musician once told me that one should never play a single note without hearing it, feeling that it is true, thinking it beautiful.

Farm labor had stained his hands, but music stained his heart.

A high, positive vibration attracts positive events, people and situations; a low, negative vibration attracts more negativity.

Think of yourself as an incandescent power, illuminated and perhaps forever talked to by God and his messengers.

I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five or six mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day.

How could I have ever loved Peg? I love you." And too late, he realized that the words he had just spoken were the truth. He closed his eyes, holding her even more tightly, allowing himself to finally realize and identify his feelings. He was stunned by their enormity, their intensity, their power. ~Sean O'Neill

No te rindas, por favor no cedas, aunque el frío queme, aunque el miedo muerda, aunque el sol se esconda, y se calle el viento, aún hay fuego en tu alma, aún hay vida en tus sueños…”.

I want to assure you with all earnestness, that no writing is a waste of time, – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good. It has stretched your understanding.

Though she was obviously joking, she didn’t even crack a smile. Thomas had to hide a wince. “Funny, Brenda.” “Glad to see you still have a sense of humor about it,” Teresa said. But her face could’ve turned water to ice. Thomas looked down at his watch. Fifty-five minutes left. “I, um, need to talk to Newt.” He turned and quickly walked away before either girl could say anything. He wanted to be as far away from both of them as possible. Newt was sitting on the ground with Frypan and Minho, all three looking as if they were waiting for the end of the world.

When I was a young, fireflies were as magical to me as a rare southern snow, newborn puppies, and a full moon. Back then, fireflies came in masses, filling the nearby brush and woods with the golden-green glow of something elusive and mysterious.

I know I have no right to ask for exclusiveness beyond that point, but until then, I want to know that no other man is on your mind, in your heart or a part of your soul. When I make love to you, I want you to be mine in every way a woman can belong to a man.

Brenda is staring at Roamer and the rest of the crying herd, her eyes dry and angry. I know what she's feeling. Here are these people who called him 'freak' and never paid attention to him, except to make fun of him or spread rumors about him, and now they are carrying on like professional mourners, the ones you can hire in Taiwan or the Middle East to sing, cry, and crawl on the ground. His family is just as bad.

Curiously, the darkness seemed to have something to do with Harriet, Ron's intended, and I thought for a time that it was simply the reality of Harriet's arrival that had dramatized the passing of time: we had been talking about it and now suddenly it was here — just as Brenda's departure would be here before we knew it.

For when you come to think of it, the only way to love a person is not, as the stereotyped Christian notion is, to coddle them and bring them soup when they are sick, but by listening to them and seeing and believing in the god, in the poet, in them. For by doing this, you keep the god and the poet alive and make it flourish.

Brenda burst in. “Do you know what some people do? They charge something and wear it, and then take it back and say it didn’t fit or something. The stores don’t give ’em no trouble.” Her father turned in a kind of roar. “I never heard such a fool thing in my life. Didn’t you hear your mother tell you to shut your mouth, girl!

You got folks like Brenda, who think they need them to survive, and then you got the Khalils, who think they need to see them to survive. The Brendas can't get jobs unless they're clean, and they can't pay for rehab unless they got jobs. When the Khalils get arrested for selling drugs, they either spend most of their life in prison, another billion-dollar industry, or they have a hard time getting a real job and probably start selling drugs again. That's the hate they're giving us, baby, a system designed against us. That's Thug Life' (170)

The truth had lacerated him to the bone, had punctured his heart, and had ripped through his soul. The truth had slain him and tended to his wounds. The truth had hated him and loved him. The truth had opened his eyes to his own faults.

For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. —Acts 4:20 NKJV

Cambiar. Desconocerse es más importante que conocerse.

You are successful when you accomplish the goals and dreams you set for yourself.

Kindness isn't so difficult, when the object is worthy.

No tengo hábito de lectura, habito en ella.

The true self is always in motion - like music, a river of life, changing, moving, failing, suffering, learning, shining.

Even though the aquarium divider is gone, the mollies act as if the barrier is still there. Are we like mollies, stuck in the world we’re used to?

I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five- or six-mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day. I have done this for many years. It is at these times I seem to get re-charged. If I do not walk one day, I seem to have on the next what van Gogh calls "the meagerness.""The meagerness," he said, "or what is called depression." After a day or two of not walking, when I try to write I feel a little dull and irresolute. For a long time I thought that the dullness was just due to the asphyxiation of an indoor, sedentary life (which all people who do not move around a great deal in the open air suffer from, though they do not know it).

