“
You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
”
”
G.K. Chesterton
“
The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save-the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour-your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life-the greater is the store of your estranged being.
”
”
Karl Marx
“
The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the pub, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which neither moth nor rust will corrupt—your capital. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being.
”
”
Karl Marx (Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844)
“
And if these mountains had eyes, they would wake to find two strangers in their fences, standing in admiration as a breathing red pours its tinge upon earth's shore. These mountains, which have seen untold sunrises, long to thunder praise but stand reverent, silent so that man's weak praise should be given God's attention.
”
”
Donald Miller (Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road)
“
Rembrandt painted portraits, The Karate Kid painted fences, and I paint my toenails. But I’m not a snob, I still consider those other two guys to be artists.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Who Moved My Choose?: An Amazing Way to Deal With Change by Deciding to Let Indecision Into Your Life)
“
We want to decipher skies and paintings, go behind these starry backgrounds or these painted canvases and, like kids trying to find a gap in a fence, try to look through the cracks in the world.
”
”
Georges Bataille
“
That's it, I think, crumpling the pages into one tiny ball of suck. I'm done banging my head against this stone wall; I don't care if I have to begin my article, "Vlad likes three things: fencing, himself, and killing off his siblings." I don't care if I have to lie and —oops— report that Vlad likes finger painting with dolphin blood in his spare time. We're now entering full investigative mode.
”
”
A.M. Robinson (Vampire Crush)
“
I love crafting. Knitting, decoupage, scrapbooking, any "lady-ish" art form, I'm a fan. For about six months each. Then I shove all the supplies in a closet, alongside the skeletons of long dead New Year's resolutions, like saber fencing, playing the ukulele, and Japanese brush painting.
”
”
Felicia Day (You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost))
“
It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling leaves. How beautifully they go to their graves! how gently lay themselves down and turn to mould!--painted of a thousand hues, and fit to make the beds of us living. So they troop to their last resting-place, light and frisky. They put on no weeds, but merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting the spot, choosing a lot, ordering no iron fence, whispering all through the woods about it,--some choosing the spot where the bodies of men are mouldering beneath, and meeting them half-way.
”
”
Henry David Thoreau (Autumnal Tints (Applewood Books))
“
Speak, breathe, prophesy, get behind a pulpit and preach, mark exam papers, run a company or a nonprofit, clean your kitchen, put paint on a canvas, organize, rabble-rouse, find transcendence in the laundry pile while you pray in obscurity, deliver babies for Haitian mothers in the midwifery clinic—work the Love out and in and around you however God has made you and placed you to do it. Just do it. Don’t let the lies fence you in or hold you back.
”
”
Sarah Bessey (Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women)
“
Oh, God, send down fire from heaven to consume the blasphemer,” said Lawson. “What has nature got to do with it? No one knows what’s in nature and what isn’t! The world sees nature through the eyes of the artist. Why, for centuries it saw horses jumping a fence with all their legs extended, and by Heaven, sir, they were extended. It saw shadows black until Monet discovered they were colored, and by Heaven, sir, they were black. If we choose to surround objects with a black line, the world will see the black line, and there will be a black line; and if we paint glass red and cows blue, it’ll see them red and blue, and, by Heaven, they will be red and blue.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)
“
Rembrandt painted portraits, The Karate Kid painted fences, and I paint my ducks' beaks a brighter orange to boost sales. But I’m not a snob—I still consider those other two guys to also be artists.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (BearPaw Duck And Meme Farm presents: Two Ducks Brawling Is A Pre-Pillow Fight)
“
The step through the gates that takes you from painted grounf to bare grass feels heavy.
You think, as you walk away from Le Cirque des Reves and into the creeping dawn, that you felt more awake within the confines of the circus.
You are no longer quite certain which side of the fence is the dream.
”
”
Erin Morgenstern (The Night Circus)
“
The step through the gates that takes you from painted ground to bare grass feels heavy.
You think, as you walk away from Le Cirque des Reves and into the creeping dawn, that you felt more awake within the confines of the circus.
You are no longer quite certain which side of the fence is the dream.
”
”
Erin Morgenstern (The Night Circus)
“
I remember you saying that each individual had a responsibility to do something beautiful in his or her life, even if it was painting a horse fence. The quest for beauty kept us from becoming enamored of evil.
”
”
Abigail Keam (Death By Bridle (Josiah Reynolds Mystery, #3))
“
The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being.
”
”
Karl Marx
“
The truth is that I've never cared anything about sports. In PE, I do my best to get hit with the dodgeball on the first throw so I can sit out and read instead of play. I'd rather eat a hot dog at a baseball game than play baseball. I'd rather paint a soccer ball than kick one. I don't mind running, but only if I'm running toward something wonderful. I don't see the point in running away from anything, ever. But tree climbing is different. Tree climbing is natural and easy and I'm pretty sure I could climb for hours and never get tired. Mama says it's the mountain girl in me. She says mountain girls climb trees and fences and anything else that gets us closer to the stars.
”
”
Natalie Lloyd (A Snicker of Magic)
“
The towering tents are striped in white and black, no golds and crimsons to be seen. No colour at all, save for the neighbouring trees and grass of the surrounding fields. Black-and-white stripes on grey sky; countless tents of varying shapes and sizes, with an elaborate wrought-iron fence encasing them in a colourless world. Even what little ground is visible from outside is black or white, painted or powdered, or treated with some other circus trick.
”
”
Erin Morgenstern
“
Instead of taking a bow for walking on the moon, Colonel Buzz Aldrin, PhD, told his admirers, “It’s something we did. Now we should do something else,” apparently no more satisfied than if he had painted a fence. His desire was not to bask in his glory but to find “something else”—the next big challenge that could hold his interest. This perpetual need to identify a goal and calculate a way to reach it was perhaps the most important factor in his historic success. But it’s not easy having so much dopamine coursing through the control circuits. It almost certainly played a significant role in Aldrin’s post-lunar struggle with depression, alcoholism, three divorces, suicidal impulses, and a stay on a psychiatric ward, which he described in his candid autobiography, Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon.
”
”
Daniel Z. Lieberman (The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity―and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race)
“
And I don’t just mean the fun stuff, like gathering eggs. There’s manure to shovel and fences to paint … This isn’t an easy life.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Stars Above: A Lunar Chronicles Collection (The Lunar Chronicles, #4.5))
“
I wanted to work alone (painting the fence). I wanted to seem outmatched and undermanned by the insanity of the job before me, so that when the Mexicans returned they'd feel sorry for me.
