Cardboard Sign Quotes

I Believe in Bonnie and Clyde the sign read. Finn read it again, and then again, not sure what to make of it. Then he looked at Bonnie and shrugged. "So?" ... "So?" she hissed. "It's a sign!" "Yeah. It is. A cardboard sign." "Finn! It has our names on it!" "Names which happen to be the same as a very well-known pair. He could have written 'I believe in Sonny and Cher' or 'Beavis and Butthead' or Peanut Butter and Jelly." Bonnie looked a little crestfallen. He'd taken the magic out of the moment. ...

The anti-life of [Jerry Falwell] proves only one thing: that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and truth in this country if you'll just get yourself called Reverend. People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup.

Whenever Ingrid and I got out of the suburbs, into Berkeley or San Francisco, and saw how other people lived, Ingrid would cry at the smallest of things- a little boy walking home by himself, a discarded cardboard sign saying HUNGRY PLEASE HELP. She would snap a picture, and by the time she lowered her camera, tears would already be falling. I always felt kind of guilty that I didn't feel as sad as she did, but now, watching Dylan, I think that's probably a good thing. I mean, you see a million terrible things every day, on the news and in the paper, and in real life. I'm not saying that it's stupid to feel sad, just that it would be impossible to let everything get to you and still get some sleep at night.

[On Jerry Falwell] No, and I think it’s a pity there isn’t a hell for him to go to... The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing: that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you’ll just get yourself called Reverend. Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God’s punishment if they hadn’t got some kind of clerical qualification. People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup.

My mom tries to comfort me by saying that girls like Heather Campbell tend to peak early in life and then quickly fade. That's why she looks so much better than everyone now. But by the time I go to my ten-year reunion, I'll be way prettier than she is. To which I always reply with the same statement, "I don't want to be pretty in ten years. I want to be pretty now." Because what good is it to me now that I might or might not be drop-dead gorgeous when I'm twenty-seven? It's not like I can go to school every day with a big cardboard sign around my neck that says, "Trust me, in ten years, I'll look like this." And then an arrow pointing to a picture of a supermodel.

-believed in carnal love. To us, a book's words were holy, but the paper, cloth, cardboard, glue, thread, and ink that contained them were a mere vessel, and it was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated. Hard use was a sign not of disrespect but of intimacy.

I'm...um...I've got guests in my studio. I don't know how they undid my secure barricade made of cardboard signs that said KEEP OUT! and SECRET ROOM! in all caps with an exclamation point, but it's my program director, Lauren, and some man I've never seen bef - but no, I have seen him before.

He held the camera out for me to see. It was a women, her sunken eyes looking straight at the camera. 'I don't want your money', her cardboard sign read. 'Just look at me so I know I exist'. The words and her expression were arresting on their own, but they weren't what made the photograph so compelling. It was the people in the foreground, the passersby, eyes glued to their phones as they hurried to wherever they were going at lunch, completely oblivious of the women with the sign.

There is a trailer that I pass on the drive to my parents’ house in Robards, and obstructing the dance of the overgrown weeds is a Trump sign. Last summer, another sign went up next to it. The sign, handily made of cardboard and black marker, said, “EXTRA FRUITS AND VEGGIES FROM GARDEN, STOP BY AND GET YOU SOME.

Have you noticed how many of these stories have kings who wanted sons? I don’t know what’s up with that. You’d think no royal family ever had boys—like Greece was littered with kings standing on the side of the road holding cardboard signs that read: WILL WORK FOR SONS PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW TO HAVE BOY CHILDREN.

To the man who was hustling to sell facemasks for years before Covid, living rough on the streets and warning us of the nightmare to come. May your cardboard doomsday signs be framed and celebrated. May we always heed your warnings in future, no matter if the next plague requires wearing glittering buttplugs 24/7 to ward off the Coronass virus of 2021. May we never take you and your wild ramblings for granted again. We will buy your buttplugs, good sir. Just name your price.

