Mt Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Mt. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.
Arthur Miller (The Ride Down Mt. Morgan)
MT [Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.
Christopher Hitchens
I think resentment is when you take the poison and wait for the other person to die
M.T. (A Sponsorship Guide for 12-Step Programs)
If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.
John McPhee (Basin and Range (Annals of the Former World, 1))
There are times when friendship feels like running down a hill together as fast as you can, jumping over things, spinning around, and you don't care where you're going, and you don't care where you've come from, because all that matters is speed, and the hands holding your hands.
M.T. Anderson (Whales on Stilts: M. T. Anderson's Thrilling Tales (Pals in Peril, #1))
J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.
Terry Pratchett
However, there is a way to know for certain that Noah’s Flood and the Creation story never happened: by looking at our mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA).  Mitochondria are the “cellular power plants” found in all of our cells and they have their own DNA which is separate from that found in the nucleus of the cell.  In humans, and most other species that mitochondria are found in, the father’s mtDNA normally does not contribute to the child’s mtDNA; the child normally inherits its mtDNA exclusively from its mother.  This means that if no one’s genes have mutated, then we all have the same mtDNA as our brothers and sisters and the same mtDNA as the children of our mother’s sisters, etc. This pattern of inheritance makes it possible to rule out “population bottlenecks” in our species’ history.  A bottleneck is basically a time when the population of a species dwindled to low numbers.  For humans, this means that every person born after a bottleneck can only have the mtDNA or a mutation of the mtDNA of the women who survived the bottleneck. This doesn’t mean that mtDNA can tell us when a bottleneck happened, but it can tell us when one didn’t happen because we know that mtDNA has a rate of approximately one mutation every 3,500 years (Gibbons 1998; Soares et al 2009). So if the human race were actually less than 6,000 years old and/or “everything on earth that breathed died” (Genesis 7:22) less than 6,000 years ago, which would be the case if the story of Adam and the story of Noah’s flood were true respectively, then every person should have the exact same mtDNA except for one or two mutations.  This, however, is not the case as human mtDNA is much more diverse (Endicott et al 2009), so we can know for a fact that the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Noah are fictional.   There
Alexander Drake (The Invention of Christianity)
The only freedom you truly have is in your mind, so use it.
M.T. Dismuke
The natural world is so adaptable...So adaptable you wonder what's natural.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
We only came close to dying six or seven times, which I thought was pretty good. Once, I lost my grip and found myself dangling by one hand from a ledge fifty feet above the rocky surf. But I found another handhold and kept climbing. A minute later Annabeth hit a slippery patch of moss and her foot slipped. Fortunately, she found something else to put it against. Unfortunately, that something was mt face. "Sorry," she murmured. "S'okay," I grunted, though I'd never really wanted to know what Annabeth's sneaker tasted like.
Rick Riordan (The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2))
ആരാണ് എന്നെ വരിഞ്ഞുകെട്ടി കയത്തിലിട്ടത് എന്ന ചോദ്യത്തിന് 'ശത്രു' എന്നുമാത്രം പറഞ്ഞപ്പോൾ അയാൾ ഉപദേശിച്ചു 'ശത്രുവിനോടു ദയ കാട്ടരുത്. ദയയിൽ നിന്ന് കൂടുതൽ കരുത്ത് നേടിയ ശത്രു വീണ്ടും നേരിടുമ്പോൾ അജയ്യനാവും. അതാണ് ഞങ്ങളുടെ നിയമം. മൃഗത്തെ വിട്ടുകളയാം. മനുഷ്യന് രണ്ടാമതൊരവസരം കൊടുക്കരുത്
M.T. Vasudevan Nair (രണ്ടാമൂഴം | Randamoozham)
Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics and others with a shaky hold on reality.
Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)
Getting to the top of any given mountain was considered much less important than how one got there: prestige was earned by tackling the most unforgiving routes with minimal equipment, in the boldest style imaginable.
Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)
കൊടുങ്കാറ്റുകളെ ചങ്ങലയ്ക്കിട്ട് നടക്കുന്ന ദേവാ, ഇവിടെ ഞാനുണ്ട്.അവിടുത്തെ മകനായ അഞ്ചുവയസ്സുള്ള ഒരുണ്ണി.(ഭീമൻ)
M.T. Vasudevan Nair (രണ്ടാമൂഴം | Randamoozham)
It was titillating to brush up against the enigma of mortality, to steal a glimpse across its forbidden frontier. Climbing was a magnificient activity, I firmly believed, not in spite of the inherent perils, but precisely because of them.
Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)
There's an ancient saying in Japan, that life is like walking from one side of infinite darkness to another, on a bridge of dreams. They say that we're all crossing the bridge of dreams together. That there's nothing more than that. Just us, on the bridge of dreams.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
This forms the nub of a dilemna that every Everest climber eventually comes up against: in order to succeed you must be exceedingly driven, but if you're too driven you're likely to die.
Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)
Whispering makes a narrow place narrower.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
കുരുവംശത്തിലെ പുരുഷന്മാർ മുഴുവൻ സ്ത്രീകളുടെ കണീര് കണ്ട് രസിച്ചവരാണ്.എനിക്കറിയാം ....(ഗാന്ധാരി )
M.T. Vasudevan Nair (രണ്ടാമൂഴം | Randamoozham)
We were too tired to help. Above 8,000 meters is not a place where people can afford morality
Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)
soon I'll finish this 5th of Puerto Rican rum. in the morning I'll vomit and shower, drive back in, have a sandwich by 1 p.m., be back in my room by 2, stretched on the bed, waiting for the phone to ring, not answering, my holiday is an evasion, mt reasoning is not.
Charles Bukowski (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
…It’s like a spiral: They keep making everything more basic so it will appeal to everyone. And gradually, everyone gets used to everything being basic, so we get less and less varied as people, more simple. So the corps make everything even simpler. And it goes on and on.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
At long last, you may no longer distinguish what binds you from what is you.
M.T. Anderson (The Pox Party (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #1))
We all flee in hope of finding some ground of security
M.T. Anderson (The Kingdom on the Waves (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #2))
You made her apologize for sickness. For her courage. You made her feel sorry for dying.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
If you're bumming out, you're not gonna get to the top, so as long as we're up here we might as well make a point of grooving. (Quoting Scott Fischer)
Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)
When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in the warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand feet below the seafloor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.
John McPhee (Annals of the Former World)
I do not know what I regret. I sit with my pen, and cannot find an end to that sentence.
M.T. Anderson (The Pox Party (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #1))
Then it was this big thing. She was like, 'I never want to see you again', and I was like, 'Fine. Okay? Fine. Then get some special goggles.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
കടം വീട്ടാന്‍ പലതും ബാക്കിയിരിക്കേ ആചാര്യനായാലും പിതാമഹനായാലും ഭീമന് ജയിച്ചേ പറ്റൂ...
M.T. Vasudevan Nair (രണ്ടാമൂഴം | Randamoozham)
It's like when someone says, 'How are you?' do you say, 'Well, mt head hurts and I'm lonely and depressed and I'm worried about everything and the world is collapsing and full of evil? Or do you say, I'm fine?
Sara Shepard (The Visibles)
My idea of life, it's what happens when they're rolling the credits.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
I am messaging you to say that I love you, and that you're completely wrong about me thinking you're stupid. I always thought you could teach me things. I was always waiting. You're not like the others. You say things that no one expects you to. You think you're stupid. You want to be stupid. But you're someone people could learn from.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
Empedolces claims that in utero, our backbone is one long solid; and that through the constriction of the womb and the punishments of birth it must be snapped again and again to form our vertebrae; that for the child to have a spine, his back must first be broken
M.T. Anderson (The Pox Party (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #1))
ശത്രുവിനോടു ദയ കാട്ടരുത് . ദയയില്‍ നിന്നു കൂടുതല്‍ കരുത്തുനേടിയ ശത്രു വീണ്ടും നേരിടുമ്പോള്‍ അജയ്യാനാവും . മൃഗത്തെ വിട്ടുകളയാം. മനുഷ്യന് രണ്ടാമതൊരവസരം കൊടുക്കരുത്.
M.T. Vasudevan Nair (രണ്ടാമൂഴം | Randamoozham)
...they told me of color, that it was an illusion of the eye, an event in the perceiver's mind, not in the object; they told me that color had no reality; indeed, they told me that color did not inhere in a physical body any more than pain was in a needle. And then they imprisoned me in darkness; and though there was no color there, I still was black, and they still were white; and for that, they bound and gagged me.
M.T. Anderson (The Pox Party (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #1))
...I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium, and suffering, it struck me that most of use were probably seeking, above else, something like a state of grace.
Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)
Mankind's biggest blunder, ignorance. Mankind's second, infallible.
M.T. Dismuke
The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in the whole universe to be called -- in the local language -- Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the word Skund. The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool. Rainclouds clustered around the bald heights of Mt. Oolskunrahod ('Who is this Fool who does Not Know what a Mountain is') and the Luggage settled itself more comfortably under a dripping tree, which tried unsuccessfully to strike up a conversation.