”
”
John Grisham (A Painted House)
“
The faculties of our souls are improved and made useful to us just after the same manner as our bodies are. Would you have a man write or paint, dance or fence well, or
perform any other manual operation dexterously and with ease, let him have ever so much vigour and activity, suppleness and address naturally, yet no body expects this from him unless he has been used to it, and has employed time and pains in fashioning and forming his hand or outward parts to these motions. Just so it is in the mind; would you have a man reason well, you must use him to it betimes, exercise his mind in observing the connection of ideas and following them in train.
”
”
John Locke (Locke's Conduct of the Understanding)
“
dinner. I would climb over the farmer’s fence and toss back to my father samples of the crop I was harvesting. It could be ears of corn or tomatoes or whatever was in season. That’s what you had to do to get by and put food on the table. But the farmers weren’t any too happy with our ideas about sharing in nature’s bounty. Some nights they’d be waiting for us with shotguns. Some farmer would chase me, and I’d jump over the fence and get hit in the butt with birdshot. One
”
”
Charles Brandt ("I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa)
“
I was drawing near to the curve of the track; already the twelve hooves of those dead horses were visible in the distance, jutting towards the sky like the columns in the cathedral crypt at Stará Boleslav. I thought of Masha, and of how we met for the first time, when I was still with the track superintendent. He gave us two buckets of red paint and told us to paint the fence round the entire state workshops. Masha began by the railway track, just as I did. We stood facing each other with the tall wire fence between us, at our feet we each had a bucket of cinnabar paint, we each had a brush, and we stippled away with our brushes opposite each other and painted that fence, she from her side and I from mine.
There were four kilometres altogether of this fence; for five months we stood facing each other like this, and there wasn't anything we didn't say to each other, Masha and I, but always there was this fence between us. After we'd painted two kilometres of it, one day I'd done just as high as Masha's mouth with this red colour, and I told her that I loved her, and she, from her side, had painted just up to there, too, and she said that she loved me, too ... and she looked into my eyes, and, as this was in a ditch and among tall goosefoot plants, I put out my lips, and we kissed through the newly painted fence, and when we opened our eyes she had a sort of tiny red fence-pale striped across her mouth, and so had I, and we burst out laughing, and from that moment on we were happy.
”
”
Bohumil Hrabal (Closely Observed Trains)
“
She bade her friends good-bye, and again started along the road of yellow brick. When she had gone several miles she thought she would stop to rest, and so climbed to the top of the fence beside the road and sat down. There was a great cornfield beyond the fence, and not far away she saw a Scarecrow, placed high on a pole to keep the birds from the ripe corn. Dorothy leaned her chin upon her hand and gazed thoughtfully at the Scarecrow. Its head was a small sack stuffed with straw, with eyes, nose, and mouth painted on it to represent a face. An old, pointed blue hat, that had belonged to some Munchkin, was perched on his head, and the rest of the figure was a blue suit of clothes, worn and faded, which had also been stuffed with straw. On the feet were some old boots with blue tops, such as every man wore in this country, and the figure was raised above the stalks of corn by means of the pole stuck up its back.
”
”
L. Frank Baum (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Oz, #1))
“
The rabbits and chickens lived in the courtyard space at the far end of the big two-story guardhouse. Everything wooden, the fences, the wall, the hutches on their stilts, was painted dark green, a flat ugly color against the complex natural greens of the cactus and the hedges and the trees. Trotsky put on his work gloves—he was very finicky about his hands—and got the rabbits out of their hutches, looking over each one for ticks or skin problems or signs of hairballs. He had read up on rabbit food and designed their diets himself, and learned about their diseases and habits, as absorbed in this task, as precise and methodical, as he had been in building the Red Army.
”
”
Cecelia Holland (The Death of Trotsky (Kindle Single))
“
at Dunkin’ Donuts, how did we move our anchor to Starbucks? This is where it gets really interesting. When Howard Shultz created Starbucks, he was as intuitive a businessman as Salvador Assael. He worked diligently to separate Starbucks from other coffee shops, not through price but through ambience. Accordingly, he designed Starbucks from the very beginning to feel like a continental coffeehouse. The early shops were fragrant with the smell of roasted beans (and better-quality roasted beans than those at Dunkin’ Donuts). They sold fancy French coffee presses. The showcases presented alluring snacks—almond croissants, biscotti, raspberry custard pastries, and others. Whereas Dunkin’ Donuts had small, medium, and large coffees, Starbucks offered Short, Tall, Grande, and Venti, as well as drinks with high-pedigree names like Caffè Americano, Caffè Misto, Macchiato, and Frappuccino. Starbucks did everything in its power, in other words, to make the experience feel different—so different that we would not use the prices at Dunkin’ Donuts as an anchor, but instead would be open to the new anchor that Starbucks was preparing for us. And that, to a great extent, is how Starbucks succeeded. GEORGE, DRAZEN, AND I were so excited with the experiments on coherent arbitrariness that we decided to push the idea one step farther. This time, we had a different twist to explore. Do you remember the famous episode in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the one in which Tom turned the whitewashing of Aunt Polly’s fence into an exercise in manipulating his friends? As I’m sure you recall, Tom applied the paint with gusto, pretending to enjoy the job. “Do you call this work?” Tom told his friends. “Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?” Armed with this new “information,” his friends discovered the joys of whitewashing a fence. Before long, Tom’s friends were not only paying him for the privilege, but deriving real pleasure from the task—a win-win outcome if there ever was one. From our perspective, Tom transformed a negative experience to a positive one—he transformed a situation in which compensation was required to one in which people (Tom’s friends) would pay to get in on the fun. Could we do the same? We
”
”
Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions)
“
In that movie, Mr Miyagi has Daniel doing all these mundane tasks like painting the fence and waxing the car, then later Daniel does the same moves and finds out it's kung fu. You have me doing all of these fighting moves... If I find out later that what you're actually doing is teaching me how to paint fences and wax cars, I'm not paying you, you understand? - Scapegrace
”
”
Derek Landy (Last Stand of Dead Men (Skulduggery Pleasant, #8))
“
Thought is sequential, successive, one-dimensional, while the real world presents itself as a multidimensional, non-successive, simultaneous pattern of infinite richness and variety; and trying to make the one grasp the other is like trying to appreciate a beautiful landscape by looking through a narrow slit in a fence or trying to take in a Renoir painting by microscope alone.
