Iwas Quotes

Even now I occasionally get a long letter from Kimiko, who’s still in and out of mental hospitals. I’ve never written a reply. The Last Picture Show Iwas eighteen.

I don’t remember waking up that Sunday morning —- perhaps I never slept. Iwas just sitting up in bed watching Sarah sleep. She’d slept naked in my bed but she hadn’t let me have sex with her. I didn’t care. I loved watching her sleep. The light was falling through my window, all over the blue sheets of my old bed, and onto her face. I lifted up the sheets and watched her breasts move with her breath. They seemed to be sleeping themselves. I hoped that she wouldn’t wake up. I laid the sheet back over her, right up to her chin. I looked up and out of my room. I thought, This must be what praying is like.

Talent is something you make bloom, Instinct is something you polish.

Iwas the one who would do anything to keep her sister safe, no matter the cost. Not because she was braver or stronger—certainly not because she was kinder—but because she was selfish. Because seeing Asya suffer hurt more than suffering herself.

I would browse for half an hour or so in the secondhand bookstores in the neighborhood. Owning my own 'library' was my only materialistic ambition; in fact, trying to decide which two of these thousands of books to buy that week, I would frequently get so excited that by the time the purchase was accomplished I had to make use of the bookseller's toilet facilities. I don't believe that either microbe or laxative has ever affected me so strongly as the discovery that I was all at once the owner of a slightly soiled copy of Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity in the original English edition.

If I could sleep, could get just one decent night’s rest, I was certain I would feel better, that I would be able to function again.

I was dog-ear tired...

Iwas going to kiss her. But first I was going to strangle her.

Iwas no longer looking at a woman. I was looking at a fucking goddess. A goddess of death and vengeance and utter, indiscriminate destruction. She could be nothing else

I don't need a trumpet for you to know I'm coming. I simply arrive.

was born and raised in Texas, home of the Lone Ranger. I was trained to believe that I could be well all by myself. That I could only count on me. That I did not need other people. This story is a lie.

Our lives are so important to us that we tend to think the story of them begins with our birth. First there was nothing, then Iwas born…Yet that is not so. Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others and laid out straight. Families are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating. Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole.

Naturally, I said. You’re always the same person. You don’t change from one milieu to another. You’re honest and open. You could get along anywhere with any group or class or race. But most people aren’t that way. Most people are conscious of race, color, religion, nationality, and so on. To me all peoples are mysterious when I look at them closely. I can detect their differences much easier than their kinship. In fact, I like the distinctions which separate them just as much as I like what unites them. I think it’s foolish to pretend that we’re all pretty much the same. Only the great, the truly distinctive individuals, resemble one another. Brotherhood doesn’t start at the bottom, but at the top. The nearer we get to God the more we resemble one another. At the bottom it’s like a rubbish pile … that’s to say, from a distance it all seems like so much rubbish, but when you get nearer you perceive that this so-called rubbish is composed of a million-billion different particles. And yet, no matter how different one bit of rubbish is from another, the real difference only asserts itself when you look at something which is not rubbish. Even if the elements which compose the universe can be broken down into one vital substance … well, I don’t know what I was going to say exactly … maybe this … that as long as there is life there will be differentiation, values, hierarchies. Life is always making pyramidal structures, in every realm. If you’re at the bottom you stress the sameness of things; if you’re at the top, or near it, you become aware of the difference between things. And if something is obscure—especially a person—you’re attracted beyond all power of will. You may find that it was an empty chase, that there was nothing there, nothing more than a question mark, but just the same…

Originally, the word power meant able to be. In time, it was contracted to mean to be able. We suffer the difference. Iwas waiting for a plane when I overheard two businessmen. One was sharing the good news that he had been promoted, and the other, in congratulation, said, “More power to you.” I've heard this expression before, but for some reason, I heard it differently this time and thought, what a curious sentiment. As a good wish, the assumption is that power is the goal. Of course, it makes a huge difference if we are wishing others worldly power or inner power. By worldly power, I mean power over things, people, and situations—controlling power. By inner power, I mean power that comes from being a part of something larger—connective power. I can't be certain, but I'm fairly sure the wish here was for worldly power, for more control. This is commonplace and disturbing, as the wish for more always issues from a sense of lack. So the wish for more power really issues from a sense of powerlessness. It is painfully ironic that in the land of the free, we so often walk about with an unspoken and enervating lack of personal freedom. Yet the wish for more controlling power will not set us free, anymore than another drink will quench the emptiness of an alcoholic in the grip of his disease. It makes me think of a game we played when I was nine called King of the Hill, in which seven or eight of us found a mound of dirt, the higher the better, and the goal was to stand alone on top of the hill. Once there, everyone else tried to throw you off, installing themselves as King of the Hill. It strikes me now as a training ground for worldly power. Clearly, the worst position of all is being King of the Hill. You are completely alone and paranoid, never able to trust anyone, constantly forced to spin and guard every direction. The hills may change from a job to a woman to a prized piece of real estate, but those on top can be so enslaved by guarding their position that they rarely enjoy the view. I always hated King of the Hill—always felt tense in my gut when king, sad when not, and ostracized if I didn't want to play. That pattern has followed me through life. But now, as a tired adult, when I feel alone and powerless atop whatever small hill I've managed to climb, I secretly long for anyone to join me. Now, I'm ready to believe there's more power here together.

