β
The farther you go...the harder it is to return. The world has many edges and it's easy to fall off.
β
β
Anderson Cooper (Dispatches From The Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival)
β
Don't touch her," he growled.
There was a note in his voice that would of scared me if it had been directed toward me. He shoved me behind him, putting his body protectively in front of mine with my back to the table. Guardians came at us from all directions,and Dimitri began dispatching them with the same deadly grace that had once made people call him a god.
β
β
Richelle Mead (Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy, #5))
β
When I was a kid I believed everything I was told, everything I read, and every dispatch sent out by my own overheated imagination. This made for more than a few sleepless nights, but it also filled the world I lived in with colors and textures I would not have traded for a lifetime of restful nights.
β
β
Stephen King (Nightmares and Dreamscapes)
β
At fifty times the distance, you dispatched that ko-bold with three arrows to the neck. Iβve earned a trio to the chest. Seems you slapped him while youβre tickling me. You doona want to kill me, which is a good sign. Maybe this is your way of flirting?
β
β
Kresley Cole (Pleasure of a Dark Prince (Immortals After Dark, #8))
β
In the rough-and-tumble play of politics, dog-whistle messages are copiously dispatched over the heads of the grassroots people that cannot see the writing on the wall and have to remain in the cold, like dumb puppets on a string. ("What after bowling alone?" )
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.
β
β
Ernest Hemingway (By-Line: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades)
β
Alec?" Magnus was staring at him. He had dispatched the remaining Iblis demons, and the square was empty but for the two of them. "Did you just- did you just save my life?"
Alec knew he ought to say something like, Of course, because I'm a Shadowhunter and that's what we do, or That's my job. Jace would have said something like that. Jace always knew the right thing to say. But the words that actually came out of Alec's mouth where quite different- and sounded petulant, even to his own ears. "You never called me back," he said. "I called you so many times and you never called me back."
Magnus looked at Alec as if he'd lost his mind. "Your city is under attack," he said. "The wards have broken, and the streets are full of demons. And you want to know why I haven't called you?
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3))
β
Each childβs story is worthy of telling. There shouldnβt be a sliding scale of death. The weight of it is crushing.
β
β
Anderson Cooper (Dispatches From The Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival)
β
Never postpone until tomorrow what you can postpone until the day after.
β
β
Raoul Wallenberg (Letters and Dispatches 1924-1944)
β
The low bird is not picked tenderly out of the dust by its fellows; rather, it is dispatched quickly and without mercy.
β
β
Stephen King (Carrie)
β
I believe the first draft of a book β even a long one β should take no more than three monthsβ¦Any longer and β for me, at least β the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave duiring a period of severe sunspot activity.
β
β
Stephen King (On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft)
β
A crowded society is a restrictive society; an overcrowded society becomes an authoritarian, repressive and murderous society.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
How came the bodies of animals to be contrived with so much art, and for what ends were their several parts?
Was the eye contrived without skill in Opticks, and the ear without knowledge of sounds?...and these things being rightly dispatchβd, does it not appear from phΓ¦nomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent...?
β
β
Isaac Newton (Opticks: Or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light-Based on the Fourth Edition London, 1730)
β
Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
When guns are outlawed, only the Government will have guns. The Government - and a few outlaws. If that happens, you can count me among the outlaws.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
There was the smell of old books, a smell that has a way of making all libraries seem the same. Some say that smell is asbestos.
β
β
Scott Douglas (Quiet, Please: Dispatches From A Public Librarian)
β
I took the other road, all right, but only because it was the easy road for me, the way I wanted to go. If I've encountered some unnecessary resistance that's because most of the traffic is going the other way.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
There is no idea so bad that it cannot be made to look brilliant with the proper application of fonts and color.
β
β
Scott Adams (Dilbert's Guide to the Rest of Your Life: Dispatches from Cubicleland)
β
Anger is the privilege of the truly broken, and yet, I've never met a woman who was broken enough that she allowed herself to be angry.