One afternoon, Reeves and a colleague were having lunch in Central Park. On the way back to their Madison Avenue office, they encountered a man sitting in the park, begging for money. He had a cup for donations and beside it was a sign, handwritten on cardboard, that read: I AM BLIND. Unfortunately for the man, the cup contained only a few coins. His attempts to move others to donate money were coming up short. Reeves thought he knew why. He told his colleague something to the effect of: “I bet I can dramatically increase the amount of money that guy is raising simply by adding four words to his sign.” Reeves’s skeptical friend took him up on the wager. Reeves then introduced himself to the beleaguered man, explained that he knew something about advertising, and offered to change the sign ever so slightly to increase donations. The man agreed. Reeves took a marker and added his four words, and he and his friend stepped back to watch. Almost immediately, a few people dropped coins into the man’s cup. Other people soon stopped, talked to the man, and plucked dollar bills from their wallets. Before long, the cup was running over with cash, and the once sad-looking blind man, feeling his bounty, beamed. What four words did Reeves add?   It is springtime and   The sign now read:   It is springtime and I am blind.   Reeves won his bet. And we learned a lesson. Clarity depends on contrast.

and all the songs were in the language of the cardboard signs she saw everywhere she went. Please Help. Need Help. Help me. Trying to get home. Lost everything. Signs written in want, need, must, hungry, sick, lonely, scared. Songs for people who couldn’t escape the weight that pressed down on their backs like a mountain, crushed them to the ground, who couldn’t walk because they were too tired, who couldn’t run away because their feet were in chains, who couldn’t think of a solution because they were too hungry to think past their next meal.

He trotted over with a big grin on his face. He wore a faded Hawaiian shirt and nothing for pants except thick brown goat fur. His massive Afro jiggled. His eyes were hidden behind little round rainbow-tinted glasses. He held a cardboard sign that read: WILL WORK SING TALK GO AWAY FOR DENARII. “Hi, Don,” Hazel said. “Sorry, we don’t have time—” “Oh, that’s cool! That’s cool!” Don trotted along with them. “Hey, this guy’s new!” He grinned at Percy. “Do you have three denarii for the bus? Because I left my wallet at home, and I’ve got to get to work, and—” “Don,” Hazel chided. “Fauns don’t have wallets. Or jobs. Or homes. And we don’t have buses.” “Right,” he said cheerfully, “but do you have denarii?

I have not yet described to you the most singular part. About six years ago—to be exact, upon the 4th of May, 1882—an advertisement appeared in the Times asking for the address of Miss Mary Morstan and stating that it would be to her advantage to come forward. There was no name or address appended. I had at that time just entered the family of Mrs. Cecil Forrester in the capacity of governess. By her advice I published my address in the advertisement column. The same day there arrived through the post a small card-board box addressed to me, which I found to contain a very large and lustrous pearl. No word of writing was enclosed. Since then every year upon the same date there has always appeared a similar box, containing a similar pearl, without any clue as to the sender.

When you leave a job, one of the hardest decisions you have to make on cleaning out your desk is what to do with the coffinlike cardboard tray holding 958 fresh-smelling business cards. You can’t throw them out— they and the nameplate and a few sample payroll stubs are proof to yourself that you once showed up at that building every day and solved complicated, utterly absorbing problems there; unfortunately, the problems themselves, though they once obsessed you, and kept you working late night after night, and made you talk in your sleep, turn out to have been hollow: two weeks after your last day that already have contracted into inert pellets one-fiftieth of their former size; you find yourself unable to create the sense of what was really at stake, for it seems to have been the Hungarian 5/2 rhythm of the lived workweek alone that kept each fascinating crisis inflated to its full interdepartmental complexity. But coterminously, while the problems you were paid to solve collapse, the nod of the security guard, his sign-in book, the escalator ride, the things on your desk, the site of colleagues’ offices, their faces seen from characteristic angles, the features of the corporate bathroom, all miraculously expand: and in this way what was central and what was incidental end up exactly reversed.

They may have been singing and wearing pretty scarves, but their signs and placards were clear. Anne had tied one to Tony’s pram that read MY MUMMY WANTS TO HELP WIN THE WAR. Maeve and her girls had used chalk to write on blackout cards NURSERIES FOR KIDS, WAR WORK FOR MOTHERS, while another pram sported a sign saying HELP MUMMY HELP OUR DADDY. Two women I didn’t recognise held pieces of cardboard that read WE NEED NURSERIES TO HELP WIN THE WAR.