Henry Ward Beecher used the parade and the IWA’s eight-hour-day battle to hector the working poor from the pulpit. Fewer hours would tend “to make men feel that work is not a good thing… hard knocks, and a good many of them” were the only way to “carve out independent fortunes.” Beecher admitted that underpaid workers could not make enough in an eight-hour day to advance from their lowly state at their present pay, but he neglected to denounce the owners who paid them so poorly. Working longer hours was his Christian solution.

The environment of spiritual direction, then, is affirming and encouraging, but it is also a place of authenticity. In spiritual direction we look at the truth of our present situation and experience. The question asked is not "What should be happening in my life?" but "What is happening in my life?" We look for God here, now, because the place where we are in our lives is the place where we find God. Our souls, our lives, are the dwelling place of God. We are God's temple (2 Corinthians 6:16). God names himself the "I AM" (Exodus 3:14) - not the I-will-be, the I-was, the I-could-be, but the I-am. The present moment, the present set of circumstances, the present relationships in our lives - this is where God lives. This is where God meets us and gives us life. This is where spiritual direction occurs.

with “This is a class assignment,” and (2) they had to engage the interactions with a straight face. They couldn’t give away the punchline. The exchanges went something like this: Students (walking in a group toward a stranger in a mall): “Excuse me, sir!” Stranger (looking around and awkwardly shifting bags of clothes): “Uhh, yeah? Me?” Students: “Yes! You. I was walking by, saw you, and wondered: Will you be my friend? Can I see pictures of your family? What are your political preferences? Can I see the pictures of your tattoos? What are your religious preferences? Why? Are you pro-choice? How come? Who are your favorite musicians? We’re going to read you a list of probing, introspective quotes, and you simply give us a thumbs up or a thumbs down if you like them or don’t like them. If you feel angry about a quote, tell us why.” And so on. My students had to video each interaction. And yes, it was as awkward and cringey as you can imagine. According to the papers they had to write after the fact, the assignment stirred up quite a bit of reflection. In a few short years, my students had come to believe they had “friends” because they knew some information about people. They thought they were connecting with those people. The exercise helped them see that our social media exchanges are anything but normal. The thumbs ups and thumbs downs are anything but connecting. The reality is that most of us don’t have any friends. Until recently, friendship was about enduring the awkwardness and ugliness of human

When I was a newly single mom with a toddler and a newborn, I’d cringe when meeting new people, especially other young parents, none of whom seemed to be anything but blissfully orbiting in their nuclear family unit. I’d dance around any pressures (perceived or real) to reveal my marital status, until I’d burst, and a flood of unprompted details would pour out: “I’m-separated-yes-your-math-is-right-my-ex-moved-out-while-Iwas-pregnant-but-he-had-a-brain-injury-and-destabalized-so-it-is-an-unusual-situation-a-medical-crisis-he’sactually-a-very-good-person-I’m-not-angry-about-that-we-are-all-fine!

I thank the dark Virgin, morena like me... There are many who will tell you that the dark-skinned girls, las morenitas, have got no chance. But when Iwas a girl, I noted the Virgen de Guadalupe, her with the important job of taking care of all the pueblitos, and standing in every home with candles and all the respect, and her own day of Guadalupe with people crawling across zócalo and up the cathedral steps on raw knees and singing themselves ronca all night long

Ni Marx ni Bakunin fueron responsables de la formación de la Asociacion Internacional de Obreros (International Workingmen’s Association, IWA), que al final fue conocida como la Primera Internacional. Se estableció en 1864 para favorecer la cooperación entre las asociaciones de trabajadores con el objetivo de promover «la protección, la prosperidad y la completa emancipación de la clase obrera». Era una organización no sectaria de base amplia, que acogía a los numerosísimos refugiados radicados en Londres y a un caleidoscopio de filosofías prevalentes en aquellos momentos, incluidos los demócratas y los anarquistas, los internacionalistas y los nacionalistas, los idealistas y los materialistas, y los moderados y los extremistas.

