Metro Quotes

- Soy feliz. Jamás me he sentido tan bien, ¿y tu? - ¿Yo? - Step la abraza con fuerza-. Estoy de maravilla. - ¿Hasta el punto de llegar a tocar el cielo con un dedo? - No, así no. - ¿Ah, no? - Mucho más. Al menos tres metros sobre el cielo.

… y es ahí, justo en ese momento, cuando te das cuenta de que las cosas sólo ocurren una vez, y por mucho que te esfuerces ya nunca volverás a sentir lo mismo, ya nunca tendrás la sensación de estar a tres metros sobre el cielo”.

And what if there’s nothing in there?’ You die and there’s nothing beyond that. Nothing. Nothing remains. Someone might remember you for a little while after but not for long.

Humans had always been better at killing than any other living thing.

Just because i know how to change a guys oil doesn't mean i want to spend the rest of my life on my back, staring up his undercarriage.

There's only one thing that can save a man from madness and that's uncertainty.

Being or nothing, that is the question. Ascending, descending, coming, going, a man does so much that in the end he disappears.

Yes, Marcos is gay. Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains. Marcos is all the exploited, marginalised, oppressed minorities resisting and saying `Enough'. He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every untolerated group searching for a way to speak. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable -- this is Marcos.

And then, after five minutes of silence, almost inaudibly, the old man sighed and said, more to himself than to Artyom: ‘Lord, what a splendid world we ruined . . .

Y lo que llamamos amarnos fue quizá que yo estaba de pie, delante de vos, con una flor amarilla en la mano, y vos sostenías dos velas verdes, y el tiempo soplaba contra nuestras caras una lenta lluvia de renuncias y despedidas y tickets de metro.

The number of places in paradise is limited; only in hell is entry open to all.

Metro Von Dickfucker

Cut the chatter!' interrupted Melnick, fiercely. 'Don't you know librarians can't stand noise? For them, noise is like waving a red rag in front of a bull.

If someday, in a morning, you see you, in a mirror or the dent of a spoon, and wonder Where is my soul and Where has it gone, remember this: Catch the gaze of a woman on the metro, subway, tram. Look at a man. Seek and you will find you in the silvered space, a flash between souls.

y es ahí, justo en ese momento, cuando te das cuenta de que las cosas sólo ocurren una vez, y por mucho que te esfuerces ya nunca volverás a sentir lo mismo, ya nunca tendrás la sensación de estar a tres metros sobre el cielo

What metro Boston AAs are trite but correct about is that both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in their life: i.e almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer.

Alice wondered if no one ever felt as old as they were because it happened so slowly, and you were only ever one day slower and creakier, and the world changed so gradually that by the time cars had evolved from boxy to smooth, or green taxis had joined yellow ones, or MetroCards had replaced tokens, you were used to it. Everyone was a lobster in the pot.

In a Station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

Because the purpose of feminism isn’t to make a particular type of woman. The idea that there are inherently wrong and inherently right “types” of women is what’s screwed feminism for so long — this belief that “we” wouldn’t accept slaggy birds, dim birds, birds that bitch, birds that hire cleaners, birds that stay at home with their kids, birds that have pink Mini Metros with POWERED BY FAIRY DUST! bumper stickers, birds in burkas or birds that like to pretend, in their heads, that they’re married to Zach Braff from Scrubs and that you sometimes have sex in an ambulance while the rest of the cast watch and, latterly, clap. You know what? Feminism will have all of you. What is feminism? Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be. Are you a feminist? Hahaha. Of course you are.

Tres metros sobre el cielo es una sensación que recorre tu cuerpo a 100.000 bytes por segundo, provocando una irrigación sanguínea que nutre el corazón hasta hacerlo bombear mil por hora. ¿Cómo lo sientes? ¿Por qué lo sientes? ¿Con quién lo sientes? Todo depende: una persona, las circunstancias, la experiencia...lo que es seguro es que son tus manos las que laten, tus ojos los que hablan, tus labios los que tiemblan y tu boca la que golpea. Esto es tres metros sobre el cielo. El momento en el que te sientes vivo. Un instante en que tomes la dirección que tomes ya nada volverá a ser lo mismo. Unos lo llaman amor, otros amistad y riesgo y unos pocos peligro, pero a mi me gusta llamarlo: la sensación vertiginosa que provoca el estar a tres metros sobre el cielo.

But if they have a flashlight, it means they're human and not some kind of monsters from the surface,' objected Artyom. "I don't know what's worse," said Melnik, cutting off Artyom.

Los caminos se bifurcan, cada uno toma una dirección pensando que al final los caminos se volverán a unir… Desde tú camino ves a la otra persona cada vez más pequeña. No pasa nada, estamos hechos el uno para el otro, y ahí está, y al final solo ocurre una cosa, llega el invierno no hay vuelta atrás, lo sientes, y justo entonces intentas recordar en que momento comenzó todo y descubres que todo empezó antes de lo que pensabas… Mucho antes… y es ahí justo en ese momento cuando te das cuenta de que las cosas solo ocurren una vez, y que por mucho que te esfuerces, ya nunca volverás a sentir lo mismo, ya nunca tendrás la sensación de estar a tres metros sobre el cielo.

Never discuss the rights of the strong. You are too weak to do that. -Khan

Jamás vendas la biblioteca;si un día quieres deshacerte de ella, dónde, regalala a una escuela, reparte la en la glorieta del metro Insurgentes. Hay muchos que quieren leer y no tienen cómo pagar por los libros. No se vale hacer negocio.

Do you know the parable about the frog in the cream? Two frogs landed in a pail of cream. One, thinking rationally, understood straight away that there was no point in resistance and that you can’t deceive destiny. But then what if there’s an afterlife – why bother jumping around, entertaining false hopes in vain? He crossed his legs and sank to the bottom. The second, the fool, was probably an atheist. And she started to flop around. It would seem that she had no reason to flail about if everything was predestined. But she flopped around and flopped around anyway . . . Meanwhile, the cream turned to butter. And she crawled out. We honour the memory of this second frog’s friend, eternally damned for the sake of progress and rational thought.

Y algún día nos cruzaremos en un bar o en el metro. Fingiremos no reconocernos o no vernos, nos apartaremos rápidamente. Sentiremos vergüenza por lo que ha sido de «lo nuestro», por lo que ha quedado: Nada. Dos extraños con un ficticio pasado común, por el que tanto tiempo y con tanto descaro se habían dejado engañar.