”
”
Ken Wilber (The Spectrum of Consciousness)
“
Where an owner showed pride in his home, the fresh paint, the upright picket fence, the well-barbered shrubs only emphasized the debris, decay, and dilapidation that characterized the surrounding properties. Each island of order did not offer hope of a community-wide transformation, but instead seemed to be a dike that could not long hold back an inevitably rising tide of chaos.
”
”
Dean Koontz (Forever Odd (Odd Thomas, #2))
“
As we walk away I know they’re watching, these two men who aren’t yet permitted to touch women. They touch with their eyes instead and I move my hips a little, feeling the full red skirt sway around me. It’s like thumbing your nose from behind a fence or teasing a dog with a bone held out of reach, and I’m ashamed of myself for doing it, because none of this is the fault of these men, they’re too young. Then I find I’m not ashamed after all. I enjoy the power; power of a dog bone, passive but there. I hope they get hard at the sight of us and have to rub themselves against the painted barriers, surreptitiously. They will suffer, later, at night, in their regimented beds. They have no outlets now except themselves, and that’s a sacrilege. There are no more magazines, no more films, no more substitutes; only me and my shadow, walking away from the two men, who stand at attention, stiffly, by a roadblock, watching our retreating shapes.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale)
“
Thus political economy — despite its worldly and voluptuous appearance — is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-renunciation, the renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theater, the dance hall, the public house, the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save — the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour — your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and drink, go to the dance hall and the theater; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power — all this it can appropriate for you — it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for him to want to live, and may only want to live in order to have that.
”
”
Karl Marx (Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844)
“
Art itself becomes a sport (hence the phrase “art for art’s sake”) to be played before a highly intelligent audience of connoisseurs and buyers, whether the feat consist in mastering absurd instrumental tone masses and taking harmonic fences, or in some tour de force of coloring. Then a new fact-philosophy appears, which can only spare a smile for metaphysical speculation, and a new literature that is a necessity of life for the megalopolitan palate and nerves and both unintelligible and ugly to the provincials. Neither Alexandrine poetry nor plein-air painting is anything to the "people".
”
”
Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West)
“
Most humans, it seems, still put up fences around their acts and thoughts – even when these are piles of shit – for they have no other way of delimiting them. Contrast Paleolithic cave paintings, in which animals and magical markings are overlayed with no differentiation or sense of framing. But when some of us have worked in natural settings, say in a meadow, woods, or mountain range, our cultural training has been so deeply ingrained that we have simply carried a mental rectangle with us to drop around whatever we were doing. This made us feel at home. (Even aerial navigation is plotted geometrically, thus giving the air a "shape".)
”
”
Allan Kaprow (Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life)
“
I went up the stairs of the little hotel, that time in Bystřice by Benešov, and at the turn of the stairs there was a bricklayer at work, in white clothes; he was chiselling channels in the wall to cement in two hooks, on which in a little while he was going to hang a Minimax fire-extinguisher; and this bricklayer was already and old man, but he had such an enormous back that he had to turn round to let me pass by, and then I heard him whistling the waltz from The Count of Luxembourg as I went into my little room. It was afternoon. I took out two razors, and one of them I scored blade-up into the top of the bathroom stool, and the other I laid beside it, and I, too, began to whistle the waltz from The Count of Luxembourg while I undressed and turned on the hot-water tap, and then I reflected, and very quietly I opened the door a crack. And the bricklayer was standing there in the corridor on the other side of the door, and it was as if he also had opened the door a crack to have a look at me and see what I was doing, just as I had wanted to have a look at him.
And I slammed the door shut and crept into the bath, I had to let myself down into it gradually, the water was so hot; I gasped with the sting of it as carefully and painfully I sat down. And then I stretched out my wrist, and with my right hand I slashed my left wrist ... and then with all my strength I brought down the wrist of my right hand on the upturned blade I'd grooved into the stool for that purpose. And I plunged both hands into the hot water, and watched the blood flow slowly ouf of me, and the water grew rosy, and yet al the time the pattern of the red blood flowing remained so clearly perceptible, as though someone was drawing out from my wrists a long, feathery red bandage, a film, dancing veil ... and presently I thickened there in the bath, as that red paint thickened when we were painting the fence all round the state workshops, until we had to thin it with turpentine - and my head sagged, and into my mouth flowed pink raspberryade, except that it tasted slightly salty .. and then those concentric circles in blue and violet, trailing feathery fronds like coloured spirals in motion ... and then there was a shadow stooping over me, and my face was brushed lightly by a chin overgrown with stubble. It was that bricklayer in the white clothes. He hoisted me out and landed me like a red fish with delicate red fins sprouting from its wrists. I laid my head on his smock, and I heard the hissing of lime as my wet face slaked it, and that smell was the last thing of which I was conscious.
”
”
Bohumil Hrabal (Closely Observed Trains)
“
But trivial as are the topics they are not utterly without a connecting thread of motive. As the reader's eye strays, with hearty relief, from these pages, it probably alights on something, a bed-post or a lamp-post, a window blind or a wall. It is a thousand to one that the reader is looking at something that he has never seen: that is, never realised. He could not write an essay on such a post or wall: he does not know what the post or wall mean. He could not even write the synopsis of an essay; as "The Bed-Post; Its Significance—Security Essential to Idea of Sleep—Night Felt as Infinite—Need of Monumental Architecture," and so on. He could not sketch in outline his theoretic attitude towards window-blinds, even in the form of a summary. "The Window-Blind—Its Analogy to the Curtain and Veil—Is Modesty Natural?—Worship of and Avoidance of the Sun, etc., etc." None of us think enough of these things on which the eye rests. But don't let us let the eye rest. Why should the eye be so lazy? Let us exercise the eye until it learns to see startling facts that run across the landscape as plain as a painted fence. Let us be ocular athletes. Let us learn to write essays on a stray cat or a coloured cloud. I have attempted some such thing in what follows; but anyone else may do it better, if anyone else will only try.