On my left (without a compass I had no way of knowing what direction I was facing),

Iwas never completely gone. My spark was always inside me, smoldering.

Iwas up early, my anxiety keeping me from getting any more sleep than was absolutely necessary.

I was a human rights defender, and I based my criticisms of the state on legal grounds. But authoritarian governments are not fond of shades of gray; they cannot tolerate any criticism at all,

Iwas given a month off.

Years passed—or was it just a moment? Hard to say. Phyllis’s cognitive mind slipped farther and farther away and a different kind of awareness bloomed. The swamp breathed and she breathed with it. She saw everything: the creatures, the flowers, the tender shoots of green and the towering trees, the depths of the water. All that was dead and dying. All that was bursting with life. Her notebooks, tucked away in their plastic container, were gradually forgotten. The urge to record, to quantify, left her. Instead, she returned to the inclination that had guided her through all the years when her mind was sharp. The root of her curiosity: a simple and enduring desire to notice. There were moments during this last stretch when she occupied herself so completely that she forgot there had been any other time than now, any other way to exist but this. And there were also moments when she fought against the ebbing of logic and analysis, feeling adrift and upset, as if something precious had been taken from her that she would never have again. All of this was true. All of it was right. Memories of childhood dusted her skin like pollen. All it took was a brisk gust of wind to send it all scattering. She remembered learning—the crispness of a washed blackboard, a good mark on her paper, the perfect loneliness of a library; she remembered men she’d known and she remembered intimacy; she remembered her parents, having them and losing them; she remembered her sister, pretty and harsh and unwilling to imagine the future Phyllis had foreseen; she remembered teaching—the way her hands shook at the start of every term, her students and their litany of excuses; she remembered her research—working in the field, working at her desk, the minutiae of life glimpsed through a microscope; she remembered every forest she’d ever walked through; she remembered every city she’d ever visited; she remembered preparing, preparing, preparing. And then all of this was gone. Piece by piece, Phyllis said goodbye to each part of her life that had come before. She held on to Wanda the longest. As long as she could. She replayed every moment they had spent together. She repeated Wanda’s name to herself when Wanda left her alone in the tree house, reciting it like a chant, a prayer, so that when she came home, it would already be on her tongue. This didn’t always work. Sometimes Phyllis arrived in a moment she hadn’t been aware of—like time travel, hopping from one place to another with smooth, easy leaps. It was only when she saw the exhaustion on Wanda’s face that she realized she had missed something in between. “I’m sorry,” Phyllis said. “I think I…was somewhere else.” “That’s all right.” “What are we doing?” “We’re weaving nets. Do you want to help?” “Yes. Yes, please.” They sat

Iwas satisfied. I felt warm and sated, like a sleepy, smug cat. I nearly arched off the desk in contentment, not at all fearing the warning in my husband’s voice. It was inconvenient, I decided, to be attracted to my husband. Unfortunately, I was. Terribly.

Kung binabasa mo ito at bahagi ka ng Build, Build, Build Team, ako na mismo ang magsasabi sayo—kung wala ka, hindi tayo makagagawa ng 29,264 kilometrong kalsada, 5,950 na mga tulay, 11,340 na mga estrukturang pang-iwas ng baha, 222 evacuation centers, 150,149 na mga silid-aralan, 214 na mga paliparan, at 451 na mga daungan. Ang Pilipinas ay nasa mas magandang katayuan ngayon dahil sa inyong husay, trabaho, at sakripisyo. Kung hindi dahil sa tulong ninyo sa pagtatayo ng Pigalo Bridge, ang mga magsasaka sa Isabela na gustong dalhin ang kanilang mga produktong pang-agrikultura sa Maynila o Tuguegarao, ay kailangan pang tahakin ang 76-kilometrong Alicia-Angadanan-San Guillermo-Naguilian Road. Ngayon, naaabot na ng mga magsasaka ang parehong pamilihan sa loob lamang ng sampung minuto.” - Night Owl: Edisyong Filipino (p. 1, Sa 6.5 Milyong Kasapi ng Build, Build, Build Team)

You told me, didn’t you? That I’m fine just the way I am! Was that a lie?” “No…” “I… um, well, about that, I…was pretty h…happy to hear that, okay? But why… can’t you tell yourself the same thing?