Girls practically invented programming,” she said. “Jean Bartik, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas—they all programmed ENIAC.” I had no idea what she was talking about. “And don’t forget Margaret Hamilton. She wrote the software that let Apollo 11 land on the moon.” “I meant programming video games,” I said. “Dona Bailey, Centipede. Brenda Romero, Wizardry. Roberta Williams, King’s Quest. She designed her first computer game at the kitchen table. I interviewed her for school last year.

Someone told me that their child was diagnosed with ADHD. They wanted to know how I handle the day to day. It's hard on me but it's harder on them. I cry sometimes which means they probably do to. I worry that the world will never give them the chance they deserve but I am. I get frustrated when they are treated badly but they feel worse. I keep trying, I keep learning, and I keep telling their story. Just love your child and don't give up. They need you to be the person that understands.

There is a certain concentrated, avid-for-blood look that appears on the faces of reporters on the trail of a very big story that you'd have to visit the big cat house at the zoo to see duplicated in its primal state. From the look on Brenda's face, if a tiger was standing between her and this story right now, the cat would soon have a tall-journalist-sized hole in him.

PICK YOUR FABRIC “The importance of this step cannot be understated. If you pick the wrong fabric, your dress is doomed from the start. Pick a fabric that has the right weight, that will flatter the design. And the figure of the bride who will wear it. Once you pick your fabric, the die is cast. There is no going back.

Mom knows that BPD can cause her to see people as perfect or evil. She named me Polarity, spanning positive and negative, to remind her that I'm not one or the other.” ... “She wanted to be sure that she never judged me the way that borderlines tend to do.

[4It is hard to be carefree when you have many anxieties. But the more you have, the more necessary it is to feel carefree for a time, so that you will get some new ideas on how to deal with your anxieties.]

A’ight, so what do you think it means?” “You don’t know?” I ask. “I know. I wanna hear what YOU think.” Here he goes. Picking my brain. “Khalil said it’s about what society feeds us as youth and how it comes back and bites them later,” I say. “I think it’s about more than youth though. I think it’s about us, period.” “Us who?” he asks. “Black people, minorities, poor people. Everybody at the bottom in society.” “The oppressed,” says Daddy. “Yeah. We’re the ones who get the short end of the stick, but we’re the ones they fear the most. That’s why the government targeted the Black Panthers, right? Because they were scared of the Panthers?” “Uh-huh,” Daddy says. “The Panthers educated and empowered the people. That tactic of empowering the oppressed goes even further back than the Panthers though. Name one.” Is he serious? He always makes me think. This one takes me a second. “The slave rebellion of 1831,” I say. “Nat Turner empowered and educated other slaves, and it led to one of the biggest slave revolts in history.” “A’ight, a’ight. You on it.” He gives me dap. “So, what’s the hate they’re giving the ‘little infants’ in today’s society?” “Racism?” “You gotta get a li’l more detailed than that. Think ’bout Khalil and his whole situation. Before he died.” “He was a drug dealer.” It hurts to say that. “And possibly a gang member.” “Why was he a drug dealer? Why are so many people in our neighborhood drug dealers?” I remember what Khalil said—he got tired of choosing between lights and food. “They need money,” I say. “And they don’t have a lot of other ways to get it.” “Right. Lack of opportunities,” Daddy says. “Corporate America don’t bring jobs to our communities, and they damn sure ain’t quick to hire us. Then, shit, even if you do have a high school diploma, so many of the schools in our neighborhoods don’t prepare us well enough. That’s why when your momma talked about sending you and your brothers to Williamson, I agreed. Our schools don’t get the resources to equip you like Williamson does. It’s easier to find some crack than it is to find a good school around here. “Now, think ’bout this,” he says. “How did the drugs even get in our neighborhood? This is a multibillion-dollar industry we talking ’bout, baby. That shit is flown into our communities, but I don’t know anybody with a private jet. Do you?” “No.” “Exactly. Drugs come from somewhere, and they’re destroying our community,” he says. “You got folks like Brenda, who think they need them to survive, and then you got the Khalils, who think they need to sell them to survive. The Brendas can’t get jobs unless they’re clean, and they can’t pay for rehab unless they got jobs. When the Khalils get arrested for selling drugs, they either spend most of their life in prison, another billion-dollar industry, or they have a hard time getting a real job and probably start selling drugs again. That’s the hate they’re giving us, baby, a system designed against us. That’s Thug Life.