”
”
G.K. Chesterton (Tremendous Trifles)
“
It was in the summer that one really lived. Then all the little overcrowded houses were opened wide, and the wind blew through them with sweet, earthy smells of garden-planting. The town looked as if it had just been washed. People were out painting their fences. The cottonwood trees were a-flicker with sticky, yellow little leaves, and the feathery tamarisks were in pink bud. With the warm weather came freedom for everybody. People were dug up, as it were. The very old people, whom one had not seen all winter, came out and sunned themselves in the yard. The double windows were taken off the houses, the tormenting flannels in which children had been encased all winter were put away in boxes, and the youngsters felt a pleasure in the cool cotton things next their skin.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Song of the Lark)
“
My eye keeps escaping towards the big blue lacquered door that I've had painted in a trompe-l'oeil on the back wall. I would like to call Mrs. Cohen back and tell her there's no problem for her son's bar mitzvah, everything's ready: I would like to go through that door and disappear into the garden my mind's eye has painted behind it. The grass there is soft and sweet, there are bulrushes bowing along the banks of a river. I put lime trees in it, hornbeams, weeping elms, blossoming cherries and liquidambars. I plant it with ancient roses, daffodils, dahlias with their melancholy heavy heads, and flowerbeds of forget-me-nots. Pimpernels, armed with all the courage peculiar to such tiny entities, follow the twists and turns between the stones of a rockery. Triumphant artichokes raise their astonished arrows towards the sky. Apple trees and lilacs blossom at the same time as hellebores and winter magnolias. My garden knows no seasons. It is both hot and cool. Frost goes hand in hand with a shimmering heat haze. The leaves fall and grow again. row and fall again. Wisteria climbs voraciously over tumbledown walls and ancient porches leading to a boxwood alley with a poignant fragrance. The heady smell of fruit hangs in the air. Huge peaches, chubby-cheeked apricots, jewel-like cherries, redcurrants, raspberries, spanking red tomatoes and bristly cardoons feast on sunlight and water, because between the sunbeams it rains in rainbow-colored droplets. At the very end, beyond a painted wooden fence, is a woodland path strewn with brown leaves, protected from the heat of the skies by a wide parasol of foliage fluttering in the breeze. You can't see the end of it, just keep walking, and breathe.
”
”
Agnès Desarthe (Chez Moi: A Novel)
“
(From Chapter 9: Hearts and Gizzards)
I’m lying on the hard and narrow bed, on the mattress made of coarse ticking, which is what they call the covering of a mattress, though why do they call it that as it is not a clock. The mattress is filled with dry straw that crackles like a fire when I turn over, and when I shift it whispers to me, hush hush. It’s dark as a stone in this room, and hot as a roasting heart; if you stare into the darkness with your eyes open you are sure to see something after a time. I hope it will not be flowers. But this is the time they like to grow, the red flowers, the shining red peonies which are like satin, which are like splashes of paint. The soil for them is emptiness, it is empty space and silence. I whisper, Talk to me; because I would rather have talking than the slow gardening that takes place in silence, with the red satin petals dripping down the wall.
I think I sleep.
[...] I’m outside, at night. There are the trees, there is the pathway, and the snake fence with half a moon shining, and my bare feet on the gravel. But when I come around to the front of the house, the sun is just going down; and the white pillars of the house are pink, and the white peonies are glowing red in the fading light. My hands are numb, I can’t feel the ends of my fingers. There’s the smell of fresh meat, coming up from the ground and all around, although I told the butcher we wanted none. On the palm of my hand there’s a disaster. I must have been born with it. I carry it with me wherever I go. When he touched me, the bad luck came off on him.
I think I sleep.
I wake up at cock crow and I know where I am. I’m in the parlour. I’m in the scullery. I’m in the cellar. I’m in my cell, under the coarse prison blanket, which I likely hemmed myself. We make everything we wear or use here, awake or asleep; so I have made this bed, and now I am lying in it.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Alias Grace)
“
There's a faulty signal on this line, about halfway through my journey. I assume it must be faulty, in any case, because it's almost always red; we stop there most days, sometimes just for a few seconds, sometimes for minutes on end. If I sit in carriage D, which I usually do, and the train stops at this signal, which it almost always does, I have a perfect view into my favourite trackside house: number fifteen.
Number fifteen is much like the other houses along this stretch of track: a Victorian semi, two storeys high, overlooking a narrow, well-tended garden which runs around twenty feet down towards some fencing, beyond which lie a few metres of no man's land before you get to the railway track. I know this house by heart. I know every brick, I know the colour of the curtains in the upstairs bedroom (beige, with a dark-blue print), I know that the paint is peeling off the bathroom window frame and that there are four tiles missing from a section of the roof over on the right-hand side.
”
”
Paula Hawkins (The Girl on the Train)
“
BARRY: Phwoar! This stuff shouldn’t be available on the internet where anybody can see it.
GLENDA: Barry, what are you looking at?
BARRY: Philosophy. You should see some of the ideas floating around here.
GLENDA: As long as it’s only philosophy.
BARRY: Only?! They come out with stuff that makes your hair stand on end. Look out there. What do you see?
GLENDA: I can see it’s time to paint the fence.
BARRY: What fence?
GLENDA: Our fence. I don’t expect you to paint next door’s.
BARRY: There is no fence out there. We just think there is.
GLENDA: And I think it still needs painting.
BARRY: It’s all in here. It’s only the way we see things that makes them look as if they’re out there. Actually everything is in our heads.
GLENDA: Barry, if you can go out there with a pot of paint and paint it, then it’s out there.
BARRY: I hate it when you do that.
GLENDA: What?
BARRY: Make more sense than philosophy.
“The Second Stag Night of Doggy Wilkinson”, Last of the Summer Wine”, season 28 episode 1.
”
”
Roy Clarke (The Last of the Summer Wine)
“
I must tell you something about necks in Japan, if you don't know it; namely, that Japanese men, as a rule, feel about a woman's neck and throat the same way that men in the West might feel about a woman's legs. This is why geisha wear the collars of their kimono so low in the back that the first few bumps of the spine are visible; I suppose it's like a woman in Paris wearing a short skirt. Auntie painted onto the back of Hatsumomo's neck a design called sanbon-ashi-"three legs." It makes a very dramatic picture, for you feel as if you're
looking at the bare skin of the neck through little tapering points of a white fence. It was years before I understood the erotic effect it has on men; but in a way, it's like a woman peering out from between her fingers. In fact, a geisha leaves a tiny margin of skin bare all around the hairline, causing her makeup to look even more artificial, something like a mask worn in Noh drama. When a man sits beside her and sees her makeup like a mask, he becomes that much more aware of the bare skin beneath.
”
”
Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)
“
The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself'
- Oshima, 316
I'm empty-handed now. The can of yellow spray paint, the little hatchet- they're history. The daypack's gone as well. No canteen, no food. Not even the compass. One by one I left these behind. Doing this gives a visible message to the forest: I'm not afraid anymore. That's why I choose to be totally defenseless. Minus my hard shell, ust flesh and bones, I head for the core of the labyrinth, giving myself up to the void.