him about the photographs from the train that had vanished before my eyes. ‘For God’s sake, Daniel, why didn’t you tell me about that before?’ ‘I was afraid that I’d imagined it. That I was losing my mind.’ If I wasn’t crazy, there was only one possible explanation for the way the pictures had vanished. In the hospital car park, trying to work out Gabor’s motive for returning the computer, I had remembered what had happened immediately before I saw the photos that vanished: I’d received the email with the kitten picture from Laura. Except I was willing to bet that it hadn’t really been from Laura. If I’d looked closer at the time I would no doubt have seen that it had come from an email address set up in Laura’s name. And the picture of the kittens had contained what I was now looking for. Gabor must have guessed I’d check my laptop for viruses when it was mysteriously returned—so

Romania. Though, to be honest, I was more worried about Laura than I was about the local wildlife. Did she really blame me for what had happened? It was a fact that if I’d booked a sleeper compartment to start with, we would have been safely tucked up in our bunks with the door locked. Nobody would have stolen our stuff. We wouldn’t have met Alina and got chucked off the train. Everything would be fine. Whether or not Laura held me responsible, I 

From the time I was born, I’ve been surrounded by people who had to be strong everyday just to survive. They had to be hard in mind an’ in heart to get from one year to the next. An’ ye’ve seen my back, I’ve known hatred, come to understand it well an’ promised myself I’d never be vulnerable to it again. But I’d no idea that love could make ye ten times more open to destruction. I’ve had men beat me until I was certain there was only a minute or two left between me an’ the grave an’ yet the fists an’ the knives never hurt the way it does when I think of losin’ ye.

And it's totally sweet. Gus has tried it, he loves it, and thank God because, oh yeah, that's what I was trying to tell you, about not being an ambi-feeder. So, it's totally easy to feed him on the left side, but when I try on the right, it doesn't work as well… hence, not an ambi-feeder. So, I end up always having a really full left boob, big left tit, B.L.T. and the right one, starts to hurt a little when it gets full because baby never feeds as much on that side. So at night in bed, Gus takes a little drink for me so my boobs won't hurt. He calls it dessert.

Iwas no longer looking at a woman. I was looking at a fucking goddess. A goddess of death and vengeance and utter, indiscriminate destruction

Iwas far from an expert on love. I knew that loving someone meant accepting their flaws, their little idiosyncrasies, all their weirdness and oddities. Maybe I expected that to be dirty socks on the floor or left-opened bags of chips. Not, you know, nailing me, board by board, into a house with no escape. And, you know, trying to eat me.

Iwas glad Saturday was in the rearview mirror. The shop had been insane with customers, and I had zero time to check in with Gage about the investigation. Now that it was finally Sunday, and in my opinion the best day of the week, I could relax. I always had breakfast with Aunt Mimi and Nate. Sometimes, if I got lucky, she’d make her legendary Belgian waffles and a thick slab bacon. But today I was bringing over the big book, and Milo was going with me. She was going to help me work on the next spell and practice the first three I had sort of learned. I dressed quickly, called to Milo that we needed to hurry, and when he didn’t appear, I went looking for him. 

Iwas

Ay, ano nga ba ang ating kaugnayan? Hindi tayo magkaano-ano. Ganitong mga nagdaang danas lamang naman ang ating napagsaluhan, mga insidente at aksidenteng puta-putaking nagdaan sa ating buhay. Malapit na malayo't Malayong malapit, nakatanod sa pagtatalamitam. Naiiba ba ito sa mga sinaunang salaysay? May darating at may magpapaalam, may iibis at may sasakay, sa bawat kasalukuyan ng ating pag-iral. Maaaring kumurot ang tuwa, umusbong ang luha, at lagi, may antak na iwa. Nawa'y hindi tumiwalag ang puso kung ugnaya'y yumao. Nawa'y hindi masaling ang kaluluwa. kahit magtakipsilim ang umaga. Nawa'y hindi mapatid ang awit sa pagtigil ng hininga.

Iwas living in the burning flames of hell’s playground, and I was the devil’s toy. The worst part? I’d grown to like being around him.

Egyptian kings had already launched expeditions to ‘hack up Asia’, raiding ‘Iwa’ (Türkiye) and ‘Iasy’ (Cyprus), but Hau-nebut was Crete, with which the Egyptian family had a special relationship.

