Michael Rosen Quotes

This is me being sad. Maybe you think I'm being happy in this picture. Really I'm being sad but pretending I'm being happy. I'm doing that because I think people won't like me if I look sad.

Oh let the lemons lie there, upended yellow boats, their empty inboards so clean and white, let them always ferry such distractions from ourselves.

dignity” is a term for, as we would now put it, something’s intrinsic value—the value that it has by occupying its appropriate place within God’s creation,

... it's impossible to write the whole, true story of anything. We always leave things out. We quite often put things in. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try not to, we change things. We tell the story in our own way, which might not be the same way someone else would tell it.

I think that a childhood can sometimes last a lifetime.

Money had replaced community mental healthcare the way medication had replaced state hospitals. Medication did not go looking for those who resisted taking it, and money could not administer itself. Neither came with counseling or support. The SSI checks Michael received, and the Medicaid requirements he was eligible for, did not create a caring community or even an indifferent one. Nevertheless, checks and pills were what remained of a grand promise, the ingredients of a mental healthcare system that had never been baked but were handed out like flour and yeast in separate packets to starving people.

Someone said to me, We’re all the same age but at different times. I do the maths. He’s right.

It was easy to say that Michael had lost his mind, but his mind was the only instrument he had for locating what he’d lost. Knowing and not knowing were gray areas to begin with, shot through with ignorance and denial.

Dear, she's not tolerant at all of our being Jewish," said Mrs. Rosen. "She has no problem with it that requires any.

Uh...yes, I got a hold of the synagogue, and Rabbi Lavigne (if I remember his name correctly) let us know where she was buried.

A sieve is a thing with holes in. Nearly everything has holes in, eventually.

A few books that I've read.... Pascal, an Introduction to the Art and Science of Programming by Walter Savitch Programming algorithms Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd Edition (The MIT Press) Data Structures and Algorithms in Java Author: Michael T. Goodrich - Roberto Tamassia - Michael H. Goldwasser The Algorithm Design Manual Author: Steven S Skiena Algorithm Design Author: Jon Kleinberg - Éva Tardos Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs Book by Niklaus Wirth Discrete Math Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications Author: Kenneth H Rosen Computer Org Structured Computer Organization Andrew S. Tanenbaum Introduction to Assembly Language Programming: From 8086 to Pentium Processors (Undergraduate Texts in Computer Science) Author: Sivarama P. Dandamudi Distributed Systems Distributed Systems: Concepts and Design Author: George Coulouris - Jean Dollimore - Tim Kindberg - Gordon Blair Distributed Systems: An Algorithmic Approach, Second Edition (Chapman & Hall/CRC Computer and Information Science Series) Author: Sukumar Ghosh Mathematical Reasoning Mathematical Reasoning: Writing and Proof Version 2.1 Author: Ted Sundstrom An Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning: Numbers, Sets and Functions Author: Peter J. Eccles Differential Equations Differential Equations (with DE Tools Printed Access Card) Author: Paul Blanchard - Robert L. Devaney - Glen R. Hall Calculus Calculus: Early Transcendentals Author: James Stewart And more....

He’s my big brother Sylvest. WHAT’S HE GOT? He’s got a row of forty medals ‘cross his chest. BIG CHEST! Don’t push, don’t shove, plenty of room for you and me. He’s got an arm like a leg. BIG LEG! And a punch that’d sink a battleship, BIG SHIP! Takes all the army and the navy To put the wind up SYLVEST! Traditional, collected by Michael Rosen

He didn’t yet understand the concept of sales tax and would be disappointed when he did.

It was a shock to find the boy and because we found him, we might think that sort of thing happens all the time and the world is an evil place, but it is not. That sort of thing almost never occurs, and it is because it almost never occurs that we hear much about it when it does, making us think it occurs all the time.

playing a rock song and, as the volume increased, he was able to recognize it.

Paint over Mickey Mouse 
 Burn Where the Wild Things Are
 Pulverise the lego 
 Set fire to the Christmas tree star. 
Seize all the teddies 
 Bury every skipping rope
 Paint the walls dark brown 
 Abolish all hope.