I 'm reading now Metro 2033.It looks intresting so far

Lolita, luz de mi vida, fuego de mis entrañas. Pecado mío, alma mía. Lo-li-ta: la punta de la lengua emprende un viaje de tres pasos paladar abajo hasta apoyarse, en el tercero, en el borde de los dientes. Lo. Li. Ta. Era Lo, sencillamente Lo, por la mañana, cuando estaba derecha, con su metro cuarenta y ocho de estatura, sobre un pie enfundado en un calcetín. Era Lola cuando llevaba puestos los pantalones. Era Dolly en la escuela. Era Dolores cuando firmaba. Pero en mis brazos fue siempre Lolita. ¿Tuvo Lolita una precursora? Naturalmente que sí. En realidad, Lolita no hubiera podido existir para mí si un verano no hubiese amado a otra niña iniciática. En un principado junto al mar. ¿Cuándo? Aquel verano faltaban para que naciera Lolita casi tantos como los que yo tenía entonces. Pueden contar en que la prosa de los asesinos sea siempre elegante, vaya que lo sé. Señoras y señores del jurado, la prueba número uno es lo que los serafines, los mal informados e ingenuos ángeles de majestuosas alas, envidiaron. Contemplen esta maraña de espinas.

Welcome to the First International Red Fighting Brigade of the Moscow Metropolitan in the name of Ernesto Che Guevara!

People walk the paths of the gardens below, and the wind sings anthems in the hedges, and the big old cedars at the entrance to the maze creak. Marie-Laure imagines the electromagnetic waves traveling into and out of Michel’s machine, bending around them, just as Etienne used to describe, except now a thousand times more crisscross the air than when he lived - maybe a million times more. Torrents of text conversations, tides of cell conversations, of televisions programs, of e-mails, vast networks of fiber and wire interlaced above and beneath the city, passing through buildings, arcing between transmitters in Metro tunnels, between antennas atop buildings, from lampposts with cellular transmitters in them, commercials for Carrefour and Evian and prebaked toaster pastries flashing into space and back to earth again, I am going to be late and Maybe we should get reservations? and Pick up avocados and What did he say? and ten thousand I miss yous, fifty thousand I love yous, hate mail and appointment reminders and market updates, jewelry ads, coffee ads, furniture ads flying invisibly over the warrens of Paris, over the battlefields and tombs, over the Ardennes, over the Rhine, over Belgium and Denmark, over the scarred and ever-shifting landscape we call nations. And is it so hard to believe that souls might also travel those paths? That her father and Etienne and Madame Manec and the German boy named Werner Pfennig might harry the sky in flocks, like egrets, like terns, like starlings? That great shuttles of souls might fly about, faded but audible if you listen closely enough? They flow above the chimneys, ride the sidewalks, slip through your jacket and shirt and breastbone and lungs, and pass out through the other side, the air a library and the record of every life lived, every sentence spoken, every word transmitted still reverberating within it. Every hour, she thinks, someone for whom the war was memory falls out of the world. We rise again in the grass. In the flowers. In songs.

Could anyone who had never seen stars possibly imagine what infinity is, when, most likely, the very concept of infinity first appeared among humans inspired, once upon a time, by the nocturnal vault of the heavens?

There are some things that you don’t want to do and you pledge to yourself that you won’t do, you forbid yourself, and then suddenly they happen all by themselves. You don’t even have time to think about them, and they don’t make it to the cognitive centres of the brain: they just happen and that’s it, and you’re left just watching yourself with surprise, and convincing yourself that it wasn’t your fault, it just happened all by itself.

Люди всегда умели убивать лучше, чем любое другое живое существо.

we live by legends, and not by bread alone.

San Diego has the finest zoo in America, but the Los Angeles Zoo is not much more than a home for retired Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lions.

Nunca te llevé a que madame Leonie te mirara la palma de la mano, a lo mejor tuve miedo de que leyera en tu mano alguna verdad sobre mí, porque fuiste siempre un espejo terrible, una espantosa máquina de repeticiones, y lo que llamamos amarnos fue quizá que yo estaba de pie delante de vos, con una flor amarilla en la mano, y vos sostenías dos velas verdes y el tiempo soplaba contra nuestras caras una lenta lluvia de renuncias y despedidas y tickets de metro.

El sol está saliendo y es una bonita mañana. Ella se dirige a clase; él aún no se ha acostado. Un día como otro cualquiera. Pero en el semáforo se encuentran el uno al lado del otro. Y a partir de ese momento, ya no será un día cualquiera.

Lord, what a splendid world we ruined

Getting a new version of the answer every day, Artyom was unable to compel himself to believe what was true, because the next day another, no less precise and comprehensive one, might arise. Whom should he believe? And in what? ... Any faith served man only as a crutch supporting him. ... He understood why man needs this support. Without it, life would have become empty, like an abandoned tunnel.

As to whether Marcos is gay: Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal,… a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains.

Quantos metros precisamos percorrer, quantos dias devemos esperar, em que momento da nossa vida irá se realizar o nosso maior sonho e, uma vez realizado, teremos sensibilidade para identificá-lo? O nosso desejo mais secreto quase sempre é secreto até para nós mesmos.

André si fermò a meno di un metro da me, lo sguardo così freddo da gelarmi come una bufera di neve. «La prossima volta» disse con calma inquietante «te lo lascerò fare. Ti concederò un vantaggio. E poi ti prenderò. E ti ucciderò».

I wanna be your vacuum cleaner Breathing in your dust I wanna be your Ford Cortina I will never rust If you like your coffee hot Let me be your coffee pot You call the shots babe I just wanna be yours Secrets I have held in my heart Are harder to hide than I thought Maybe I just wanna be yours I wanna be yours, I wanna be yours Wanna be yours, wanna be yours, wanna be yours Let me be your 'leccy meter and I'll never run out And let me be the portable heater that you'll get cold without I wanna be your setting lotion (I wanna be) Hold your hair in deep devotion (How deep?) At least as deep as the Pacific Ocean I wanna be yours Read more: Arctic Monkeys - I Wanna Be Yours Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Normally death came at night, taking a person in their sleep, stopping their heart or tickling them awake, leading them to the bathroom with a splitting headache before pouncing and flooding their brain with blood. It waits in alleys and metro stops. After the sun goes down plugs are pulled by white-clad guardians and death is invited into an antiseptic room. But in the country death comes, uninvited, during the day. It takes fishermen in their longboats. It grabs children by the ankles as they swim. In winter it calls them down a slope too steep for their budding skills, and crosses their skies at the tips. It waits along the shore where snow met ice not long ago but now, unseen by sparkling eyes, a little water touches the shore, and the skater makes a circle slightly larger than intended. Death stands in the woods with a bow and arrow at dawn and dusk. And it tugs cars off the road in broad daylight, the tires spinning furiously on ice or snow, or bright autumn leaves.