...
But I gradually get better at letting these threats pass me by. This forest is basically a part of me, isn't it? This thought takes hold at a certain point. The journey I'm taking is inside me . Just like blood travels down veins, what I'm seeing is my inner self, and what seems threatening is just the echo of fear in my own heart. The spiderweb stretched taut there is the spiderweb inside me. The birds calling out overhead are birds I've fostered in my mind. These images spring up in my mind and take root.
- Kafka, 396-7
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
“
The colonists took advantage of the Aboriginal cultural beliefs to further their own gains. The Nyungar people who once walked tall and proud, now hung their head in sorrow. They had become dispossessed; these teachers and keepers of the traditional Law were prevented from practising it. They had to fight to find ways to return to their secret and sacred sites to perform their dances and other ceremonies that were crucial to their culture and whole way of life.
Their pain and suffering remained hidden and repressed, silent and deep. They remembered the corroborrees and songs that they were forbidden to dance and sing unless commanded by government officials. No longer would the corroborrees be shared and danced by scores of feet, kicking up the dust in the moonlight around the glowing fires. Warriors with painted bodies and plumes of feathers on their ochre-covered heads would become faded images, buried in the past. The important dates on their seasonal calendars would be forgotten.
”
”
Doris Pilkington (Rabbit-Proof Fence)
“
As they rode into the Lucky Star ranch yard an hour later, Liv wished she hadn’t mentioned Temo to Dayna.
She’s going to tease him about me, for sure, Liv thought and he’ll be embarrassed and think I’m a dumb little kid.
Liv remembered the first time she had seen Temo. He was more handsome than Shane, she decided, with chiseled lips, a straight nose and flashing dark eyes full of laughter. Where Shane was thin as a desert fence post, Temo was solid--strong, but tender underneath.
She remembered how he had risked his job at the Silver Spur to help them save their grandparents’ horses, how he had brought them blankets and food when they were hiding on the ranch, how he smiled when he called her muchacha, little girl, how he rode like the wind on his black-and-white paint horse, so at home in this big wild country.
She wondered about his life--why he stayed on working for Sam Regis when he didn’t like or respect him. His family worked there; that was part of the reason, she knew. She had been hoping to find out more about him at lunch today.
“I’m glad we didn’t have to stay for lunch.” Sophie slipped from Cisco’s saddle in front of the low wooden barn. “I didn’t want to face Dayna’s father again.”
Liv dismounted with a sigh. As usual, she and Sophie had been thinking about the same thing in totally different ways. Sophie hated the thought of lunch at the Silver Spur, while Liv was longing for the chance to see Temo and his family.
It was as if she and Sophie were two sides of the same coin.
”
”
Sharon Siamon (Coyote Canyon (Wild Horse Creek, #2))
“
Activities to Develop the Tactile Sense Rub-a-Dub-Dub—Encourage the child to rub a variety of textures against her skin. Offer different kinds of soap (oatmeal soap, shaving cream, lotion soap) and scrubbers (loofah sponges, thick washcloths, foam pot-scrubbers, plastic brushes). Water Play—Fill the kitchen sink with sudsy water and unbreakable pitchers and bottles, turkey basters, sponges, eggbeaters, and toy water pumps. Or, fill a washtub with water and toys and set it on the grass. Pouring and measuring are educational and therapeutic, as well as high forms of entertainment. Water Painting—Give the child a bucket of water and paintbrush to paint the porch steps, the sidewalk, the fence, or her own body. Or, provide a squirt bottle filled with clean water (because the squirts often go in the child’s mouth). Finger Painting—Let the sensory craver wallow in this literally “sensational” activity. Encourage (but don’t force) the sensory avoider to stick a finger into the goop. For different tactile experiences, mix sand into the paint, or place a blob of shaving cream, peanut butter, or pudding on a plastic tray. Encourage him to draw shapes, letters, and numbers. If he “messes up,” he can erase the error with his hand and begin again. Finger Drawing—With your finger, “draw” a shape, letter, number, or design on the child’s back or hand. Ask the child to guess what it is and then to pass the design on to another person. Sand Play—In a sandbox, add small toys (cars, trucks, people, and dinosaurs), which the child can rearrange, bury, and rediscover. Instead of sand, use dried beans, rice, pasta, cornmeal, popcorn, and mud. Making mud pies and getting messy are therapeutic, too.
”
”
Carol Stock Kranowitz (The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Processing Disorder)
“
Julie had the map and was trying to navigate, but she didn’t know about one-way streets. After a half hour of detours and dead ends, we finally turned onto Willner.
“Not exactly the high-rent district,” Jack said.
Every block had several boarded-up buildings. All the fences and half the walls had been spray-painted with slogans, some in foreign languages.
“I wish I had a gun,” I said.
Jack laughed. “Relax, Eddie. You sound like a hick from the sticks.”
“I am a hick from the sticks. I just hope we don’t get mugged.”
He laughed again. “Who’d mug you? You don’t have anything worth stealing.”
“I’m putting my money in my shoe all the same.
”
”
P.J. Petersen (The Freshman Detective Blues)
“
their daily duties, when they encounter a neighbor, David carrying a bucket of paint. “What are you going to do Uncle David?” asked little Tracy inquisitively. “I am going to paint my fence children” answered Uncle David, adding “I could do with some help” “We will be really happy to help you” said Benjamin. “OK then let’s
”
”
Aunt Rabbit (Adventures of Scouts Benjamin and Tracy)
“
My first ten years were spent in a suburb of Melbourne so quiet that I believed no people could have survived on the far side of their trimmed privet hedges unless their wardrobes and cupboards were stuffed with rubber or clay or painted tokens of another world altogether, a world that poked up into Melbourne in the dark corners of bedrooms and the shadowy spaces under fruit-trees and behind fowl sheds in backyards wholly hidden from the street. On many a Sunday afternoon when my mother took me on long trips by tram to visit some aunt or great-aunt and I had to sit for the first half-hour in the front room, I looked around me for some detail of a painted landscape on the wall or some gesture made by a porcelain figure in the crystal-cabinet or some pattern in the threads of an anti-macassar that seemed the nearest sign of the other world. Then, when I was allowed to go outside , I would always find a certain kind of place - the patch of rotting leaves under the treefern on the blind side of the house; the clump of arum lilies between the garden shed and the back fence; the corner of lawn just beyond the last flagstone in a path that had seemed likely to lead to something much more definite. I would stand in that place and stare, and wonder what word I had to learn the meaning of or what other person I had to turn myself into before I could recognise the doorway that must have been somewhere just in front of me.