β
β
Lyz Lenz (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
β
The Set animalβs jaws were pried open so fast that it yelped and let go of my arm. I stood, now encased in a magical barrier twice my normal size, and kicked Leroy into a wall.
Good! said Horus. Now dispatch the beast to the netherworld!
Quiet man. Iβm doing all the work.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, #1))
β
I am convinced that grandkids are inherently evil people who tell their grandparents to "just go to the library and open up an e-mail account - it's free and so simple.
β
β
Scott Douglas (Quiet, Please: Dispatches From A Public Librarian)
β
Always remember that as long as other people are gullible, there's no limit to what you can achieve.
β
β
Scott Adams (Dilbert's Guide to the Rest of Your Life: Dispatches from Cubicleland)
β
A house built on greed cannot long endure.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
The one thing ... that is truly ugly is the climate of hate and intimidation, created by a noisy few, which makes the decent majority reluctant to air in public their views on anything controversial. ... Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
It is more like carrying something really heavy, forever. You do not get to put it down: you have to carry it, and so you carry it the way you need to, however it fits best.
β
β
Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
β
Anyone not paranoid in this world must be crazy. . . . Speaking of paranoia, it's true that I do not know exactly who my enemies are. But that of course is exactly why I'm paranoid.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
Not everyone gets sex when they want it. Not everyone gets love when they want it. This is true for men and women. A relationship is not your reward for being a nice guy, no matter what the movies tell you.
β
β
Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
β
I have spoken here of heavenly help, of angels dispatched to bless us in time of need. But when we speak of those who are instruments in the hand of God, we are reminded that not all angels are from the other side of the veil. Some of them we walk with and talk withβhere, now, every day. Some of them reside in our own neighborhoods. Some of them gave birth to us, and in my case, one of them consented to marry me. Indeed heaven never seems closer than when we see the love of God manifested in the kindness and devotion of people so good and so pure that angelic is the only word that comes to mind.
β
β
Jeffrey R. Holland
β
If it's knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
The black widow, who had dispatched a lover or two, was sought out for her wisdom. The young spider asked her, "Did you keep his harmful secret under the threat of danger, or did you spin a web so confusing that he didn't know if you were friend or foe? Did you release him from the web and your presence or will you give another the venom in which to finish him?" The black widow was quiet and then said, "All of the above.
β
β
Donna Lynn Hope
β
I am hopeful, though not full of hope, and the only reason I don't believe in happy endings is because I don't believe in endings.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
The four cornerstones of the American political psyche are 1) emotion substituted for thought, 2) fear, 3) ignorance and 4) propaganda
β
β
Joe Bageant (Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War)
β
Hard work is rewarding. Taking credit for other people's hard work is rewarding and faster.
β
β
Scott Adams (Dilbert's Guide to the Rest of Your Life: Dispatches from Cubicleland)
β
In the land of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, one brave and honest man is bound to create a scandal.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
I now find the most marvelous things in the everyday, the ordinary, the common, the simple and tangible.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
No one gets to rake over the details of my life and determine if they think what happened to me was bad enough for me to have earned my scars, my limitations, my superpowers.
β
β
Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
β
Saving the world is only a hobby. Most of the time I do nothing.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
An angry man in cinema is Batman. An angry male musician is a member of Metallica. An angry male writer is Chekhov. An angry male politician is passionate, a revolutionary. He is a Donald Trump or a Bernie Sanders. The anger of men is a powerful enough tide to swing an election. But the anger of women? That has no place in government, so it has to flood the streets.
β
β
Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
β
A world without huge regions of total wilderness would be a cage; a world without lions and tigers and vultures and snakes and elk and bison would be - will be - a human zoo. A high-tech slum.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
Donβt ever use an insult for a woman that you wouldnβt use for a man. Say βjerkβ or βshitheadβ or βasshole.β Donβt say βbitchβ or βwhoreβ or βslut.β If you say βasshole,β youβre criticizing her parking skills. If you say βbitch,β youβre criticizing her gender.