Terry Pratchett (The Light Fantastic (Discworld, #2; Rincewind, #2))
Blessed," he says, "are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God" (Mt 5:9). Consider carefully that it is not the people who call for peace but those who make peace who are commended. For there are those who talk but do nothing (Mt 23:3). For just as it is not the hearers of the law but the doers who are righteous (Rom 2:13), so it is not those who preach peace but the authors of peace who are blessed.
Bernard of Clairvaux
Aspire to be like Mt. Fuji, with such a broad and solid foundation that the strongest earthquake cannot move you, and so tall that the greatest enterprises of common men seem insignificant from your lofty perspective. With your mind as high as Mt Fuji you can see all things clearly. And you can see all the forces that shape events; not just the things happening near to you.
Miyamoto Musashi
I looked at her, and she was smiling like she was broken.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
We pray to obey God, not to 'play God'. We pray, not to change God's mind, but to change our own; not to command God, but to let God command us. We pray to 'let God be God'. Prayer is our obedience to God even when it asks God for things, for God has commanded us to ask (Mt. 7:7).
Peter Kreeft (Prayer for Beginners)
We enter a time of calamity. Blood on the tarmac. Fingers in the juicer. Towers of air frozen in the lunar wastes. Models dead on the runways, with their legs facing backward. Children with smiles that can’t be undone. Chicken shall rot in the aisles. See the pillars fall.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
I can read. A little. I kind of protested it in School(TM). On the grounds that the silent 'E' is stupid.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
Thus the slopes of Everest are littered with corpses.
Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)
What Moses brought down from Mt Siniai were not ten suggestions. They are Commandments
Ted Koppel
I don't know when they first had feeds. Like maybe, fifty or a hundred years ago. Before that, they had to use their hands and their eyes. Computers were all outside the body. They carried them around outside of them, in their hands, like if you carried your lungs in a briefcase and opened it to breathe.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
It’s the end. It’s the end of the civilization. We’re going down. No, it’s sure not too attractive. Lenticels. I just hope my kids don’t live to see the last days. The things burning and people living in cellars. Violet. The only thing worse than the thought it may all come tumbling down is the thought that we may go on like this forever.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
Above the comforts of Base Camp, the expedition in fact became an almost Calvinistic undertaking. The ratio of misery to pleasure was greater by an order of magnitude than any mountain I'd been on; I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking above all else, something like a state of grace.
Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)
it's like a squid in love with the sky.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
I looked over at her face. I could see the light from my heartbeat on her tears.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
Maybe these are our salad days." "Huh?" "You know. Happy." "What's happy about a salad?" She shrugged. "Ranch," she said.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
People talk about the beauty of the spring, but I can't see it. The trees are brown and bare, slimy with rain. Some are crawling with new purple hairs. And the buds are bulging like tumorous acne, and I can tell that something wet, and soft, and cold, and misshapen is about to be born. And I am turning into a vampire.
M.T. Anderson (Thirsty)
The sky was as blue as a stupid postcard, and the islands were as green as islands.
M.T. Anderson (Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd)
Keep thinking. You can hear our brains rattling around inside us, like the littler Russian dolls.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
I could see my face, crying, in her blank eye.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
White Iris The iris danced across the ancient Grecian skies gliding with her embossed satiny milken sides ...
Muse (Enigmatic Evolution)
My hunger to climb had been blunted, in short, by a bunch of small satisfactions that added up to something like happiness.
Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)
And I realize that the decision to be human is not one single instant, but is a thousand choices made very day. It is choices we make every second and requires constant vigilance. We have to fight to remain human.
M.T. Anderson (Thirsty)
I didn't doubt the potential value of paying attention to subconscious cues...problem was, my inner voice resembled Chicken Little: it was screaming that I was about to die, but it did that almost every time I laced up my climbing boots.
Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)
The plain truth is that I knew better but went to Everest anyway. And in doing so I was a party to the death of good people, which is something that is apt to remain on my conscience for a very long time.
Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)
Just as ceremonial fasting was a legitimate means for getting God's attention (Mt 6:16-18; Ac 13:2-3; 14:23), the casting of lots was a legitimate means for inviting God to intercede on a matter. (Pr 18:18) It was not expected that God should intervene every time (1Sam 28:6), but the ceremonial casting of lots was an invitation for God to participate in the final decision.
Michael Ben Zehabe (A Commentary on Jonah)
It seems more than a little patronizing for Westerners to lament the loss of the good old days when life in the Khumbu was so much simpler and more picturesque. Most of the people who live in this rugged country seem to have no desire to be severed from the modern world or the untidy flow of human progress. The last thing Sherpas want is to be preserved as specimens in an anthropological museum.
Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)
Image of a girl holding a blaster to a twin’s temple. “Remember, bi***. You can’t spell ‘danger’ without DNA.” Blam.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
I miss that time. The cities back then, just after the forests died, were full of wonders, and you'd stumble on them--these princes of the air on common rooftops--the rivers that burst through the city streets so they ran like canals--the rabbits in parking garages--the deer foaling, nestled in Dumpsters like a Nativity.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
We watched each other’s eyes. We were as strangers, in that moment — as intimate as strangers — for strangers know more of us, and can judge of us more without reproach than ever those we love.
M.T. Anderson (The Pox Party (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #1))
Tehol collected his cup and carefully sniffed. Then he frowned at his manservant. Who shrugged. “We don’t have no herbs, master. I had to improvise.” “With what? Sheep hide?” Bugg’s brows rose. “Very close indeed. I had some leftover wool.” “The yellow or the grey?” “The grey.” “Well, that’s alright, then.” He sipped. “Smooth.” “Yes, it would be.” “We’re not poisoning ourselves, are we?” – MT 237
Steven Erikson (Midnight Tides (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #5))
It felt good, really good, just to scream finally. I felt like I was singing a hit single. But in Hell.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
Being a parent means never being able to relax.
M.T. Edvardsson (A Nearly Normal Family)
After ripping through The Hobbit, I read The Lord of the Rings, and the darkness of that story enveloped me in a way that is impossible to explain. I was THERE, in a very real sense. The fear was palpable in the presence of the black-cloaked Ringwraiths, and I could taste the sulfurous fumes of Mt. Doom. I could smell the sweat of horses and hot leather and hear the clash of battle as I rode with the Rohan on the fields of the Pelennor. I bled and died with the sun-king, Theoden. I rose again with Eowyn’s defiance of the Witch King. I soared with the Eagles as they swept the broken and bloody body of Frodo and his companion Samwise the Brave from the smoking crags of the fiery mountain. There has never been such a story, and I don’t think there ever shall be again.
Steve Bivans (Be a Hobbit, Save the Earth: the Guide to Sustainable Shire Living)
നിങ്ങളൊരുമിച്ചു നിന്നാൽ ഹസ്തിനപുരത്തിന് കപ്പം തന്ന് കാൽ വണങ്ങാത്ത ഒരു രാജാവും ലോകത്തിലുണ്ടാവില്ല. അതേതെങ്കിലും ആചാര്യൻ നിങ്ങളെ പഠിപ്പിക്കുന്നുണ്ടോ?............ശവം വീണു കാണാൻ കൊതിക്കുന്ന കൂളികൾ പല വേഷത്തിൽ ഈ കൊട്ടാരത്തിൽ കയറിയിറങ്ങുന്നുണ്ട്‌. ജ്യോതിഷക്കാരായിട്ടും ഋഷിമാരായിട്ടും. നിങ്ങൾ ഒരുമ്മിച്ചു കഴിയേണ്ടവരാണ്. അതു മാത്രം അവർ പറഞ്ഞുതരില്ല...(ഗാന്ധാരി )
M.T. Vasudevan Nair (രണ്ടാമൂഴം | Randamoozham)
I didn't understand for a long time, but what attracted me to MtAoFC [Mastering the Art of French Cooking] was the deeply buried aroma of hope and discovery of fulfillment in it. I thought I was using the Book to learn to cook French food, but really I was learning to sniff out the secret doors of possibility.
Julie Powell (Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen)
Those accustomed to failure fear the novelty of success. Those taught the lessons of subordination are oft timid in the school of self-service.
M.T. Anderson (The Kingdom on the Waves (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #2))
Her eyebrows lifted up. "You came here to seduce me armed with just one condom? What were you thinking?" He breathed out hard. "Oh come on, Tate, don't be nasty. I wasn't sure whether you'd talk to me. I didn't want to jinx it by being cocky and coming here with a string of latex. You know you would have had mt arrogant, self-centered ass for it," he muttered.
Elle Aycart (More than Meets the Ink (Bowen Boys, #1))
We are the nation of dreams. We are seers. We are wizards. We speak in visions. Our letters are like flocks of doves, released from under our hats. We have only to stretch out our hand and desire, and what we wish for settles like a kerchief in our palm. We are a race of sorcerers, enchanters. We are Atlantis. We are the wizard-isle of Mu.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
I have flown twice over Mt St. Helens out on our west coast. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that that one little mountain has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere of the world than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind that people are so concerned about.
Ronald Reagan
...for reading, once begun, quickly becomes home and circle and court and family, and indeed, without narrative, I felt exiled from my own country. By the transport of books, that which is most foreign becomes one's familiar walks and avenues; while that which is most familiar is removed to delightful strangeness; and unmoving, one travels infinite causeways, immobile and thus unfettered.