Thai prostitution was a haven for the men and a nuisance for the women. The streets of Phuket were outlined with bars ready to nourish thirsty sailors with euphoric intoxication to smother their pinched nerves from their personal lives deteriorating in their six-month absence. Thailand truly lived up to its port reputation. Hundreds of bikini-clad prostitutes littered the strip. Slim and petite, their narrow hips and flat chests appeared to be the appropriate age for the pink plaid schoolgirl skirts, dress shirts, ties, and pigtails intended to entice pedophilic eroticism. They wore heavy coats of pastel liquid shadow that clashed against their yellow tinted tans. They awkwardly wiggled to a nauseating blend of techno and Reggaeton as cotton-haired granddaddies lustfully gawked at them. Any Caucasian male cannot trek a block without the treatment of a pop culture heartthrob with a trail of Thai teens at his heels. “Wan hunnet baaht!” they taunt in a nasal screech. “Wan hunnet baht and I suck yo cock!” The oriental beauties cup their fists and hold them to their mouths as they wiggle their tongues against their cheeks to provide a clear visual for their performance skills. It’s easy to dismiss the humanity in Thai prostitutes. Their splotchy, heavily accented English allows the language barrier to muffle signs of intellect. They’re overtly sexual in their crotch bearing ensembles, loud and vulgar invitations, and provocative dancing that makes even corner butcher shops feel like Vegas strip clubs. Swarms of them linger in front of bars holding cardboard signs scribbled with magic marker that offer a blow job with the first beer purchased. Their eyes burn into passing tourists, with acute radar for creamy, sun-flushed complexions and potbellies - signals of the deep pockets of white male privilege.

From other shelters, there were stories of singing “Deutschland über Alles” or of people arguing amid the staleness of their own breath. No such things happened in the Fiedler shelter. In that place, there was only fear and apprehension, and the dead song at Rosa Hubermann’s cardboard lips. Not long before the sirens signaled the end, Alex Steiner—the man with the immovable, wooden face—coaxed the kids from his wife’s legs. He was able to reach out and grapple for his son’s free hand. Kurt, still stoic and full of stare, took it up and tightened his grip gently on the hand of his sister. Soon, everyone in the cellar was holding the hand of another, and the group of Germans stood in a lumpy circle. The cold hands melted into the warm ones, and in some cases, the feeling of another human pulse was transported. It came through the layers of pale, stiffened skin. Some of them closed their eyes, waiting for their final demise, or hoping for a sign that the raid was finally over. Did they deserve any better, these people? How many had actively persecuted others, high on the scent of Hitler’s gaze, repeating his sentences, his paragraphs, his opus? Was Rosa Hubermann responsible? The hider of a Jew? Or Hans? Did they all deserve to die? The children? The answer to each of these questions interests me very much, though I cannot allow them to seduce me. I only know that all of those people would have sensed me that night, excluding the youngest of the children. I was the suggestion. I was the advice, my imagined feet walking into the kitchen and down the corridor. As is often the case with humans, when I read about them in the book thief’s words, I pitied them, though not as much as I felt for the ones I scooped up from various camps in that time. The Germans in basements were pitiable, surely, but at least they had a chance. That basement was not a washroom. They were not sent there for a shower. For those people, life was still achievable.

Apple Core   Outside the morning is cold. He sits at his desk, his fingers motionless on the keyboard. A blanket covers his shoulders and a coffee mug half full of soy milk and Folgers loiters to his right. The surrounding room is strewn with papers, some failed attempts, some nothing at all. Unsealed envelopes and empty packs of cigarettes, unfinished books and drained beer bottles, a dictionary and a worn notebook mixed in with laundry, plastic bags, and cardboard boxes. He sits and stares at his   computer screen, no more than a title punched out along the top of the page. Thoughts swirl around him and the clock face blinks overhead. His speakers lie silent, his printer still. A burned out candle sits next to unopened whiskey. Notes taped to every surface are lorded over by an Easter card signed with familiar names. They speak to the urgency of the world around him. His breakfast is left unfinished, except for the apple, whose core he has wrapped in a napkin and tossed on top of his overflowing wastebasket.