β
β
Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
β
But of the seven deadly sins, wrath is the healthiest - next only to lust.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
Walking is the only form of transportation in which a man proceeds erect - like a man - on his own legs, under his own power. There is immense satisfaction in that.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
The ugliest thing in America is greed, the lust for power and domination, the lunatic ideology of perpetual Growth - with a capital G. 'Progress' in our nation has for too long been confused with 'Growth'; I see the two as different, almost incompatible, since progress means, or should mean, change for the better - toward social justice, a livable and open world, equal opportunity and affirmative action for all forms of life. And I mean all forms, not merely the human. The grizzly, the wolf, the rattlesnake, the condor, the coyote, the crocodile, whatever, each and every species has as much right to be here as we do.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
Write the following: "Private missive, from Lieutenant Master-Sergeant Field Quartermaster Pores, to Fist Kindly. Warmest salutations and congratulations on your promotion, sir. As one might observe from your advancement and, indeed, mine, cream doth rise, etc. In as much as I am ever delighted in corresponding with you, discussing all maner of subjects in all possible idioms, alas, this subject is rather more official in nature. In short, we are faced with a crisis of the highest order. Accordignly, I humbly seek your advice and would suggest we arrange a most private meeting at the earliest convenience. Yours affectionately, Pores." Got that, Himble?'
'Yes sir'
'Please read it back to me.'
'"Pores to Kindly meet in secret when?"'
'Excellent, Dispatch at once, Himble
β
β
Steven Erikson (The Crippled God (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #10))
β
There are people one knows and people one doesn't. One shouldn't cheapen the former by feigning intimacy with the latter.
β
β
Tony Horwitz (Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War)
β
How we react to the tragedy of one small person accurately reflects our attitude towards a whole nationality, and increasing the numbers doesn't change much.
β
β
Anna Politkovskaya (Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches)
β
My brother once called me a hard person. I think he meant that I am a person who does not forgive. This is true. I find it difficult to forgive people who have done harm to me.
β
β
Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
β
Caring about the quality of your work causes stress. Stress can kill you. Maintain good health by remembering that the stockholders are complete strangers who have never done anything for you.
β
β
Scott Adams (Dilbert's Guide to the Rest of Your Life: Dispatches from Cubicleland)
β
The job isn't done until you've blamed someone for the parts that went wrong.
β
β
Scott Adams (Dilbert's Guide to the Rest of Your Life: Dispatches from Cubicleland)
β
I think it is far more important to save one square mile of wilderness, anywhere, by any means, than to produce another book on the subject.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
Why can't we simply borrow what is useful to us from Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, especially Zen, as we borrow from Christianity, science, American Indian traditions and world literature in general, including philosophy, and let the rest go hang? Borrow what we need but rely principally upon our own senses, common sense and daily living experience.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
Our culture is now one of masculine triumphalism, in which transhistorically feminine expressions β empathy, sweetness, volubility, warmth β are seen as impediments to a womanβs professional trajectory in many sectors.
β
β
Antonella Gambotto-Burke (Mama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love)
β
The main difference between marketing and fraud is that criminals have to pay for their own alcohol.
β
β
Scott Adams (Dilbert's Guide to the Rest of Your Life: Dispatches from Cubicleland)
β
Even intellectuals should have learned by now that objective rationality is not the default position of the human mind, much less the bedrock of human affairs.
β
β
Roy Blount Jr. (Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South)
β
Rape was and is a cultural and political act: it attempts to remove a person with agency, autonomy, and belonging from their community, to secrete them and separate them, to depoliticize their body by rendering it detachable, violable, nothing.
β
β
Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
β
Later I would understand that modern industrial communities are obsessed with the importance of βgoing somewhereβ and βdoing something with your lifeβ. The implication is an idea I have come to hate, that staying local and doing physical work doesnβt count for much.