Out of bedrooms and wards long lines of the dead walk towards you asking you, ‘Who were you to decide that our innings was over? Who gave you the umpire’s white coat and upraised finger?’ Did you think we would never speak from the graves you gave us?

Where is sad? Sad is anywhere. It comes along and finds you. When is sad? Sad is any time. It comes along and finds you. Who is sad? Sad is anyone. It comes along and finds you.

In the early years of the nineteenth century, Jews sought equal rights in the German principalities. Part of the deal was that they would take on German names in their daily affairs. This had its price – quite literally; Jews had to buy these new names when some couldn’t afford to, and they were sometimes given derogatory, mocking or even obscene names: ‘Ochsenschwanz’ – ‘oxtail’ – with the tail being lewdly ambiguous; ‘Hinkediger’ – ‘hunchback’; ‘Kaufpisch’ – ‘sell-piss’.

A’ STARTS ITS life in around 1800 BCE. Turn our modern ‘A’ upside down and you can see something of its original shape. Can you see an ox’s head with its horns sticking up in the air? If so, you can see the remains of this letter’s original name, ‘ox’, or ‘aleph’ in the ancient Semitic languages.

Michael had carried a knife, and slept with a baseball bat, because he thought his parents had been replaced by surgically altered Nazis who had murdered them and wanted to kill him.

Michael wanted out of his prison but he also wanted to confess his crimes. He’d been “riding high on a certain presentation of myself,” he said.

Non-Greeks have used Greek letters to be scientifically precise and specific, yet the reason why Greek was chosen – and is still being chosen – is cultural. In Roman times, Greek was the language of teachers, and in art the Romans looked to the Greeks as their progenitors. In the medieval period, the two foundation languages were seen to be Latin and Greek, with Greek being the older. Early scientists were assumed to have a level of education which would include knowing the Greek letters. For the writers of fiction and the namers of new substances or new products, the key issue is connotation – that cloud of associations that runs through and around every word we say and write. Using a Greek letter lends the object, being or character a scientific identity. Because so much modern science is beyond the uninitiated, the association is not only with science but also with mystery, something that only true boffin-heads really know and understand.

And another thing: because she and my father were very ideological people, always doing things from the body of principle and dogma of the Communist Party, there was a time when I thought that italic writing was Communist. It’s not.

The most Frenchified ways of speaking and writing English belong in the main to those uses of language which are to do with ruling, making and administering laws, the expression of ideas and religion, and most literature. The least Frenchified ways of speaking and writing belong in the main to those uses of language which are to do with the activities and ideas of the labouring classes and their domestic life, of small-time shopkeepers and lowly officials like sextons.

Deep inside his brain, something had made him realise that it was Malcolm (and now his friend too, who had been so stupid as to join with Malcolm in this whole stupid, stupid, stupid business), who stood in his way.

Of course the tallest monument in Paris is the Eiffel Tower, named for the visionary engineer who designed it, Fred Tower.

Dignity is something that all human beings have in common. We are all (all of us who have attained the “age of reason,” that is) subject to its demands, whatever place in society we may happen to occupy, and it is this that gives us our inalienable inner value.

Astrodome’s fences were moved in. Would the team, as currently composed, do better or worse in a smaller, more hitter-friendly park? Cramer ran the numbers—showing the relative propensity of the Astros versus their opponents to hit long pop flies—and told Rosen, “Sorry, if

While I was walking down the beach one bright and sunny day, I saw a great big wooden box a-floatin’ in the bay. I pulled it in and opened it up and much to my surprise, Oh, I discovered a   *     *   right before my eyes, Oh, I discovered a   *     *    right before my eyes. I picked it up and ran to town as happy as a king, I took it to a guy I know who’d buy most anything But this is what he hollered at me as I walked in his shop: Oh, get out of here with that   *     *   before I call a cop… I turned around and got right out, a-runnin’ for my life, And then I took it home with me to give it to my wife, But this is what she hollered at me as I walked in the door: Oh, get out of here with that   *     *   and don’t come back no more… I wandered all around the town until I chanced to meet A hobo who was looking for a handout on the street.

He had expected many more hugs and kisses, and he had expected to be able to tell her goodbye many times over before the annoyed and impatient Death took her from him. He had never expected that they would part without any goodbyes.