I had long since managed a degree of detachment when dealing with photographs from homicide cases. They no longer upset me as they once did, although I make it a point not to dwell on them. By the time I stood in Shirley Lewis’s office, I had seen thousands of body pictures. I had seen pictures of Kathy Devine and Brenda Baker in Thurston County, but that was months before it was known there was a “Ted.” Of course, there were no bodies to photograph in the other Washington cases, and I had had no access to Colorado or Utah pictures. Now, I was staring down at huge color photographs of the damage done to girls young enough to be my daughters—at pictures of damage alleged to be the handiwork of a man I thought I knew. That man who only minutes before had smiled the same old grin at me, and shrugged as if to say, “I have no part of this.” It hit me with a terrible sickening wave. I ran to the ladies’ room and threw up.

Una no es tonta, me doy cuenta que en otros lugares a una la ven mal: si no trae una ropita de marca, no es nadie; si no trae carro, no es nadie; si trae carro pero no es del año, mal. Por un lado te dicen que le eches ganas, que mejores la raza, que no te quedes pobre, pero si le buscas, te dicen arribista, pinche arribista que te avergüenzas de los tuyos, pero si te quedas en donde dicen que es tu lugar, pues entonces luego luego se te nota lo india, lo quesdillera, lo verdulera, lo totonaca. Y si sí es cierto que estás morena, pues ya te chingaste, te quedas abajo, para que te pisoteen, ésa es la ley de la vida.

(about William Blake) [Blake] said most of us mix up God and Satan. He said that what most people think is God is merely prudence, and the restrainer and inhibitor of energy, which results in fear and passivity and "imaginative death." And what we so often call "reason" and think is so fine, is not intelligence or understanding at all, but just this: it is arguing from our *memory* and the sensations of our body and from the warnings of other people, that if we do such and such a thing we will be uncomfortable. "It won't pay." "People will think it is silly." "No one else does it." "It is immoral." But the only way you can grow in understanding and discover whether a thing is good or bad, Blake says, is to do it. "Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." For this "Reason" as Blake calls it (which is really just caution) continually nips and punctures and shrivels the imagination and the ardor and the freedom and the passionate enthusiasm welling up in us. It is Satan, Blake said. It is the only enemy of God. "For nothing is pleasing to God except the invention of beautiful and exalted things." And when a prominent citizen of his time, a logical, opining, erudite, measured, rationalistic, Know-it-all, warned people against "mere enthusiasm," Blake wrote furiously (he was a tender-hearted, violent and fierce red-haired man): "Mere enthusiasm is the All in All!

While I slept you stood in the colorful night market with pyramids of bright fruit piled high Where those who loved you, rushing back to their intimate stalls, held out pears that had been dreamed for you And would the dream pear not come gladly once it knew this was you wanting to take it in? The dream pear chose reality, wanting your mouth as I did - Honestly, it was happy to be bitten.

I asked about the price of the guitars, reminding him that if expected me to man the cash register, I’d need to know what to charge. He told me, 'There ain’t no set price on these babies. Take what the customer offers you. Even if it’s his soul.

My friends never seem to yell at their kids. Even when their kids are behaving hideously, they pull them aside and say, now sweetie, you know you shouldn't, blah, blah, blah. Please don't yadda, yadda, okay sweetie? Maybe it's some bullshit show they put on for non-family members, but I'd have to be on happy pills to act like that

Yo entendía a Diego. Desde que llegamos a España estábamos como amputados, pero sin diagnóstico. Como que nos faltaba algo, pero todos lo negaban. ¿Faltarnos algo? ¡Al contrario! ¡Si lo habíamos conseguido todo: casa, papeles, mamá! ¿Qué nos podían amputar? Pues México, pen- saba yo. Nos amputan México. Pero México no como país, sino como lo que dicen que es saudade. Te da saudade, te enfermas, te mueres un poco.

Secret, smug believers! God never gives you more than you can bear, they like to say, as if the strong should be punished for their strength: We can bear it. So we got it. But what about my baby? How weak does a newborn have to be to escape God's burdens?

Now before going to a party, I just tell myself to listen with affection to anyone who talks to me, to be in their shoes when they talk, to try to know them without my mind pressing against theirs, or arguing, or changing the subject. No. My attitude is: 'Tell me more.' This person is showing me his soul. It is a little dry and meager and full of grinding talk just now, but presently he will begin to think, not just automatically to talk. He will show his true self. Then he will be wonderfully alive.' ...Creative listeners are those who want you to be recklessly yourself, even at your very worst, even vituperative, bad-tempered. They are laughing and just delighted with any manifestation of yourself, bad or good. For true listeners know that if you are bad-tempered it does not mean that you are always so. They don't love you just when you are nice; they love all of you.