Any faith served man only as a crutch supporting him.

He who is brave and patient enough to peer into the darkness his whole life will be first to see a flicker of light in it.

Believe me there is one thing that is permanent. That is LOVE. The circumstances, beginning, ending and the protagonist all changes.

Just because Hottie McHot Ass walks in with his super metro hot best friend, and all those like muscles and shit, doesn’t mean you get to turn into a pile of goo. We hate them.

Slowly, slowly, his soul was filled with bitterness at the fact that he had stood a step away from enlightenment, from the most real enlightenment, but he hadn’t been resolute, he hadn’t dare give himself to the flow of the tunnel’s ether, and now he would be left to wander in the darkness for his whole life because he was once too afraid of the light of authentic knowledge.

But let us turn back to the tragic events of February 6. The story of the riots may be briefly told. A riot in France is one of the most remarkable things in the world. The frenzied combatants maintain perfect discipline. Seventeen people were barbarously killed, and several thousand injured, but there was no fighting at all between about seven-thirty p.m. and nine, when everyone took time out for dinner. When it started, no one thought of revolution; it was just a nice big riot. Communists, royalists, Fascists, socialists, fought shoulder to shoulder under both red flag and tricolor against the police and Garde Mobile. The fighting stopped on the stroke of twelve, because the Paris Metro (underground) stops running at twelve-thirty, and no one wanted to walk all the way home. Bloody, bandaged, fighters and police jostled their way into the trains together. Promptly at seven-thirty next morning the fighting started again. – John Gunther, Inside Europe pg. 154-155

Life in Christ is like traveling on a metro link train, with a predetermined destination. You are not the driver, Jesus is, and God provided the route on this one time trip. He plotted everything, the date and the time of your travel and arrival. There will be stops and delays along the way, but remember this, at the bottom of a traffic light is always a green light.

Era Lo, sencillamente Lo, por la mañana, un metro cuarenta y ocho de estatura con pies descalzos. Era Lola con pantalones. Era Dolly en la escuela. Era Dolores cuando firmaba. Pero en mis brazos era siempre Lolita.

There was nothing: just an empty, dark tunnel he was supposed to plod his way through, from “Birth” station to “Death” station. Those looking for faith had simply been trying to find the side branches in this line. But there were only two stations, and only tunnel connecting them.

Love is selfless. It does not dictate terms. Expectations are natural but not compulsory. It doesn’t say I will love you as long as you will listen to me. The minute you will disobey me I will leave you. It says I will show you the right path. If you choose a path which is wrong according to me than I will not support you but I will still love you

Right or wrong is decided by God because it is he who has done that thing. You are just a medium.

Not all Love stories are similar. Each one is different and each has a different beginning and different ending. If someone judges all of them with similar yardstick than he is a fool.

Soul mates are the one who understand the unspoken, hear the unsaid and feel the unfelt. They bring out in you the things even you are unaware of till now and they are the wind with the help of which you can soar high in the sky towards your dream. Your soul mate is an extension of you, who does not complete you, brings out a complete you, someone who merges with you not to lose her identity but to give you a picture of serenity!

Her purse is half open, and I see a hotel room key, a metro ticket, and a hundred-franc note folded in four, like objects brought back by a space probe sent to earth to study how earthlings live, travel, and trade with one another. The sight leaves me pensive and confused. Does the cosmos contain keys for opening up my diving bell? A subway line with no terminus? A currency strong enough to buy my freedom back? We must keep looking. I'll be off now.

We got passes, till midnight after the parade. I met Muriel at the Biltmore at seven. Two drinks, two drugstore tuna-fish sandwiches, then a movie she wanted to see, something with Greer Garson in it. I looked at her several times in the dark when Greer Garson’s son’s plane was missing in action. Her mouth was opened. Absorbed, worried. The identification with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer tragedy complete. I felt awe and happiness. How I love and need her undiscriminating heart. She looked over at me when the children in the picture brought in the kitten to show to their mother. M. loved the kitten and wanted me to love it. Even in the dark, I could sense that she felt the usual estrangement from me when I don’t automatically love what she loves. Later, when we were having a drink at the station, she asked me if I didn’t think that kitten was ‘rather nice.’ She doesn’t use the word ‘cute’ any more. When did I ever frighten her out of her normal vocabulary? Bore that I am, I mentioned R. H. Blyth’s definition of sentimentality: that we are being sentimental when we give to a thing more tenderness than God gives to it. I said (sententiously?) that God undoubtedly loves kittens, but not, in all probability, with Technicolor bootees on their paws. He leaves that creative touch to script writers. M. thought this over, seemed to agree with me, but the ‘knowledge’ wasn’t too very welcome. She sat stirring her drink and feeling unclose to me. She worries over the way her love for me comes and goes, appears and disappears. She doubts its reality simply because it isn’t as steadily pleasurable as a kitten. God knows it is sad. The human voice conspires to desecrate everything on earth.

Nem sempre é na altura de morrermos que a vida inteira nos passa como um clarão diante dos nossos olhos. Essa é a morte física, que não é a única. Para algumas pessoas há um dia em que cada sonho amontoado ao longo dos anos, cada boa intenção, se ergue dentro de si revoltando-se contra a vida que têm vivido. Isto pode suceder no metro, ao volante de um carro, numa ponte olhando para as águas de um rio".