β
β
James Rebanks (The Shepherd's Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape)
β
the waste of words
continues with a stunning persistence
for all who laugh at us-
no matter, no matter
as long as your shoes are tied and
nobody is walking too close behind.
those constipated minds that seek
larger meaning will be dispatched
with the other garbage.
back off.
if there is light
it will find
you....
β
β
Charles Bukowski
β
Patriotic duty and the disease of nationalism lure us to deny our common humanity
β
β
Chris Hedges (The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress)
β
Instant communication is not communication at all but merely a frantic, trivial, nerve-wracking bombardment of cliches, threats, fads, fashions, gibberish and advertising.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
Simply because humankind have the power now to meddle or 'manage' or 'exercise stewardship' in every nook and cranny of the world does not mean that we have a right to do so. Even less, the obligation.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
You need to come with us right now," one of the queen's guards said. "If you resist, we'll take you by force."
"Leave him alone!" I yelled, looking from face to face. That angry darkness exploded within me. How could they still not believe? Why were they still coming after him? "He hasn't done anything! Why can't you guys accept that he's really a dhampir now?"
The man who'd spoken arched an eyebrow. "I wasn't talking to him."
"You're...you're here for me?" I asked. I tried to think of any new spectacles I might have caused recently. I considered the crazy idea that the queen had found out I'd spent the night with Adrian and was pissed off about it. That was hardly enough to send the palace guard for me, though...or was it? Had I really gone too far with my antics?
"What for?" demanded Dimitri. That tall, wonderful bod of hisβthe one that could be so sensual sometimesβwas filled with tension and menace now.
The man kept his gaze on me, ignoring Dimitri. "Don't make me repeat myself: Come with us quietly, or we will make you." The glimmer of handcuffs showed in his hands.
My eyes went wide. "That's crazy! I'm not going anywhere until you tel me how the hell thisβ"
That was the point at which they apparently decided I wasn't coming quietly. Two of the royal guardians lunged for me, and even though we technically worked for the same side, my instincts kicked in. I didn't understand anything here except that I would not be dragged away like some kind of master criminal. I shoved the chair I'd been sitting in earlier at the one of the guardians and aimed a punch at the other. It was a sloppy throw, made worse because he was taller than me. That height difference allowed me to dodge his next grab, and when I kicked hard at his legs, a grunt told me I'd hit home.
[...]
Meanwhile, other guardians were joining the fray. Although I got a couple of good punches in, I knew the numbers were too overwhelming. One guardian caught hold of my arm and began trying to put the cuffs on me. He stopped when another set of hands grabbed me from the other side and jerked me away.
Dimitri.
"Don't touch her," he growled.
There was a note in his voice that would have scared me if it had been directed toward me. He shoved me behind him, putting his body protectively in front of mine with my back to the table. Guardians came at us from all directions, and Dimitri began dispatching them with the same deadly grace that had once made people call him a god. [...] The queen's guards might have been the best of the best, but Dimitri...well, my former lover and instructor was in a category all his own. His fighting skills were beyond anyone else's, and he was using them all in defense me.
"Stay back," he ordered me. "They aren't laying a hand on you.
β
β
Richelle Mead (Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy, #5))
β
She liked a very particular kind of plot: the sort where the pirate kidnaps some virgin damsel, rapes her into loving him, and then dispatches lots of seamen while she polishes his cutlass. Or where the Highland clan leader kidnaps some virginal English Rose, rapes her into loving him, and then kills entire armies Sassenachs while she stuffs his haggis. Or where the Native American warrior kidnaps a virginal white settler, rapes her into loving him, and then kills a bunch of colonists while she whets his tomahawk. I hated to get Freudian on Linda, but her reading patterns suggested some interesting insight into why she is such a bitch.
β
β
Nicole Peeler (Tempest Rising (Jane True, #1))
β
And the so-called 'political process' is a fraud: Our elected officials, like our bureaucratic functionaries, like even our judges, are largely the indentured servants of the commercial interests.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
[F]or though a very few hours spent in hard labour of incessant talking will dispatch more subjects than can really be in common between any two rational creatures, yet with lovers it is different. Between them no subject is finished, no communication is even made, till it has been made at least twenty times over.