WILL WORK FOR FOOD © 2013 Lyrics & Music by Michele Jennae There he was with a cardboard sign, Will Work For Food Saw him on the roadside, As I took my kids to school I really didn’t have time to stop, Already running late Found myself pulling over, Into the hands of fate The look in his eyes was empty, But he held out his hand I knew my kids were watching, As I gave him all I had My heart in my throat I had to ask, “What brought you here?” He looked up and straight into my eyes, I wanted to disappear. CHORUS He said… Do you think I really saw myself, Standing in this light Forgotten by society, After fighting for your rights WILL WORK FOR FOOD, WILL DIE FOR YOU I AM JUST A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO v. 2 He put the money in his pocket, Then he took me by the hand Thank you dear for stopping by, I am sure that you have plans He nodded toward my children, Watching from afar It’s time they were off to school, You should get in the car My eyes welled up and tears fell down, I couldn’t say a word Here this man with nothing to his name, Showing me his concern I knew then that the lesson, That today must be taught Wouldn’t come from textbooks, And it could not be bought CHORUS He said… Do you think I really saw myself, Standing in this light Forgotten by society, After fighting for your rights WILL WORK FOR FOOD, WILL DIE FOR YOU I AM JUST A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO v. 3 I told him then that I had a job, That I could give him work And in return he’d have a meal, And something to quench his thirst He looked at me and shrugged a bit, And followed me to the car We went right over to a little café, Just up the road not too far After I ordered our food he looked at me, And asked about the kids “Shouldn’t these tykes be in school, And about that job you said.” “Your job,” I said, “is to school my girls, In the ways of the world Explain to them your service, And how your life unfurled.” He said… Do you think I really saw myself, Standing in this light Forgotten by society, After fighting for your rights WILL WORK FOR FOOD, WILL DIE FOR YOU I AM JUST A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO v. 4He wasn’t sure quite what to do, As he ate his food And began to tell us all about his life… the bad… the good. He wiped his own tears from his eyes, His story all but done My girls and I all choked up, Hugged him one by one Understanding his sacrifice, But not his current plight We resolved then and there that day, That for him, we would fight. We offered him our friendship, And anything else we had He wasn’t sure how to accept it, But we made him understand LAST CHORUS That we had not really seen before, Him standing in the light No longer forgotten by us, We are now fighting for his rights He had… WORKED FOR FOOD HE HAD ALL BUT DIED FOR ME AND YOU NOT FORGOTTEN ANYMORE BUT STILL A SOLDIER IN TRUST

Initially the driver asked the passengers to stay seated and remain on the bus, but after a half hour of conferring with his supervisors, he informed the passengers that another bus was being sent to their location to take them to Los Angeles. The driver gave them an hour and reiterated that the journey would resume on the new bus at ten thirty, and to please be prompt so they wouldn’t be left behind. He gave them a quick tour-guide style run-down of the available restaurants and sites to see in Primm, including a huge Buffalo shaped pool at Buffalo Bills Hotel, and the roller coaster that Finn was suddenly determined to ride. But when the bus driver mentioned that the bullet riddled car of the infamous outlaws, Bonnie and Clyde, was on display at Whiskey Pete’s Hotel and Casino, he and Bonnie looked at each other in wide-eyed wonder. Finn had started to laugh, almost choking on his disbelief. “Now that, Infinity, is a sign,” Bonnie drawled, and immediately scowled. “William’s sign is still in Bear’s car. I’ve got to get it back. If I only come out of this trip with one souvenir, that’s the one I want. A cardboard sign and a big, blond husband. That’s all I ask.

He knew that you didn’t win justice by carrying a sign or a cardboard coffin. You earned it by being on the side of the righteous, by being unswayed from that

Don't Laugh At Me" I'm a little boy with glasses The one they call the geek A little girl who never smiles 'Cause I've got braces on my teeth And I know how it feels To cry myself to sleep. I'm that kid on every playground Who's always chosen last A single teenage mother Tryin' to overcome my past You don't have to be my friend Is it too much to ask? [Chorus:] Don't laugh at me, don't call me names Don't get your pleasure from my pain In God's eyes we're all the same Someday we'll all have perfect wings Don't laugh at me. I'm the cripple on the corner You pass me on the street I wouldn't be out here beggin' If I had enough to eat And don't think that I don't notice That our eyes never meet. I lost my wife and little boy Someone crossed that yellow line The day we laid 'em in the ground Is the day I lost my mind Right now I'm down to holdin' This little cardboard sign. [Chorus:] Don't laugh at me, don't call me names Don't get your pleasure from my pain In God's eyes we're all the same Someday we'll all have perfect wings Don't laugh at me. I'm fat, I'm thin, I'm short, I'm tall I'm deaf, I'm blind, hey aren't we all? [Chorus:] Don't laugh at me, don't call me names Don't get your pleasure from my pain In God's eyes we're all the same Someday we'll all have perfect wings Don't laugh at me.