Over a quarter of a century ago she and Vernon had made a household for almost a year, in a tiny rooftop flat on the rue de Seine. There were always damp towels on the floor then, and cataracts of her underwear tumbling from drawers she never closed, a big ironing board that was never folded away, and in the one overfilled wardrobe dresses , crushed and shouldering sideways like commuters on the metro. Magazines, makeup, bank statements, bead necklaces, flowers, knickers, ashtrays, invitations, tampons, LPs, airplane tickets, high heeled shoes- not a single surface was left uncovered by something of Molly's, so that when Vernon was meant to be working at home, he took to writing in a cafe along the street. And yet each morning she arose fresh from the shell of this girly squalor, like a Botticelli Venus, to present herself, not naked, of course, but sleekly groomed, at the offices of Paris Vogue.

They tell you to get a guy friend to walk you home, not realizing that guy friends can rape you. Take a cab! But the cab driver can rape you. Take an uber, but they're even more rapey. Take the metro -- rapists ride free. What if everyone was like me, I wondered, and hunted down their respective Will's? Would the economy collapse?

Wages and housing costs have diverged so dramatically that, for a growing number of Americans, the dream of a middle-class life has gone from difficult to impossible. As I write this, there are only a dozen counties and one metro area in America where a full-time minimum wage worker can afford a one-bedroom apartment at fair market rent. You’d have to make at least $16.35 an hour—more than twice the federal minimum wage—to rent such an apartment without spending more than the recommended 30 percent of income on housing. The consequences are dire, especially for the one in six American households that have been putting more than half of what they make into shelter. For many low-income families, that means little or nothing left over to buy food, medication, and other essentials.

Life always gives option to quit. If you want to compromise you always have that option

His delight at seeing this creation of human hands was mixed with the bitterness of finally understanding that nothing like it ever would be created again.

Never follow the crowd.... Until and unless you're crossing the road...

For anyone who wanted to throw away his watch, along with his past, this was the place.

It’s so much easier for people to die when they believe in something! For those who believe that death isn’t the end of everything. For those in whose eyes the world is separated into black and white – who know exactly what they need to do and why, who hold the torch of an idea, of beliefs, in their hands, and everything they see is illuminated by it. Those who have nothing to doubt and nothing to regret. They must have an easy time of dying. They die with a smile on their face.

Now he only had an abstract interest in what was surrounding him, as though none of this was happening to him, but he was just reading a book about it. The fate of the main character interested him, of course, but if he was killed then he could just pick another book off the shelf - one with a happy ending.

I hated that the Metro was carpeted, and that it was so far underground—you felt like a mole by the time you got down the escalator—and I hated that you had to swipe your card to get in and out of the station. I hated that you couldn’t eat or drink on the train, and I especially hated that everyone obeyed the rule, like they were afraid they’d be arrested for sipping a cup of Starbucks on their morning commute.

Mi diressi dalla metro verso il South Dock, attraversai il South Quay Footbridge e lo ritrovai in pochi minuti di cammino. Ogni volta che visitavo l'ex area portuale, da quand'era stata trasformata in centro direzionale dagli splendidi grattacieli in vetro e acciaio, non potevo non restare colpita dallo sforzo che era stato fatto per abbracciare la modernità senza sacrificare la bellezza. Il grattacielo dove viveva Edy, in South Quay Plaza, non faceva eccezione, anche se la zona era un po' troppo densa di cemento per i miei gusti. Mi fermai alla base dell'edificio, lasciando che il mio sguardo cercasse di raggiungere la sommità della torre di vetro. In fondo, era ovvio che Edy Thor vivesse lassù, quasi a guardare noi mortali dall'alto.

The night-noises of the metro night: harbor-wind skirling on angled cement, the shush and sheen of overpass traffic, TPs' laughter in interior rooms, the yowl of unresolved cat-life. Horns blatting off in the harbor. Receding sirens. Confused inland gulls' cries. Broken glass from far away. Car horns in gridlock, arguments in languages, more broken glass, running shoes, a woman's either laugh or scream from who can tell how far, coming off the grid. Dogs defending whatever dog-yards they pass by, the sounds of chains and risen hackles.

Why was he doing this? So that life could continue in the metro? Right. So that they could grow mushrooms and pigs at VDNKh in the future, and so that his stepfather and Zhenkina’s family lived there in peace, so that people unknown to him could settle at Alekseevskaya and at Rizhskaya, and so that the uneasy bustle of trade at Byelorusskaya didn’t die away. So that the Brahmins could stroll about Polis in their robes and rustle the pages of books, grasping the ancient knowledge and passing it on to subsequent generations. So that the fascists could build their Reich, capturing racial enemies and torturing them to death, and so that the Worm people could spirit away strangers’ children and eat adults, and so that the woman at Mayakovskaya could bargain with her young son in the future, earning herself and him some bread. So that the rat races at Paveletskaya didn’t end, and the fighters of the revolutionary brigade could continue their assaults on fascists and their funny dialectical arguments. And so that thousands of people throughout the whole metro could breathe, eat, love one another, give life to their children, defecate and sleep, dream, fight, kill, be ravished and betrayed, philosophize and hate, and so that each could believe in his own paradise and his own hell . . . So that life in the metro, senseless and useless, exalted and filled with light, dirty and seething, endlessly diverse, so miraculous and fine could continue.

The almost-35-year-old Terry Schmidt had very nearly nothing left anymore of the delusion that he differed from the great herd of the common run of men, not even in his despair at not making a difference or in the great hunger to have an impact that in his late twenties he'd clung to as evidence that even though he was emerging as sort of a failure the grand ambitions against which he judged himself a failure were somehow exceptional and superior to the common run's - not anymore, since now even the phrase Make A Difference had become a platitude so familiar that it was used as the mnemonic tag in low-budget Ad Council PSAs for Big Brothers/Big Sisters and the United Way, which used Make a Difference in a Child's Life and Making a Difference in Your Community respectively, with B.B./B.S. even acquiring the telephonic equivalent of DIF-FER-ENCE to serve as their Volunteer Hotline number in the metro area.

Kung sakaling malupit sa iyo ang kapalaran, alalahanin mo ako, dahil hindi mapapagod sa paghihintay itong walang sawang tumitingin sa iyo.

Homo homini lupus… Но волки, настоящие волки, были бы оскорблены таким сравнением.

Life is not complex. It is made to be complex. Complex issues are developed around simple issues.