β
β
Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility)
β
How many times did someone have to run in front of a machine gun before it became an act of cowardice?
β
β
Michael Herr (Dispatches)
β
Anarchism? You bet your sweet betsy. The only cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. Much more.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
We speak of men and their rage as if it I laudable. "Men just get mad and push each other and it's over", we say. "Women are just bitches; they never let it go." That's because we never can let it go. Because where would we put it? What system? What faith? What institution has room? Has patience? Has understanding for an angry woman?
β
β
Lyz Lenz (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
β
Hold Everything Dear
β
β
John Berger (Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance)
β
But it is Bella, not the supernaturals she falls in with, who is the true horror show here, at least as a female role model.
β
β
Peggy Orenstein (Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture)
β
Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book's eventual fate.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
Anisha tells me, βA good therapist knows you have to live in the house while you remodel.
β
β
Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
β
Angry women care. Angry women speak and yell and sob their truths.
β
β
Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
β
Yes, there are plenty of heroes and heroines everywhere you look. They are not famous people. They are generally obscure and modest people doing useful work, keeping their families together and taking an active part in the health of their communities, opposing what is evil (in one way or another) and defending what is good. Heroes do not want power over others.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
The Life Ruiner alone didn't ruin me. The world that made him didβthe place that continues to manufacture replicas of him and continues to create the circumstances in which he and his replicas thrive.
What is there to do about that?
β
β
Nora Salem (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
β
The love of a man for his wife, his child, of the land where he lives and works, is for me the real meaning of mystical experience.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
This is rape's legacy, the countless deaths women die just trying to keep existing in the world as it is.
β
β
Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
β
It is only through my daughter that I have come to realise that a life without femininity β devoid of mystery, emotion, gentleness and the unerring power of a womanβs love β is no life at all.
β
β
Antonella Gambotto-Burke (Mama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love)
β
If middle-class Americans do not feel threatened by the slow encroachment of the police state or the Patriot Act, it is because they live comfortably enough and exercise their liberties very lightly, never testing the boundaries. You never know you are in a prison unless you try the door.
β
β
Joe Bageant (Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War)
β
Philosophy without action is the ruin of the soul. One brave deed is worth a hundred books, a thousand theories, a million words. Now as always we need heroes. And heroines! Down with the passive and the limp.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
I suppose each of us has his own fantasy of how he wants to die. I would like to go out in a blaze of glory, myself, or maybe simply disappear someday, far out in the heart of the wilderness I love, all by myself, alone with the Universe and whatever God may happen to be looking on. Disappear - and never return. That's my fantasy.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
One of the pleasant things about small town life is that everyone, whether rich or poor, liked or disliked, has some kind of a role and place in the community. I never felt that living in a city -- as I once did for a couple of years.
β
β
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
β
Most people, when they imagine New England, think about old colonial homes, white houses with black shutters, whales, and sexually morbid WASPs with sensible vehicles and polite political opinions. This is incorrect. If you want to get New England right, just imagine a giant mullet in paint-stained pants and a Red Sox hat being pushed into the back of a cruiser after a bar fight.
β
β
Matt Taibbi (Spanking the Donkey: Dispatches from the Dumb Season)
β
In another Christmas story, Dale Pearson, evil developer, self-absorbed woman hater, and seemingly unredeemable curmudgeon, might be visited in the night by a series of ghosts who, by showing him bleak visions of Christmas future, past, and present, would bring about in him a change to generosity, kindness, and a general warmth toward his fellow man. But this is not that kind of Christmas story, so here, in not too many pages, someone is going to dispatch the miserable son of a bitch with a shovel. That's the spirit of Christmas yet to come in these parts. Ho, ho, ho.