This is me just going on a rant about self harm and my experience started when I was 7 through 10 I was always getting raped my my cousin I had told my brother and after he said "well so u wanna have sex with me" i kept telling him no then he force me to I was 7 he was 9 and the thing with him lasted until i was fucking 12 mothers day weekend of 2022 i was scared, alone so I went to my last resort, cutting i was always in the care of my father fast forward to about 2 months later so in july i went 4 months without seeing my father so iwas heart broken i couldent see him so now my father was in a motorcycling accident i mean he was mentally abusive so i kinda laughed then i realized that he night not make it

Iwas no longer looking at a woman. I was looking at a fucking goddess. A goddess of death and vengeance and utter, indiscriminate destruction. She could be nothing else – standing there in her white jacket so spattered with blood that it soaked crimson, sword raised, those scarlet butterflies forming a cape around her shoulders.

Iwas a girl when the goblin king first sent out his messages. Any young, unmarried woman willing to come to his castle would receive one gold piece for every night she spent there.

often felt locked into these gazes and lost in a dreamy trance as Iwa would continue to pull me through the portals of her eyes into the gentleness of her heart.

and I was able to close the deal quickly because there was no third-party (bank) involvement. Of the three properties that the real estate agent presented to me, this is the one I took, and the seller financing was a large factor in my decision. _______________

Iwas good at keeping secrets. I had to be. I’d learned how to hide things, how to prevent anybody finding out the truth. And I’d had loads of practice concealing what I felt, at hiding the real me. Turns out this was a good thing, because I was still disguising how I felt about the boy playing Romero to my Juliet.

»A STEP FORWARD 4« Iwa (DidaraOluwa), the daughter of my womb, Thanks for blessing me with your wealth dear. Where is your diary? Let's talk. One morning We were asked to plant maize in a container. Despite the time and energy invested, the Container was without life in it. Oh no, what An error. So, I stopped watering and was about To destroy the container. Kai, discontentment Set in. Iwa, many waste their time on the outer Part of the container. The structure is not the Issue. The question is this, what the container Contains i.e the content. Hmm I know you want To grow, but what do you have in you to grow? I know you want to fly, but these people you Move with are reptiles, so growing of wings to Fly high, higher above the sky is like betraying Your intimate friends. I also know you want to Be the best in your profession, but Iwa, what You possess determines the greatness of what You profess. Be still dear, pick the spanner of Life, check the content. Your first step to take »A STEP FORWARD 4« #achieversdiary

Wherever we stop is the summit. Iwas climbing Trail Ridge Road through the Rocky Mountains, determined to make the Continental Divide, when two sharp feelings pierced me almost at once. I, who have never had any trouble with heights, felt rushes of fear as I drove on narrow stretches 12,000 feet up. I was also filled with the irrevocable truth that everything-there-is is wherever we are. This all made me stop and walk the tundra above the treeline. There, I was overcome with the sudden truth that I could go no farther, and that I had no need to go any farther. Can it be that this journey through the mountains mirrors the journey through our lives? Is our suffering like the dizzying, gut-wrenching narrow passes through these ancient rocks? Do we simply move on until we can't, and in accepting our humanity, does the peak come to us? What an unlikely truth. I traveled as far as I could manage, and there on the bare scalp of the Earth, I realized that where I can go no further is my destination. This is the wearing of heart that no one can escape. Despite all our noble efforts to reach some treasured peak—be it a dream of wealth or love—we carry the summit within. And it is always the effort and exhaustion—the very journey itself—that opens the view which is everywhere. For the summit is not so much arrived at as we are worn open to it. I felt the truth of arriving at wherever my human limitations had left me, knew somehow it was enough, and I let out a cry like a vapor. We are as bare as these crags being worn by endless wind, and, regardless of the maps we carefully draw and pass down, we arrive at what we've always had when we use up everything we've saved. In this way we are brought to humility. Once accepting our frail humanity, we can see how stubbornly fragile living things are. We can see how it takes just a thin lick of water down a mountain crack to strengthen a root and a bare lick of love through our stony hearts to blossom a soul.

Iwa: he begged on his knees Iwa: the coaches got worried he’d injure his bad knee further so they let him do it

And all my life, in the search for something remarkable—something extraordinary—I had never imagined something such as this; something so solitary, this private and flawless moment. Once, before I had known Philip at all, I had wanted to be the subject of songs, a hero in poems. I had wanted to be like Richard the Lionheart, like Philip Augustus. These were the men who would be chanted of, who would be immortalized in their castles and their cities, in the soil of their kingdoms and the white stone of their effigies. But those men were not real, and they never would be. We were real, he and I, and I was glad that no one else would ever know Philip as I did in that moment, nor know me as he did. We were only for each other.