Dar um passo pode ser fruto de uma decisão complexa. Há a possibilidade de seguir para a direita ou para a esquerda, posso continuar em frente ou voltar para trás, desfazer. Cada escolha lançará uma cadeia de resultados. Mal comparado, é como acordar na estação Sèvres-Lecourbe e não ter mapa do metro, nunca ter estado ali, não saber sequer onde se está, não saber sequer o que é o metro. Ter de aprender tudo. Ao fim de um tempo, com sorte, conversando com pedintes cegos, tocadores de concertina, talvez se consiga chegar à conclusão que se quer ir para a estação Ourcq, esse é o lugar onde se poderá ser feliz, mas como encontrar o caminho sem mapa, sem conhecer linhas e ligações? É possível arrastar a vida inteira no metro de Paris e nunca passar por Ourcq. É também possível passar por lá e não reconhecer que é ali que se quer sair.

Do I really deserve this? Artyom thought. Is my life so much more important than the lives of all these people? No, he was glad to have been rescued. But all these people – randomly scattered, like bags and rags, on the granite of the platform, side by side, on the rails, left forever in the poses that Hunter’s bullets had found them in – they all died so that he could live? Hunter had made this exchange with such ease, just as though he had sacrificed some minor chess figures to safeguard one of the most important pieces . . . He was just a player, and the metro was a chessboard, and all the figures were his, because he was playing the game with himself. But here was the question: Was Artyom such an important piece to the game that all these people had to perish for his preservation?

И все это для чего? Чтобы своей кровью искупить грех первого человека, которого Бог сам же спровоцировал и наказал, и чтобы люди вернулись в рай и вновь обрели бессмертие. Какая-то бессмысленная возня, ведь можно было просто не наказывать так строго их всех за то, чего они даже не делали. Или отменить наказание за сроком давности. Но зачем жертвовать любимым сыном, да еще и предавать его? Где здесь любовь, где здесь готовность прощать, где здесь всемогущество?

This time of year," she said, "people’s consciences gnaw at them. They give away truckloads of canned goods and quote Dickens and wring their hands over the ‘less fortunate.’" We boarded the Metro and took seats perpendicular to each other. "But God forbid anyone should address why they’re poor in the first place, or try to change the structures that keep them poor. Then the ‘less fortunate’ turn into ‘welfare queens’ and ‘derelicts.’ But if I were a lobbyist whoring on behalf of some transnational corporation, I’d never hear the word ‘derelict.’" "So when it comes to taking care of poor people," I said, "if Mother Teresa is the Hallmark card, then you’re the electric bill.

One afternoon a big wolf waited in a dark forest for a little girl to come along, carrying a basket of food to her grandmother. Finally a little girl did come a long and she was carrying a basket of food. “Are you carrying that basket to your grandmother? asked the wolf. The little girl said yes, she was. So the wolf asked her where her grandmother lived and the little girl told him and he disappeared into the wood. When the little girl opened the door of her grandmother’s house she saw that there was somebody in bed with a nightcap and nightgown on. She had approached no nearer than twenty-five feet from the bed when she saw that it was not her grandmother but the wolf, for even in a nightcap a wolf does not look any more like your grandmother than the Metro-Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge. So the little girl took an automatic out of her basket and shot the wolf dead. Moral: It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be.

—Pues tampoco está tan mal… —comentó James en voz alta. —¿Qué es lo que no está tan mal? Sorprendido, dejó caer el sujetador al suelo. Era Kelsey, que le observaba con atención a apenas dos metros de distancia. Estaba de brazos cruzados y, a juzgar por la agria expresión de su rostro, seguía cabreada. —Decía que…, nada, que no está tan mal esto de tender la ropa —mintió. —Me alegra. Espero que te sirva de lección y lo hagas más a menudo. —No lo dudes —añadió, esforzándose por no reír. —¿Sabes?, hoy estás un poco raro. —Así soy yo: raro y exclusivo —aclaró. —No eres exclusivo en el buen sentido de la palabra, James. En todo caso serías… repulsivo. James frunció el ceño, molesto.

First, contrary to popular belief, Buddhists can actually be very anxious people. That’s often why they become Buddhists in the first place. Buddhism was made for the anxious like Christianity was made for the downtrodden or AA for the addicted. Its entire purpose is to foster equanimity, to tame excesses of thought and emotion. The Buddhists have a great term for these excesses. They refer to them as the condition of “monkey mind.” A person in the throes of monkey mind suffers from a consciousness whose constituent parts will not stop bouncing from skull-side to skull-side, which keep flipping and jumping and flinging feces at the walls and swinging from loose neurons like howlers from vines. Buddhist practices are designed explicitly to collar these monkeys of the mind and bring them down to earth—to pacify them. Is it any wonder that Buddhism has had such tremendous success in the bastions of American nervousness, on the West Coast and in the New York metro area?

Basta, dovevo uscire da lì! Non potevo starmene chiusa nel gabinetto tutto il giorno e, se l’avessi incontrato, l’avrei ignorato. Aprii la porta e mi ritrovai a qualche metro di distanza da Mister Copertina. Non propriamente una scena romantica. Senza giacca, con le maniche della camicia arrotolate a mettere in evidenza i bicipiti abbronzati, le mani conserte e appoggiato al lavandino era l’incarnazione dell’uomo voglio, comando e posso. Ed era sexy. Troppo. Senza pensare con lucidità, cosa che capitava spesso ultimamente, tornai in bagno e mi chiusi dentro.

Twenty million people live and work in Tokyo. It’s so big that nobody really knows where it stops. It’s long since filled up the plain, and now it’s creeping up the mountains to the west and reclaiming land from the bay in the east. The city never stops rewriting itself. In the time one street guide is produced, it’s already become out of date. It’s a tall city, and a deep one, as well as a spread-out one. Things are always moving below you, and above your head. All these people, flyovers, cars, walkways, subways, offices, tower blocks, power cables, pipes, apartments, it all adds up to a lot of weight. You have to do something to stop yourself caving in, or you just become a piece of flotsam or an ant in a tunnel. In smaller cities people can use the space around them to insulate themselves, to remind themselves of who they are. Not in Tokyo. You just don’t have the space, not unless you’re a company president, a gangster, a politician or the Emperor. You’re pressed against people body to body in the trains, several hands gripping each strap on the metro trains. Apartment windows have no view but other apartment windows.