β
β
Christopher Moore (The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror (Pine Cove, #3))
β
Because of course I feared that i might be overreacting, overemotional, oversensitive, weak, playing victim, crying wolf, blowing things out of proportion, making things up. Because generations of women have heard that they're irrational, melodramatic, neurotic, hysterical, hormonal, psycho, fragile and bossy.
Because girls are coached out of the womb to be nonconfrontational, agreeable, solicitous, deferential, demure, nurturing, to be tuned in to others, and to shrink and shut up.
Because speaking up for myself was not how I learned English. Because I'm fluent in Apology, in Question Mark, in Giggle, in Bowing Down, in Self-Sacrifice.
β
β
Elissa Bassist (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
β
There is only one princess in the Disney tales, one girl who gets to be exalted. Princesses may confide in a sympathetic mouse or teacup, but they do not have girlfriends. God forbid Snow White should give Sleeping Beauty a little support. Let's review: princesses avoid female bonding. Their goals are to be saved by a prince, get married, and be taken care of the rest of their lives.
β
β
Peggy Orenstein (Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture)
β
Summary If a boy treats you like youβre special, itβs probably because he wants to come and not because you are a treasure he discovered. You are not a treasure. You are a thing a boy can use to make him ejaculate. This makes sense because you already believe this at your core. You have been taught.
β
β
Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
β
Sometimes people tell me that something bad happened to me, but I am brave and strong. I donβt want to be told that I am brave or strong. I am not right just because he was wrong. I donβt want to be made noble. I want someone willing to watch me thrash and crumple because that, too, is the truth, and it needs a witness. βHe broke me,β I say to a friend. βYouβre not broken,β she whispers back. I turn my palms up, wishing I could show her the pieces.
β
β
Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
β
The only solution for female anger is for her to stop being angry. And yet, when Jesus flipped tables in the temple, his rage was lauded. King David railing to the heavens to rain fire on his enemies is lauded as a man after Godβs own heart. An angry man in cinema is Batman. An angry male musician is a member of Metallica. An angry male writer is Chekhov. An angry male politician is passionate, a revolutionary. He is a Donald Trump or a Bernie Sanders. The anger of men is a powerful enough tide to swing an election. But the anger of women? That has no place in government, so it has to flood the streets.
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Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
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Devoted though we must be to the conservation cause, I do not believe that any of us should give it all of our time or effort or heart. Give what you can, but do not burn yourselves out -- or break your hearts. Let us save at least half of our lives for the enjoyment of this wonderful world which still exists. Leave your dens, abandon your cars and walk out into the great mountains, the deserts, the forests, the seashores. Those treasures still belong to all of us. Enjoy them to the full, stretch your legs, expand your lungs, enliven your hearts -- and we will outlive the greedy swine who want to destroy it all in the name of what they call GROWTH.
God bless America -- let's save some of it.
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet!
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Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
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This crappy, mean, broken-down school took five years of my life. Iβd be mad, but for the fact that it taught me more about who I was than anything else I have ever done. It also made me think that modern life is rubbish for so many people. How few choices it gives them. How it lays out in front of them a future that bores most of them so much they canβt wait to get smashed out of their heads each weekend. How little most people are believed in, and how much it asks of so many people for so little in return.
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James Rebanks (The Shepherd's Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape)
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To the Technocrats: Have mercy on us. Relax a bit, take time out for simple pleasures. For example, the luxuries of electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating, instant electronic communication and such, have taught me to relearn and enjoy the basic human satisfactions of dipping water from a cold clear mountain stream; of building a wood fire in a cast-iron stove; of using long winter nights for making music, making things, making love; of writing long letters, in longhand with a fountain pen, to the few people on this earth I truly care about.
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Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
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Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of it - but we lose the dignity of being real men and women. Power corrupts; attracts the worst and corrupts the best. ... Refuse to participate in evil; insist on taking part in what is healthy, generous, and responsible. Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back. Get down off the fence and lend a hand, grab a-hold, be a citizen - not a subject.