I like the way you look at me,” I admit. “Like I hung the moon.” “To me, you did. And I like the way you look at me. Like I’m all right just the way I am.” I balk at that. “You’re so much more than ‘all right.’ You’re perfect.” “I’m not, though,” she says softly. “Perfect in my eyes.

I'm Perfect at Feelings,
 so I have no problem telling you
 why you cried over the third lost
 metal or the mousetrap. I knew
 that orgasms weren't your fault 
and that feeling of keeping solid
 in yourself but wanting an ecstatic
 black hole was just bad beauty. 

 Certain loves were perfect
 in the daytime and had every 
right to express carnally behind
 the copy machine and there are 
no hard feelings for the boozy 
sodomy and sorry XX daisy chain,
 whenever it felt right for you.

 And when the moment of soft 
levitation with erasing hands 
made you feel dirty, like
 the main person to think up love
 in the first place, I knew that.
 It's okay, you're an innocent
 with the brilliance of an animal stuffing yourself sick on a kill.
 Don't, don't feel like the runt alien 
on my ship: I get you. I know
 the dimensions of your wishing 
and losing and don't think you
 a glutton with petty beefs. But
 even I, who know your triggers,

 your emblematic sacs of sad fury,
 I understand why the farthest fat trees 
sliver down with your disappointment 
and why the big sense of the world,
 wrong before you, shrugs but
 somewhere grasps your spinning,
 stunning, alone. But you have me.

During my childhood, I saw at least ten thousand fireflies shimmering their amber lights in the darkness and never once longed to dissect a single one to discover the source of its magic. I’m older now, my youth behind me, and fireflies continue to fill me with the joy of childhood. I refuse to dissect their magic. We all need a miracle or two or three to cling to, and I will always cling to the miracle of fireflies on a summer’s night.

In the same way there is much, much in all of us, but we do not know it. No one ever calls it out in us, unless we are lucky enough to know intelligent, imaginative, sympathetic people who love us and have the magnanimity to encourage us, to believe in us, by listening, by praise, by appreciation, by laughing. If you are going to write, you must become aware of this richness in you and come to believe in it and know it is there so that you can write opulently with with self-trust. Once you become aware of it, have faith in it, you will be all right. But it is like this: if you have a million dollars in the bank and don't know, it doesn't so you any good.

He said he’d heard the sound of one hand clapping. He said, once his mind took in the wondrous no-sound of holy oneness, the empty echo of eternal bliss, he was never the same. He could hear it still, he said, resounding in the ether and tickling the back of his brain. Something not normal was going on with his brain. No argument there.

If the two meanings of 'heart' are 'center' and 'part,' then the word 'art' also forms a perplexing doubleness: it is something human-made with materials; that is, it is made of us. Art is life. And yet it is distinct from 'life.' Art is life's counterpoint. We make it, and in that making, art is pointedly not life. It is just made of us.

Books are silent friends, and should be treated well. I am proud of my books. I hope that my children will use them and preserve them when I am gone from this world. Human friends may betray you, but not so with books. Books contain wisdom for our understanding, humour for our entertainment, information for our development, and matter for our pleasure.

When I describe for my far-away friends the Northwest’s subtle shades of weather — from gloaming skies of ‘high-gray’ to ‘low-gray’ with violet streaks like the water’s delicate aura — they wonder if my brain and body have, indeed, become water-logged. Yet still, I find myself praising the solace and privacy of fine, silver drizzle, the comforting cloaks of salt, mold, moss, and fog, the secretive shelter of cedar and clouds. Whether it’s in the Florida Keys, along the rocky Maine coast, within the Gulf of Mexico’s warm curves, on the brave Outer Banks; or, for those who nestle near inland seas, such as the brine-steeped Great Salk Lake or the Midwest’s Great Lakes — water is alive and in relationship with those of us who are blessed with such a world-shaping, yet abiding, intimate ally. Every day I am moved by the double life of water — her power and her humility. But most of all, I am grateful for the partnership of this great body of inland sea. Living by water, I am never alone. Just as water has sculpted soil and canyon, it also molds my own living space, and every story I tell. …Living by water restores my sense of balance and natural rhythm — the ebb and flow of high tides and low tides, so like the rise and fall of everyday life. Wind, water, waves are not simply a backdrop to my life, they are steady companions. And that is the grace, the gift of inviting nature to live inside my home. Like a Chambered Nautilus I spin out my days, drifting and dreaming, nurtured by marine mists, like another bright shell on the beach, balancing on the back of a greater body.