William climbed into the car, and just before he shut the door, Bonnie asked him if she could borrow his cardboard sign, just for a second. He acquiesced, obviously, because Bonnie Rae grabbed it as William pulled the door closed, and then she held it over the roof of the car, showing Finn, who still stood next to the driver’s side door. Bonnie’s eyes were almost as wide and crazy as George Orrin Dillinger’s. She pointed at the words on the sign fiercely, not speaking. I Believe in Bonnie and Clyde the sign read. Finn read it again, and then again, not sure what to make of it. Then he looked at Bonnie and shrugged. “So?” “So?” she hissed. “It’s a sign!” “Yeah. It is. A cardboard sign.” “Finn! It has our names on it!” “Names which happen to be the same names as a very well-known pair. He could have written ‘I believe in Sonny and Cher’ or ‘Beavis and Butthead’ or ‘peanut butter and jelly.’” Bonnie looked a little crestfallen. He’d taken the magic out of the moment. He was good at that. “And now we have a smelly guy named William with the initials, G.O.D. in our backseat. And I’m not happy about it, Bonnie Rae.” “His initials are G.O.D!” Bonnie’s eyes were seriously going to pop out of her skull. The magic was back. Finn moaned and then started laughing, once again not even sure how any of this could possibly be real. He even pinched himself, just to make sure he’d actually woken up this morning to a pop star in his arms, a Bear on his front steps, and now, God in his backseat

...another city, existing alongside the glossy one I knew. This city was composed of dead ends and blind alleys and back streets full of garbage bags, and had its own cast of inhabitants, who lived in a permanent stench of urine and decay and had to be nudged to life with a toe before one could question them as to Droyd’s whereabouts. Sometimes they were too intoxicated to speak; sometimes they tried to make up stories in the hope of getting some change. Sometimes they didn’t respond to the toe, and we would have to roll them over and squint at their grubby faces till we were sure they weren’t him. The sheer volume of these wretched people was incredible. And as we made our way back down Grafton Street, I realized that they were here too, had been here all along, living their heroiny lives: slumped by cash machines, lurking in suspicious-looking groups around dustbins, making lunatic speeches to office workers who scurried by pretending not to hear, or simply ghosting wall-eyed through the crowd, with beakers from McDonald’s and misspelled cardboard signs. It was slow, painful work. As the day dragged on, and yet another pile of garbage bags disclosed yet another human form, it started to seem as if there could hardly be anyone left who hadn’t, in some fashion, fallen through the cracks; and the city began to take on the appearance of a newspaper photo, when you look at it close up and at some unannounced point the image gives way, leaving you with a collection of unsignifying dots in a vast empty space; so much space that you forget there had ever been a picture at all.

The girl in the knee-length white dress wasn’t just waving at me and holding a cardboard sign with my name in Sharpied

with a brown craft cardboard box and heavy crayola sign: MEN’S COSTUMES above it for the evening’s performance, he looked me up and down

Walking downtown in a cool October drizzle, Justin and I were offered an umbrella by a middle-aged stranger in an olive bowler hat. “It’s extra,” he said, bowing down slightly. “I brought it because I knew someone would need it.” A palpable force seemed to be unifying the people of the city, the sudden camaraderie of solidarity. Arriving in the Financial District, we saw a tent city in Manhattan’s heart. A thousand people were gathered on the grass of Zuccotti Park, wielding cardboard signs with powerful reminders: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free” and “We are the 99%.” Chatting with the campers, individuals who strongly reminded us of thru-hikers from the trail, we learned that this patchwork rally was a coordinated response to our country’s growing wealth gap.

Someone had spray-painted “Que pasa?” on the passenger’s-side door of his truck. The question-mark dot was a peace sign. I stepped up and in, lowering myself amongst the seat debris. Cardboard coffee cups rolled around at my feet. I wondered if he’d ever driven up to Ma’s tollbooth—if coins had ever passed between them. My weight slanted his whole truck; the ride through Easterly felt lopsided. Luckily, he played the radio at a volume that ruled out conversation. The truck rattled and creaked and reeked of gasoline.

maybe you should just make a giant cardboard sign to wear the next time you see her that reads “I DON’T CARE.

My future plans involve standing at traffic junctions with a cardboard sign, begging for money.

The small cardboard sign said Spider ?-2011 in her best writing. Millie ran her fingers over the line in between the question mark and Spider's death-year. Back and forth, back and forth. It was strange, she thought, that this line - this long, straight line - was all there was to show of his whole life.

She stood. He Stood. They stood on different corners with cardboard signs. Signs that read "Why lie? I need love." signs. © 2013 All Rights Reserved.