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Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
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I doubt that my sense of personal freedom is any stronger than anybody else's. I'm happy to respect authority when it's genuine authority, based on moral or intellectual or even technical superiority. I'm eager to follow a hero if we can find one. But I tend to resist or evade any kind of authority based merely on the power to coerce. Government, for example. The Army tried to train us to salute the uniform, not the man. Failed. I will salute the man, maybe, if I think he's worthy of it, but I don't salute uniforms anymore.
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Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
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Anger is always reserved for someone else. And yet, I've been in a room with a woman who escaped a war, who lost her father in ethnic cleansing, whose mother burned her hair, whose cousin raped her. "What right do I have to be angry, when I'm alive? she said.
Anger is a privilege of the truly broken, and yet I've never met a woman who was broken enough that she allowed herself to be angry. An angry woman must answer for herself. The reasons for her anger must be picked over, examined, and debated. My anger must stand the scrutiny of the court of law, of evidentiary procedures. I must prove it comes from somewhere justified and not just because one time some man touched my sister. Or because one time some man touched some woman and will continue on and on.
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Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
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But in truth, the world is constantly shifting: shape and size, location in space. It's got edges and chasms, too many to count. They open up, close, reappear somewhere else. Geologists nay have mapped out the planet's tectonic plates -hidden shelves of rock that grind, one against the other, forming mountains, creating continents - but thy can't plot the fault lines that run through our heads, divide out hearts.
The map of the world is always changing; sometimes it happens overnight. All it takes is the blink of an eye, the squeeze of a trigger, a sudden gust of wind. Wake up and your life is perched on a precipice; fall asleep, it swallows you whole
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Anderson Cooper (Dispatches From The Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival)
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I keep thinking about all the kids who got wiped out by seventeen years of war movies before coming to Vietnam to get wiped out for good. You donβt know what a media freak is until youβve seen the way a few of those grunts would run around during a fight when they knew that there was a television crew nearby; they were actually making war movies in their heads, doing little guts-and-glory Leatherneck tap dances under fire, getting their pimples shot off for the networks. They were insane, but the war hadnβt done that to them. Most combat troops stopped thinking of the war as an adventure after their first few firefights, but there were always the ones who couldnβt let that go, these few who were up there doing numbers for the camerasβ¦ Weβd all seen too many movies, stayed too long in Television City, years of media glut had made certain connections difficult.
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Michael Herr (Dispatches)
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Republican or Democrat, this nation's affluent urban and suburban classes understand their bread is buttered on the corporate side. The primary difference between the two parties is that the Republicans pretty much admit that they grasp and even endorse some of the nastiest facts of life in America. Republicans honestly tell the world: "Listen in on my phone calls, piss-test me until I'm blind, kill and eat all of my neighbors right in front of my eyes, but show me the money! Let me escape with every cent I can kick out of the suckers, the taxpayers, and anybody else I can get a headlock on, legally or otherwise." Democrats, in contrast, seem content to catalog the GOP's outrages against the Republic, showing proper indignation while laughing at episodes of The Daily Show. But they stand behind the American brand: imperialism. They "support our troops," though you will be hard put to find any of them who have served alongside them or who would send one of their own kids off to lose an eye or an arm in Iraq. They play the imperial game, maintain their credit ratings, and plan to keep the beach house and the retirement investments if it means sacrificing every damned Lynndie England in West Virginia.
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Joe Bageant (Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War)
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Abelmanβs Dry Goods
Kansas City, Missouri
U.S.A. Mr. I. Abelman, Mongoloid, Esq.:
We have received via post your absurd comments about our trousers, the comments revealing, as they did, your total lack of contact with reality. Were you more aware, you would know or realize by now that the offending trousers were dispatched to you with our full knowledge that they were inadequate so far as length was concerned.
βWhy? Why?β You are, in your incomprehensible babble, unable to assimilate stimulating concepts of commerce into your retarded and blighted worldview.