La mia vita mi spinge a immaginarmi come sarebbe stata la sua se le fosse toccato ciò che è toccato a me, che uso avrebbe fatto della mia fortuna. E la sua vita si affaccia di continuo nella mia, nelle parole che ho pronunciato, dentro le quali c'è spesso un'eco delle sue, in quel gesto determinato che è un riadattamento di un suo gesto, in quel mio di MENO che è tale per un suo di PIU', in quel mio di PIU' che è la forzatura di un suo di MENO senza contare ciò che non ha mai detto ma mi ha lasciato intuire, ciò che non sapevo e che poi ho letto nei suoi quaderni. Così il racconto dei fatti deve fare i conti con filtri, rimandi, verità parziali, mezze bugie: ne viene una estenuante misurazione del tempo passato tutta fondata sul metro incerto delle parole.

The whole underneath of Paris was an ant nest, Metro tunnels, sewer shafts, catacombs, mines, cemeteries. She'd been down in the city of bones where skulls and femurs rose in yellowing walls. Right down there, win the square before them. through a dinky little entrance, were the Roman ruins like honeycomb. The trains went under the river. There were tunnels people had forgotten about. It was a wonder Paris stood up at all. The bit you saw was only half of it. Her skin burned, thinking of it. The Hunchback knew. Up here in the tower of Notre Dame he saw how it was. Now and then, with the bells rattling his bones, he saw it like God saw it -- inside, outside, above and under -- just for a moment. The rest of the time he went back to hurting and waiting like Scully out there crying in the wind.

- Um dia, um marciano sábio vem à terra para ensinar umas coisinhas às pessoas - começo. - Um marciano? De que tamanho? -Oh, mais ou menos um metro e noventa. -Como é que se chama? - Marciano Luther King. (...) - Era um marciano muito simpatico, o senhor King. Era parecido connosco, nariz, boca, cabelo na cabeça, mas algumas pessoas olhavam para ele de maneira estranha e, bem às vezes acho que as pessoas eram mesmo más. (...) - Porquê Aibee? Porque eram maus para ele? - Porque ele era verde.

Orin's special conscious horror, besides heights and the early morning, is roaches. There'd been parts of metro Boston near the Bay he'd refused to go to, as a child. Roaches give him the howling fantods. The parishes around N.O. had been having a spate or outbreak of a certain Latin-origin breed of sinister tropical flying roaches, that were small and timid but could fucking fly, and that kept being found swarming on New Orleans infants, at night, in their cribs, especially infants in like tenements or squalor, and that reportedly fed on the mucus in the babies' eyes, some special sort of optical-mucus — the stuff of fucking nightmares, mobile flying roaches that wanted to get at your eyes, as an infant — and were reportedly blinding them; parents'd come in in the ghastly A.M.-tenement light and find their infants blind, like a dozen blinded infants that last summer; and it was during this spate or nightmarish outbreak, plus July flooding that sent over a dozen nightmarish dead bodies from a hilltop graveyard sliding all gray-blue down the incline Orin and two teammates had their townhouse on, in suburban Chalmette, shedding limbs and innards all the way down the hillside's mud and one even one morning coming to rest against the post of their roadside mailbox, when Orin came out for the morning paper, that Orin had had his agent put out the trade feelers.

Continuing up Rennes. Dodging little Saabs and Renaults. Loving walking here. Sun alternately streaming. Obliterating physiognomies. No longer nouns. But movement. Disappearing. Now heavily raining. Sitting out anyway. Over drain smelling of beer. Metro. Sewers. Fetid breath of Paris. Two cold coffees. Watching shadows lengthening. On la Gaite opposite. Where Colette once performing. Having walked in old boots across city. Drawing mole above lip. Rice-powdering delicious arms. Paris a drug. P saying on phone. Yes Paris a drug. A woman. And I waking this a.m. Thinking there must be some way. Of staying. Now my love’s silhouette of rooftops eclipsing. Into night. Cold heinous breath. Blowing on privates. Through grille underneath.

-¡Cómo le envidio que tenga tiempo para leer! ¿ Y por qué ella, que trabaja, hace la compra, educa a los niños, conduce su coche, ama a tres hombres, visita al dentista, se muda la semana próxima, encuentra tiempo para leer, y ese casto rentista soltero no? El tiempo para leer siempre es tiempo robado. (Al igual que el tiempo para escribir, por otra parte, o el tiempo para amar.) ¿Robado a qué? Digamos que al deber de vivir. Ésta es, sin duda, la razón de que el metro -símbolo arraigado de dicho deber- resulte ser la mayor biblioteca del mundo. El tiempo para leer, al igual que el tiempo para amar, dilata el tiempo de vivir. Si tuviéramos que considerar el amor desde el punto de vista de nuestra distribución del tiempo, ¿qué arriesgaríamos? ¿Quién tiene tiempo de estar enamorado? ¿Se ha visto alguna vez, sin embargo, que un enamorado no encontrara tiempo para amar? Yo jamás he tenido tiempo para leer, pero nada, jamás, ha podido impedirme que acabara una novela que amaba. La lectura no depende de la organización del tiempo social, es, como el amor, una manera de ser.

WE ALL DO IT, YOU know. Distract ourselves from noticing how time’s passing. We throw ourselves into our jobs. We focus on keeping the blight off our tomato plants. We fill up our gas tanks and top off our Metro cards and do the grocery shopping so that the weeks look the same on the surface. And then one day, you turn around, and your baby is a man. One day, you look in the mirror, and see gray hair. One day, you realize there is less of your life left than what you’ve already lived. And you think, How did this happen so fast? It was only yesterday when I was having my first legal drink, when I was diapering him, when I was young. When this realization hits, you start doing the math. How much time do I have left? How much can I fit into that small space? Some of us let this realization guide us, I guess. We book trips to Tibet, we learn how to sculpt, we skydive. We try to pretend it’s not almost over. But some of us just fill up our gas tanks and top off our Metro cards and do the grocery shopping, because if you only see the path that’s right ahead of you, you don’t obsess over when the cliff might drop off. Some of us never learn. And some of us learn earlier than others. —

Nell walks what feels like the length of Paris. She walks through the numbered arrondissements, meandering through a food market, gazing at the glossy produce, both familiar and not at the same time, accepting a plum at a stallholder's urging and then buying a small bag in lieu of breakfast and lunch. She sits on a bench by the Seine, watching the tourist boats go by, and eats three of the plums, thinking of how it felt to hold the tiller, to gaze onto the moonlit waters. She tucks the bag under her arm as if she does this all the time and takes the Metro to a brocante recommended in one of her guidebooks, allowing herself an hour to float among the stalls, picking up little objects that someone once loved, mentally calculating the English prices, and putting them down again. And as she walks, in a city of strangers, her nostrils filled with the scent of street food, her ears filled with an unfamiliar language, she feels something unexpected wash through her. She feels connected, alive.