”
”
Gerald Murnane (Landscape with Landscape)
“
You know, the old Nesfield is going. It won't survive the coming war. And I for one shan't mourn it. A nasty rabbit-warren of a place. … And we shall have a sort of dog-kennel civilisation instead. Every man, every family-unit in a nice drudgery-proof kennel with plenty of bright paint and a good high fence around. Do you ever look at the book-stalls? All those magazines about homes and gardens and refrigerators and furniture-polish? It's not a dream world, like the cinema. It's a world on the verge of becoming real. And to my way of thinking, not a bad thing. But desperately insulating and unsociable. The rabbit-warren is at least a shoulder-rubbing sort of place, and that breeds communal feeling, ideas, discontents – the things that make the individual life get somewhere.
”
”
Michael Innes (The Weight of the Evidence (Inspector Appleby Mystery))
“
The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the pub, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which neither moth nor rust will corrupt—your capital. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being.”
― Karl Marx, Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
”
”
Karl Marx (Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844)
“
So, you want us to stop saying gay.
Want to remove the right to acknowledge the truth of our bodies and hearts
and eradicate the language that names us
As if this will somehow keep you safe from our existence
As if you can see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil us into oblivion.
It was you who birthed us into a legacy of code makers and breakers.
Humans who took their language underground.
Cast spells and had wordless conversations with our ancestors
Who gifted us new ways to speak in the open air.
We painted pink triangles on the walls of
The underground bomb shelters you built to bury us alive
Left a trail of glitter pointing to the inborn light in our chests
So the ones who came looking for us would know how we lived.
We stole back the vernacular you created to hide us back from the tips of your forked tongues
Alchemized the sounds that twisted your mouth into symbols of reclamation
Used your vilification to dig ourselves out of the closets you constructed around us
Made our way blazing and victorious into the sun.
When AIDS devastated an entire glittering generation
We crafted a whispered language of the isolated hospital room and empty funeral
That can only be heard by bodies
That have been asked to hold a loss too deep to name.
When Matthew Shephard's bloody and broken body
Was found tied to that barbed wire fence, the only clean part of his skin the trails of his desperate tears
We twisted from the ethers an entirely new way to name collective grief and fear, one far too infinite to hold alone
It has always been our tenacious together than holds us.
Drive us underground
We will always surface
Singing words you can never own
Because don’t have the range to hear them.
Go ahead, take away our words,
We will birth a whole new language
You’ve been sending your armies for us since the beginning of time
But we were born for battle.
You wonder why we are still here?
You made us this strong.
You think getting rid of a word will silence us?
You’d have to ban them all.
”
”
Jeanette LeBlanc
“
Even their environments were opposites, and that matters. A painter can paint anywhere; the subject can spring from the painter’s mind. Photographers must be in the presence of their subjects. Stieglitz lived in and photographed a long-tamed landscape, from his skyscraper forests to the fenced pastures of his family’s summerhouse outside the city. Edward could see the snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains from his front porch, and even Los Angeles had been wilderness not that long before.
”
”
Mary Street Alinder (Group f.64: Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and the Community of Artists Who Revolutionized American Photography)
“
Peñalosa learned when he was a boy that the redistribution of privilege always meets with resistance. But he was not one for compromise. He ordered the removal of thousands of cluttering commercial billboards, and he tore down the fences residents had erected around neighborhood parks. He went to war not just with cars but with anyone who appropriated public space in Bogotá, even if they were poor—in one case forcing thousands of struggling street vendors to remove stalls that had choked off public plazas. The city’s amenities were for everyone. Peñalosa campaigned to turn the city’s grand country club into a public park. Even the dead were targeted: while Mockus had the words “Life Is Sacred” painted on the walls of a cemetery in the central city, Peñalosa attempted to remove the graves so that the living could have more park space. (Both the country club and cemetery initiatives failed.) This aggressive plan created plenty of enemies for him at first. Private bus operators and drivers who were pushed from TransMilenio routes were furious. So were the vendors and hawkers who were swept from popular plazas. But none were as vociferous as the business lobby, who were outraged by the bollards that went up along city sidewalks, effectively killing their free parking. They could not imagine customers arriving by foot, bike, or bus. “He was trying to Satanize cars,” Guillermo Botero, the president of FENALCO, Colombia’s national federation of retailers, told me. “The car is a means of subsistence. It is an indispensable means for people to develop their own lives. If we keep squeezing roads, the city will eventually collapse.” FENALCO
”
”
Charles Montgomery (Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design)
“
Salon writer Scot Sea, who said that his experience with his own autistic daughter helped him understand why a California man named Delfin Bartolome had shot his son and then himself. “The odor has finally made its way down the hall. When you see the balled-up pants and diaper on the floor, you know you are too late,” Sea began ominously. “A bright red smear across the door, the molding, the wall. Turn the corner and the bedroom is a crime scene. An ax murder? In fact, it is only your daughter at her worst.” He described a scene worthy of a slasher movie: “Splashes of blood glistening like paint, black clots, yellow-brown feces, and a 3-foot-in-diameter pond of vomit that your daughter stands in the middle of . . . hands dripping, face marked like a cannibal.” Parents in previous eras were spared these horrors, he explained, because “idiot” children were promptly “tossed down the well or thumped against the fence post.” For “educated” families in more recent times, he added, at least there was a way out—institutionalization. But now, desperate parents had to find their own ways out, as Bartolome had been forced to do with a handgun when he ran out of options. This was the harsh reality of raising a child with autism, according to Sea. (He neglected to mention that weeks before the shooting, Bartolome—described by his relatives as a loving and devoted father—had been laid off just before retirement, shunting him into a series of temporary jobs and putting his son’s future care at risk.) Shannon felt herself becoming physically ill while reading Sea’s article. Was this her family’s future? IV
”
”
Steve Silberman (NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity)
“
The Resource List Oak Wood 104, Oak Wood Planks 12, Oak Wood Slabs 58, Birch Wood Planks 28, Birch Wood Stairs 36, Birch Wood Slabs 60, Cobblestone Wall 44, Gravel, Glass 16, Ladders 18, Fence 26, Torch 10, Redstone Torch 4, Redstone Lamp 4, Painting, Crafting Table, Furnace, Trapdoors, Chests, Wooden Door, Flower Pots 3, Jungle Leaves, Jungle Sapling 4, Fern 2, Flowers
”
”
Johan Lööf (Minecraft House Ideas & Awesome Structures (Resource Lists, Step-By-Step Blueprints, Descriptions & Pictures))
“
A number of the wrought-iron fences that encircled the courtyards and gardens of the homes were painted the color of gold on their European-inspired spikes and finials.