The trousers were sent to you (1) as a means of testing your initiative (A clever, wide-awake business concern should be able to make three-quarter-length trousers a byword of masculine fashion. Your advertising and merchandising programs are obviously faulty.) and (2) as a means of testing your ability to meet the standards requisite in a distributor of our quality product. (Our loyal and dependable outlets can vend any trouser bearing the Levy label no matter how abominable their design and construction. You are apparently a faithless people.)
We do not wish to be bothered in the future by such tedious complaints. Please confine your correspondence to orders only. We are a busy and dynamic organization whose mission needless effrontery and harassment can only hinder. If you molest us again, sir, you may feel the sting of the lash across your pitiful shoulders.
Yours in anger,
Gus Levy, Pres.
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John Kennedy Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces)
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Let's have some precision in language here: terrorism means deadly violence -- for a political and/or economical purpose -- carried out against people and other living things, and is usually conducted by governments against their own citizens (as at Kent State, or in Vietnam, or in Poland, or in most of Latin America right now), or by corporate entities such as J. Paul Getty, Exxon, Mobil Oil, etc etc., against the land and all creatures that depend upon the land for life and livelihood. A bulldozer ripping up a hillside to strip mine for coal is committing terrorism; the damnation of a flowing river followed by the drowning of Cherokee graves, of forest and farmland, is an act of terrorism.
Sabotage, on the other hand, means the use of force against inanimate property, such as machinery, which is being used (e.g.) to deprive human beings of their rightful work (as in the case of Ned Ludd and his mates); sabotage (le sabot dropped in a spinning jenny) -- for whatever purpose -- has never meant and has never implied the use of violence against living creatures.
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Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
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Because I questioned myself and my sanity and what I was doing wrong in this situation. Because of course I feared that I might be overreacting, overemotional, oversensitive, weak, playing victim, crying wolf, blowing things out of proportion, making things up. Because generations of women have heard that theyβre irrational, melodramatic, neurotic, hysterical, hormonal, psycho, fragile, and bossy. Because girls are coached out of the womb to be nonconfrontational, solicitous, deferential, demure, nurturing, to be tuned in to others, and to shrink and shut up. Because speaking up for myself was not how I learned English. Because Iβm fluent in Apology, in Question Mark, in Giggle, in Bowing Down, in Self-Sacrifice. Because slightly more than half of the population is regularly told that what happens doesnβt or that it isnβt the big deal weβre making it into. Because your mothers, sisters, and daughters are routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied, harassed, threatened, punished, propositioned, and groped, and challenged on what they say. Because when a woman challenges a man, then the facts are automatically in dispute, as is the speaker, and the speakerβs license to speak. Because as women we are told to view and value ourselves in terms of how men view and value us, which is to say, for our sexuality and agreeability. Because it was drilled in until it turned subconscious and became unbearable need: donβt make it about you; put yourself second or last; disregard your feelings but not anotherβs; disbelieve your perceptions whenever the opportunity presents itself; run and rerun everything by yourself before verbalizing itβput it in perspective, interrogate it: Do you sound nuts? Does this make you look bad? Are you holding his interest? Are you being considerate? Fair? Sweet? Because stifling trauma is just good manners. Because when others serially talk down to you, assume authority over you, try to talk you out of your own feelings and tell you who you are; when youβre not taken seriously or listened to in countless daily interactionsβthen you may learn to accept it, to expect it, to agree with the critics and the haters and the beloveds, and to sign off on it with total silence. Because theyβre coming from a good place. Because everywhere from late-night TV talk shows to thought-leading periodicals to Hollywood to Silicon Valley to Wall Street to Congress and the current administration, women are drastically underrepresented or absent, missing from the popular imagination and public heart. Because although I questioned myself, I didnβt question who controls the narrative, the show, the engineering, or the fantasy, nor to whom itβs catered. Because to mention certain things, like βpatriarchy,β is to be dubbed a βfeminazi,β which discourages its mention, and whatever goes unmentioned gets a pass, a pass that condones what it isnβt nice to mention, lest we come off as reactionary or shrill.
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Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)