Después de dos o tres estrofas compuestas con toda facilidad y de algunas comparaciones que lo sorprendieron, el don del trabajo se apoderó de él y advirtió la proximidad de lo que se llama inspiración. La correlación de las fuerzas que presiden la creación parecen tomar entonces la iniciativa. La prioridad ya no corresponde a su autor ni a su estado de ánimo, al que trata de dar expresión, sino al lenguaje con que quiere expresarlo. El lenguaje, del cual nace el significado y la belleza adquiere su ropaje, comienza de suyo a pensar y hablar y todo se hace música, no en el sentido de pura resonancia fonética, sino como la consecuencia y duración de su flujo interno. Entonces, lo mismo que la masa corriente de un río, que con su fluir limpia las piedras del fondo y hace girar las ruedas del molino, el lenguaje que fluye, va creando por sí, en su carrera, casi inadvertidamente con la fuerza de sus leyes, el metro y la rima y mil otras formas y relaciones más secretas, desconocidas hasta ese, momento, no singularizadas y sin nombre. En aquellos momentos Yuri Andréivich se daba cuenta de que no era él quien llevaba a cabo el trabajo esencial, sino algo más grande que él, que por encima de él lo guiaba: la situación del pensamiento y la poesía en el mundo, lo que a la poesía le estaba reservado en el porvenir, el camino que ella tenía que recorrer en su desarrollo histórico. Él era solamenta una ocasión y un punto de apoyo para que ella pudiera ponerse en movimiento.

The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor. But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary … You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals. You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs. My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species.

Mueve la cabeza de arriba abajo y frunce el ceño. - Ese es Matt Fuller. Es un sénior y nuestro Asesor promesa. -Me mira con los ojos entrecerrados y trata de leer mi mente. - ¿En serio? - Sonrío demasido grande, porque ahora él sabe totalmente que estaba mintiendo acerca de la parte linda. - ¿Cuándo? Estoy muy segura de que me acordaría de él. -Miro a Phillip con curiosidad. - No lo recuerdo exactamente, pero creo que me vio cuando llevé en mis hombros a través del campus.- Phillip niega con la cabeza hacia mí-. Realmente no sé por qué dejo que te salgas con la tuya, con las cosas que haces. - Porque soy irresistible, Phillip. - Sonrió y me encojo de hombros-. Tú no puedes ayudarte a ti mismo. Además, no fuiste por todo el campus, soló fueron unos cincuenta metros antes de que fingieras un ataque al corazón y te apoyarás en mi peso colapsando sobre mí en la hierba. -Oh, sí. Lo recuerdo. Creo que has ganado algo de peso. - Golpeo su hombro. Lo ignora y continúa -Ahora que lo pienso, creo que es cuando Matt te vió. Me da una gran sonrisa. Justo ahora lo recordaba. -Tu probablemente no te diste cuenta, porque estabas muy ocupada rodando en el césped conmigo. - Estoy bastante segura de que estaba tratando de quitarte de encima de mí. - Bueno, Matt no lo vio de esa manera puesto que me preguntó si tú eras mi novia. -Oh Dios. ¿Qué historia inventaste está vez, Phillip? Él sonríe. - Oh solo le dije que a pesar de que estas locamente enamorada de mí, no quiero estar atado, por lo que soló somos amigos. Por supuesto, lo que tendría que haber dicho es por favor solo llévatela, ella son muchos problemas de los que no valen la pena.

habiendo algunos fanáticos en el valle de Shah-i-Kot, en la provincia de Paktia. Una vez más la información era inexacta: no eran un puñado, sino centenares. Al ser afganos los talibanes derrotados, tenían a donde ir: sus aldeas y pueblos natales. Allí podían escabullirse sin dejar rastro. Pero los miembros de Al Qaeda eran árabes, uzbekos y, los más feroces de todos, chechenos. No hablaban pastún y la gente del pueblo afgano los odiaba, de manera que solo podían rendirse o morir peleando. Casi todos eligieron esto último. El mando estadounidense reaccionó al chivatazo con un plan a pequeña escala, la operación Anaconda, que fue asignada a los SEAL de la Armada. Tres enormes Chinook repletos de efectivos despegaron rumbo al valle, que se suponía vacío de combatientes. El helicóptero que iba en cabeza se disponía a tomar tierra, con el morro levantado y la cola baja, la rampa abierta por detrás y a solo un par de metros del suelo, cuando los emboscados de Al Qaeda dieron el primer aviso. Un lanzagranadas hizo fuego. Estaba tan cerca que el proyectil atravesó el fuselaje del helicóptero sin explotar. No había tenido tiempo de cargarse, así que lo único que hizo fue entrar por un costado y salir por el otro sin tocar a nadie, dejando un par de boquetes simétricos. Pero lo que sí hizo daño fue el incesante fuego de ametralladora desde el nido situado entre las rocas salpicadas de nieve. Tampoco hirió a nadie de a bordo, pero destrozó los controles del aparato al horadar la cubierta de vuelo. Gracias a la habilidad y la genialidad del piloto, pocos minutos después el moribundo Chinook ganaba altura y recorría cuatro kilómetros hasta encontrar un sitio más seguro donde proceder a un aterrizaje forzoso. Los otros dos helicópteros se retiraron también. Pero un SEAL, el suboficial Neil Roberts, que se había desenganchado de su cable de amarre, resbaló en un charquito de fluido hidráulico y cayó a tierra. Resultó ileso, pero inmediatamente fue rodeado por miembros de Al Qaeda. Los SEAL jamás abandonan a uno de los suyos, esté vivo o muerto. Poco después de aterrizar regresaron en busca de Roberts, al tiempo que pedían refuerzos por radio. Había empezado la batalla de Shah-i-Kot. Duró cuatro días, y se saldó con la muerte del suboficial Neil Roberts y otros seis estadounidenses. Había tres unidades lo bastante cerca como para acudir a la llamada: un pelotón de SBS británicos por un lado y la unidad de la SAD por el otro; pero el grupo más numeroso era un batallón del 75 Regimiento de Rangers. Hacía un frío endemoniado, estaban a muchos grados bajo cero. La nieve, empujada por el viento incesante, se clavaba en los ojos. Nadie entendía cómo los árabes habían podido sobrevivir en aquellas montañas; pero el caso era que allí estaban, y dispuestos a morir hasta el último hombre. Ellos no hacían prisioneros ni esperaban serlo tampoco. Según testigos presenciales, salieron de hendiduras en las rocas, de grutas invisibles y nidos de ametralladoras ocultos. Cualquier veterano puede confirmar que toda batalla degenera rápidamente en un caos, y en Shah-i-Kot eso sucedió más rápido que nunca. Las unidades se separaron de su contingente, los soldados de sus unidades. Kit Carson se encontró de repente a solas en medio de la ventisca. Vio a otro estadounidense (pudo identificarlo por lo que llevaba en la cabeza: casco, no turbante) también solo, a unos cuarenta metros. Un hombre vestido con túnica surgió del suelo y disparó contra el soldado con su lanzagranadas. Esa vez la granada sí estalló; no dio en el blanco sino que explotó a los pies del soldado.