”
”
David Baldacci (Saving Faith)
“
What if at school you had to take an art class in which you were only taught how to pain a fence? What if you were never shown the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci and Picasso? Would that make you appreciate art? Would you want to learn more about it? I doubt it...Of course this sounds ridiculous, but this is how math is taught.
”
”
Edward Frenkel
“
And then beyond them, farther north, were the whites, in a dreamland accessible only by the Chicago L, and even at that a place you glimpsed momentarily—redbrick houses, wrought-iron fences, tree-lined streets—then left, swallowed by the subway if you were on the Douglas-Park B, or forced to watch it all fade from view if you rode the elevated Ravenswood A.
”
”
Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski (Painted Cities)
“
It would seem peculiar, or perverse, within an Aristotelian framework of efficient causation to allege that ‘Any thing may produce any thing. ’ Although a doctor doctoring a patient might produce healing in a patient, the doctor doctoring will not eventuate in a fence’s being made white; nor will a painter’s painting bring about a beach tree’s shedding its leaves. A properly specified efficient cause, in Aristotle’s terms, carries with it an explanation of why some motion or change was initiated, and does so in such a way as to make perspicuous the connection between the activity in the agent and the alteration in the patient.
”
”
Anonymous
“
And yes, there is a hierarchy. There is a difference between painting a back fence and writing a poem, but only one of quantity. And there is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love.
”
”
Audre Lorde (Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power)
“
The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save—the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour—your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life—the greater is the store of your estranged being.
”
”
Kyla Scanlon (In This Economy?: How Money & Markets Really Work)
“
And then we came to a stop in front of a large yellow Victorian house that sat, so stately, between two brick buildings, like a misplaced Lego piece, overgrown with ivy and bluebells and honeysuckle.
The Daffodil Inn looked exactly how I'd imagined.
The bed-and-breakfast was fresh and bright, the dentils all painted across the edging on the roof, the corbels replaced, the sawn spandrils and turned spandrils all given proper attention. The bay window was set with a stained-glass daffodil, the same one that encrusted the window in the front door. Around the inn, encasing it like a lovely cage, was a wrought-iron fence overgrown with ivy and honeysuckle that bled into the rose garden that surrounded the house.
”
”
Ashley Poston (A Novel Love Story)
“
In the fields beyond the fence are rows of neatly hoed turnip plants, and beyond these there stretches young
the pale green of young oats. The ash flowers and the bracken show that this picture was painted in northern England. In the south they would be further developed by June.
”
”
E.L. Grant Watson (What To Look For In Summer)
“
We are doing 55 on Indiana 65.
Jasper County.
Flooded fields.
Iroquois River spread way out, wide and brown as a Hershey bar.
Distances in this glacier-flattened planed-down ground-level ground
aren't blue, but whitish, and the sky is whitish-blue.
It's in the eighties at 9:30 in the morning, the air is soft and humid,
and the wind darkens the flooded fields between rows of oaks.
Watch Your Speed - We Are.
Severely clean white farmhouses inside square white fences painted by
Tom Sawyer yesterday produce
a smell of dung. A rich and heavy smell of dung on the southwest wind.
Can shit be heady?
La merde majestueuse.
This is the "Old Northwest."
Not very old, not very north, not very west. And in Indiana
there are no Indians.
Wabash River
right up to the road and the oaks are standing ten feet out in the brown shadowmottled flood, but the man at the diesel station just says:
You should of seen her yesterday.
The essence is motion being in motion moving on not resting at a point:
and so by catching at points and letting them go again without recurrence
or rhyme or rhythm I attempt to suggest or imitate that essence
the essence of which is that you cannot catch it.
Of course there are other continuities:
the other aspect of the essence of moving on.
The county courthouses.
Kids on bikes.
White frame houses with high sashed windows.
Dipping telephone wires, telephone poles.
The names of the dispossessed.
The redwing blackbird singing to you from fencepost to fencepost.
Dave and Shelley singing "You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma" on the radio.
The yellow weedy clover by the road.
The flowering grasses.
And the crow, not the Indian, the bird, you seen one crow you seen 'em all,
kronk kronk.
CHEW MAIL POUCH TOBACCO
TREAT YOURSELF TO THE BEST
on an old plank barn, the letters half worn off, and that's a continuity, not only in space but time: my California in the thirties, & I at six years old would read the sign and imagine a Pony Express rider at full gallop eating a candy cigarette.
Lafayette
Greencastle
And the roadsign points: Left to Indianapolis
Right to Brazil.
Now there's some choice.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places)
“
The glare of the green landscape and the air, the air that was everywhere, in us and making way for us, and we rode and were aware only of each other and ourselves for those couple of miles, and for those couple of miles I was myself, back in the neighborhood of Chacarita, where I moved with my mom after we realized my dad was never going to move out first, that we would have to leave him, and I saw on either side of me the big ugly high-rises and squat goldenrod houses and fuchsia and blue and inscrutable notes scrawled on the walls, graffiti intermingling with the shimmering, shadowing little leaves of the tipas, and as I rode I slowed at the oleander at Facultad de Medicina, those delicate pink flowers that rose over the fence in utter opulence and the lush stiff leaves that reached out through the bars that were freshly painted bright green.
Then there it was: the Great Mamamushi.
I slowed, and Freddie slowed. We parked our bikes. I was out of breath and all the air on Earth was in my blood, and we kissed again, and I turned around, and he put his arms around my waist, and I leaned into him, and we beheld it: a tree that was almost too much to be true, that truly was incredible, with its trunk that was almost eight meters around, a staggering circumference, glittered over by dragonflies, heavy, petite, iridescent incarnations of Irena's genius, when suddenly a flock of impossible parrots exploded out of the alders, and we looked up to see them shattering the sky.
"All the oaks on this trail have their own names," I explained to Freddie. "This one is my favorite. Can you believe it's still growing?"
He put his face against mine. He didn't say anything. For a while we just stood like that, together, watching the Great Mamamushi grow.