He had heard of seniors, who after becoming bored and/or lonely and/or began fearing the closeness of death, turning or returning to religion, but he had never expected the change in his wife, especially since he thought it was only for Christians.

Mr. Rosen didn’t immediately question his wife’s decisions. He had learned to wait and after he had given it some thought, he would find she was right.

With the changes his wife had made in their lives, she never tried to force him to change. She never forced friends on him, never forced him into large tight crowds, and she always tolerated the protective emotional covering he habitually wore outside of their home. She had never once pushed him to leave his comfort zone for anything other than an absolute necessity.

the aftermath of Watergate, the Senate’s Church Committee discovered five administrations’ worth of spy agency malfeasance, including the revelation that the CIA had tested mind-altering drugs on American citizens without their knowledge, a veritable Bay of Guinea Pigs sparked by fears during the Korean War that Chinese and Soviet scientists were brainwashing captured American soldiers. One former CIA agent testified that the illicit doping continued long after it was clear there were no mind-control chemicals, because the movie version of The Manchurian Candidate came out, and it “made something impossible look plausible.” Michael and I were children of a time when a “thought experiment” meant something more than Einstein imagining a beam of light on a trolley. A movie about a foreign conspiracy to brainwash Americans and destroy the country had served as

Av, she’s not tolerant at all,” Ruth corrected him, causing his bushy eyebrows to rise. “She doesn’t have a problem with us being Jewish to require any tolerance.

Mrs. Dixon is impressively tolerant with our being Jewish.” “Av, she’s not tolerant at all,” Ruth corrected him, causing his bushy eyebrows to rise. “She doesn’t have a problem with us being Jewish to require any tolerance.

Even though Canada’s immigration laws made it more than difficult for Jews to enter the country,

You know when I was your age, we had school eight days a week. That is probably where I was confused. And we had to walk uphill both ways in two feet of snow every day during the winter. We also had to do it barefoot since boots had not been invented then.

I thought the salt was arsenic,” Michael told me once. “I thought pepper was the ashes of our people.” “What do you do with a thought like that?” I asked him. “Suffer.

We can't go over it, we can't under it. Oh no! We have to go through it.

Michael had gotten sick amid the ruins of a demolished system. The wall dividing many things—including the asylum and the street—had come down while we were growing up. So had the distinction between severe mental illness and what Freud called “the psychopathology of everyday life.

They’re called “phylacteries” in English, a Greek word Michael and I turned into “prophylacteries”—spiritual condoms—which we found hilarious.

Tall and ruddy in the white cable-knit fishing sweater her mother had given him for Christmas, its collar thick as an Elizabethan ruff, Michael arrived like someone carrying gifts even though his arms were empty.

Michael told me he avoided the library because the only history of England he’d found devoted many pages to Gladstone and only a few to Disraeli, which he took as evidence of antisemitism. But he said he couldn’t read anymore anyway.

I was aware of being afraid of Michael even as I felt love for him. Hugging him goodbye was like putting my head in the mouth of an old and toothless lion, softened by age but still capable of crushing me.

terms with

They’ve been worried about my low blood pressure but they’ve brought me the Daily Mail so it’ll be fine in just a moment.

recent months,” Gignilliat began, “this board has devoted considerable time and attention to Reinhold Kulle’s employment in the district. Mr. Kulle was a Waffen-SS guard for two and one-half years at the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Nazi Germany during World War II.

Michael was only an inch or two taller than me, and just as skinny, but he seemed to enjoy taking up space, however awkwardly he filled it.

A girl said, 'I wrote myself a letter', so I said 'What did it say?' and she said, 'I don't know, I won't get it til tomorrow'. A boy said, 'I'm really glad my mum called me Jack'. I said, 'Why's that?' He said, 'Cause all the kids at school call me that'.

*click* Noice

Deep down where I don't know, deep down inside, there's a place... so sad. Such a sad, sad place. Sometimes it fills up, and it fills up, and it fills up, and overflows in my eyes, and all of me is... so sad. Such a sad, sad place.

My mum said to me and my brother, 'Don't crumble your bread or roll in the soup'. I said, 'I don't want to roll in my soup'. Then she said, 'Eat up, Michael'. and my brother said, 'I don't want to eat up Michael'.