How are we going to bring about these transformations? Politics as usual—debate and argument, even voting—are no longer sufficient. Our system of representative democracy, created by a great revolution, must now itself become the target of revolutionary change. For too many years counting, vast numbers of people stopped going to the polls, either because they did not care what happened to the country or the world or because they did not believe that voting would make a difference on the profound and interconnected issues that really matter. Now, with a surge of new political interest having give rise to the Obama presidency, we need to inject new meaning into the concept of the “will of the people.” The will of too many Americans has been to pursue private happiness and take as little responsibility as possible for governing our country. As a result, we have left the job of governing to our elected representatives, even though we know that they serve corporate interests and therefore make decisions that threaten our biosphere and widen the gulf between the rich and poor both in our country and throughout the world. In other words, even though it is readily apparent that our lifestyle choices and the decisions of our representatives are increasing social injustice and endangering our planet, too many of us have wanted to continue going our merry and not-so-merry ways, periodically voting politicians in and out of office but leaving the responsibility for policy decisions to them. Our will has been to act like consumers, not like responsible citizens. Historians may one day look back at the 2000 election, marked by the Supreme Court’s decision to award the presidency to George W. Bush, as a decisive turning point in the death of representative democracy in the United States. National Public Radio analyst Daniel Schorr called it “a junta.” Jack Lessenberry, columnist for the MetroTimes in Detroit, called it “a right-wing judicial coup.” Although more restrained, the language of dissenting justices Breyer, Ginsberg, Souter, and Stevens was equally clear. They said that there was no legal or moral justification for deciding the presidency in this way.3 That’s why Al Gore didn’t speak for me in his concession speech. You don’t just “strongly disagree” with a right-wing coup or a junta. You expose it as illegal, immoral, and illegitimate, and you start building a movement to challenge and change the system that created it. The crisis brought on by the fraud of 2000 and aggravated by the Bush administration’s constant and callous disregard for the Constitution exposed so many defects that we now have an unprecedented opportunity not only to improve voting procedures but to turn U.S. democracy into “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” instead of government of, by, and for corporate power.

(...) Sí, por las tardes, hacia las siete, le gusta encontrarse en un vagón de segunda mano del metro. La mayoría de los pasajeros son personas que regresan de sus trabajos. Se sienta entre ellos, trata de sorprender en sus caras el motivo de sus preocupaciones. Naturalmente, están pensando en lo que acaban de abandonar hasta mañana, sólo hasta mañana, y también en lo que les espera esta noche, lo cual les alegra o les preocupa aún más. Nadja se queda mirando fijamente algo definido: «Hay buenas personas». Más alterado de lo que quisiera mostrarme, ahora sí me enojo: «Pues no. Además tampoco se trata de eso. El hecho de que soporten el trabajo, con o sin las demás miserias, impide que esas personas sean interesantes. Si la rebeldía no es lo más fuerte que sienten, ¿cómo podrían aumentar su dignidad sólo con eso? En esos momentos, por lo demás, usted les ve; ellos ni siquiera la ven a usted. Por lo que a mí se refiere, yo odio, con todas mis fuerzas, esa esclavitud que pretenden que considere encomiable. Compadezco al hombre por estar condenado a ella, porque por lo general no puede evitarla, pero si me pongo de su parte no es por la dureza de su condena, es y no podría ser más que por la energía de su protesta. Yo sé que en el horno de la fábrica, o delante de esas máquinas inexorables que durante todo el día imponen la repetición del mismo gesto, con intervalos de algunos segundos, o en cualquier otro lugar bajo las órdenes más inaceptables, o en una celda, o ante un pelotón de ejecución, todavía puede uno sentirse libre, pero no es el martirio que se padece lo que crea esa libertad. Admito que esa libertad sea un perpetuo librarse de las cadenas: será preciso, por añadidura, para que ese desencadenarse sea posible, constantemente posible, que las cadenas no nos aplasten, como les ocurre a muchos de los que usted me habla. Pero también es, y quizá mucho más desde el punto de vista humano, la mayor o menor pero, en cualquier caso, la maravillosa sucesión de pasos que le es dado al hombre hacer sin cadenas. Esos pasos, ¿les considera usted capaces de darlos? ¿Tienen tiempo de darlos, al menos? ¿Tienen el valor de darlos? Buenas personas, decía usted, sí, tan buenas como las que se dejaron matar en la guerra, ¿verdad? Digamos claro lo que son los héroes: un montón de desgraciados y algunos pobres imbéciles. Para mí, debo confesarlo, esos pasos lo son todo. Hacia dónde se encaminan, ésa es la verdadera pregunta. De algún modo, acabarán trazando un camino y, en ese camino, ¿quién sabe si no surgirá la manera de quitar las cadenas o de ayudar a desencadenarse a los que se han quedado en el camino? Sólo entonces será conveniente detenerse un poco, sin que ello suponga desandar lo andado». (Bastante a las claras se ve lo que puedo decir al respecto, sobre todo a poco que decida tratarlo de manera concreta.) Nadja me escucha y no intenta contradecirme. Tal vez lo último que ella haya querido hacer sea la apología del trabajo.