”
”
Jennifer Croft (The Extinction of Irena Rey)
“
By counting the most meagre form of life (existence) as the standard, indeed, as the general standard – general because it is applicable to the mass of men. He turns the worker into an insensible being lacking all needs, just as he changes his activity into a pure abstraction from all activity. To him, therefore, every luxury of the worker seems to be reprehensible, and everything that goes beyond the most abstract need – be it in the realm of passive enjoyment, or a manifestation of activity – seems to him a luxury. Political economy, this science of wealth, is therefore simultaneously the science of renunciation, of want, of saving and it actually reaches the point where it spares man the need of either fresh air or physical exercise. This science of marvellous industry is simultaneously the science of asceticism, and its true ideal is the ascetic but extortionate miser and the ascetic but productive slave. Its moral ideal is the worker who takes part of his wages to the savings-bank, and it has even found ready-made a servile art which embodies this pet idea: it has been presented, bathed in sentimentality, on the stage. Thus political economy – despite its worldly and voluptuous appearance – is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-renunciation, the renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything ||XVI| which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and, drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power – all this it can appropriate for you – it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for him to want to live, and may only want to live in order to have that.
”
”
Karl Marx (Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844/The Communist Manifesto)
“
In their white clapboard house with their white picket fence and their pastel-painted walls, their patterned kitchenware, their jobs and their homework, they know something. They all know something but they’re pretending they don’t.
”
”
Eliza Jane Brazier (If I Disappear)
“
She turned a corner, dodging into another person’s yard (decorated with a blue picnic table and patio umbrella with daisies painted on it, despite the shabbiness of his neighbors), before diving through a loose board in the wood fence (its edges rotted) and into another alley, and forced to squeeze past an abandoned, green Cadillac (with rusted fenders and a missing left, rear tire) that nearly blocked her path.
”
”
Janet McNulty (Solaris Seethes (Solaris Saga Book 1))
“
You really are a perfect little preacher’s daughter, aren’t you, Ash? Once upon a time you were a helluva lot more fun. Before you started sucking face with Sawyer, we use to have some good times together.” He was watching me for a reaction. Knowing his eyes were directed at me made it hard to focus on driving. “You were my partner in crime, Ash. Sawyer was the good guy. But the two of us, we were the troublemakers. What happened?”
How do I respond to that? No one knows the girl who used to steal bubble gum from the Quick Stop or abduct the paperboy to tie him up so we could take all his papers and dip them in blue paint before leaving them on the front door steps of houses. No one knew the girl who snuck out of her house at two in the morning to go toilet-paper yards and throw water balloons at cars from behind the bushes. No one would even believe I’d done all those things if I told them…No one but Beau.
“I grew up,” I finally replied.
“You completely changed, Ash.”
“We were kids, Beau. Yes, you and I got into trouble, and Sawyer got us out of trouble, but we were just kids. I’m different now.”
For a moment he didn’t respond. He shifted in his seat, and I knew his gaze was no longer focused on me. We’d never had this conversation before. Even if it was uncomfortable, I knew it was way overdue. Sawyer always stood in the way of Beau and me mending our fences, fences that had crumbled, and I never knew why. One day he was Beau, my best friend. The next day he was just my boyfriend’s cousin.
“I miss that girl, you know. She was exciting. She knew how to have fun. This perfect little preacher’s daughter who took her place sucks.
”
”
Abbi Glines (The Vincent Boys (The Vincent Boys, #1))
“
You'll never end up in a museum if you spend your whole life painting fences.
”
”
Connor Chalfant
“
thejug with water.
2 "i sugar into the jug of ,v'Ater.
3 Use the paint brush to crush the "moth sugar" on a stump, a rock, or a fence post Or soak the sponge in the mixture and hang it on a tree.
4 Just after dark, go see your new visitors.
5 If no moths have come to the place, next time add a little apple juice to the
”
”
Mel Boring (Caterpillars, Bugs and Butterflies: Take-Along Guide (Take Along Guides))
“
Across the street from the van was a board fence. Someone had spray-painted incomprehensible graffiti on it—could have been an ambigram for all she knew, legible upside-down as well as right-side-up.
”
”
S.A. Hunt (Burn the Dark (Malus Domestica, #1))
“
Remember the first time you poured that driveway, just built that new fence, or painted that barn? Do you remember how new and clean it all looked? Maybe it is time to check out what pressure washing can do for your aging property. Bee Clean Pressure Washing is a top notch, done for you, power washing service. We offer pressure washing services to Beaumont, TX and all surrounding regions. Let's have a chat to discuss your pressure washing needs.
”
”
Bee Clean Pressure Washing
“
It reminds me of sitting window seat on a plane. I look out and onto the ground and I see everyone’s little houses. They’ve got their own perfect square of land, with a roof of their own, with a tree of their own, their own fence. There’s something so artificial to it when you zoom out. Our own tree in the front yard may be large, but they aren’t rooted in a true forest. Their house could be painted gold, but the street isn’t. Everything we have is just enough for our eyes to see. I feel like we’re meant for more. More than decorations. Sometimes, even though I know it’s not possible, I feel like everyone deserves their own forest.
”
”
Kristian Ventura (The Goodbye Song)
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By pressing our faces against the wire we could clearly see, nestling amongst torn bin liners, a red-splashed pot of discarded paint. I immediately directed Jeff to climb the fence to retrieve it. I would have done it myself, but my back had not been good for several days, mostly through shifting unsold copies of Hannibal Rising from the front of the shop to the rear. Also, I have a morbid fear of rats, and mice, and nettles and wasps and jagged cans and rotting food and damp newspapers and the unemployed.
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Colin Bateman (Mystery Man (Mystery Man #1))
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The apparent wall between your body and the world is more like a picket fence. And between your mind and the world, it's like a line painted on the sidewalk.
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Rick Hanson (Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom)
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While we've painted the guardians of the pale in a somewhat reactionary light, let's give the gatekeepers their due. What lies beyond the pale isn't always safe and secure. Outside the fence of state-sanctioned consciousness, there are, to be sure, peaks of profound insight and inspiration. But there are also the swamps of addiction, superstition, and groupthink, where the unprepared can get stuck.
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Steven Kotler (Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work)
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The less you eat, drink and buy books the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being.
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Karl Marx
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The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the pub, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which neither moth nor rust will corrupt—your capital. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being. Everything which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth. All passions and all activities must therefore, be submerged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for him to want to live, and may only want to live, in order to have that.
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Karl Marx