M.T. Anderson (The Pox Party (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #1))
Achieving the summit of a mountain was tangible, immutable, concrete. The incumbent hazards lent the activity a seriousness of purpose that was sorely missing from the rest of my life. I thrilled in the fresh perspective that came from the tipping the ordinary plane of existence on end.
Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)
Is there any sort of situation where you can say with certainty that a single person is responsible for what happens? Everything in life is dependent on so many different factors that interact in so many different ways.
M.T. Edvardsson (A Nearly Normal Family)
Yeah, I must have been really bad in a past life or something." He smiled, his eyes still in pain. Reaching up, he touched a strand of mt hair. " Don't leave, OK?" "Shhh. I'm not going anywhere." I kept stroking his forehead, trailing my fingers across it. His muscular shoulders gradually relaxed, his eyes closing again. His breathing slowed, became more regular. I could hear the TV on in the other room, the sound of voices. None of it mattered to me. I stayed there until long after Alex had fallen asleep-- gently caressing the vbrow of the boy I loved, trying to keep his pain at bay.
L.A. Weatherly
Perhaps his gloom was due to his profession, that he lived among fallen empires, and in reading these languages that had not been spoken by the common man in centuries, he had all about him the ruin of language, evidence of toppled suburbs, grass growing among the mosaics, and voices that had been choked with poison, iron, age, or ash.
M.T. Anderson (The Pox Party (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #1))
I wanted to say something to cheer her up. I had a feeling that cheering her up might be a lot of work. I was thinking of how sometimes, trying to say the right thing to people, it’s like some kind of brain surgery, and you have to tweak exactly the right part of the lobe. Except with talking, it’s more like brain surgery with old, rusted skewers and things, maybe like those things you use to eat lobster, but brown. And you have to get exactly the right place, and you’re touching around in the brain but the patient, she keeps jumping and saying, “Ow.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
The maid in the lime-color panties... She had a plain broad face and was the most virtuous woman alive: she laid for EVERYBODY, regardless of race, creed, color or place of national origin, donating herself sociably as an act of hospitality, procrastinating not even for the moment it might take to discard the cloth or broom or dust mop she was clutching at the time she was grabbed. Her allure stemmed from her accessibility; like Mt. Everest, she was there, and the men climbed on top of her each time they felt the urge.
Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
ONE WHO WRAPS HIMSELF God called the Prophet Muhammad Muzzammil, "The One Who Wraps Himself," and said, "Come out from under your cloak, you so fond of hiding and running away. Don't cover your face. The world is a reeling, drunken body, and you are its intelligent head. Don't hide the candle of your clarity. Stand up and burn through the night, my prince. Without your light a great lion is held captive by a rabbit! Be the captain of the ship, Mustafa, my chosen one, my expert guide. Look how the caravan of civilization has been ambushed. Fools are everywhere in charge. Do not practice solitude like Jesus. Be in the assembly, and take charge of it. As the bearded griffin, the Humay, lives on Mt. Qaf because he's native to it, so you should live most naturally out in public and be a communal teacher of souls.
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Essential Rumi)
…what the President meant in the intercepted chat. This was, uh, nothing but a routine translation problem. It has to be understood, that…It has to be understood that when the President referred to the Prime Minister of the Global Alliance as a ‘big sh*thead,’ what he was trying to convey was, uh—this is an American idiom used to praise people, by referring to the sheer fertilizing power of their thoughts. The President meant to say that the Prime Minister’s head was fertile, just full of these nutrients where ideas can grow. It really was a compliment…
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
The worst stage was when one could tell she was still awake and almost alert, but she knew that nothing worked. Imprisoned. She was imprisoned. In a statue like the Sphinx. Looking out from the eyes. Her own mind, at that point, was as small and bewildered as a little fly. Behind great battlements.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
In all things we become acclimated; this is our strength in wartime, and also our weakness. What is a principle, if it alter with circumstance? But what is a man, if he cannot change to meet changed times? And if he can change to meet changed times, is he a man, or several in succession?
M.T. Anderson (The Kingdom on the Waves (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #2))
Walter Mittys with Everest dreams need to bear in mind that when things go wrong up in the Death Zone--and sooner or later they always do--the strongest guides in the world may be powerless to save a client's life; indeed, as the events of 1996 demonstrated, the strongest guides in the world are sometimes powerless to save even their own lives. Four of my teammates died not so much because Rob Hall's systems were faulty--indeed, nobody's were better--but because on Everest it is the nature of systems to break down with a vengeance.
Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)
So one time I said to her that she should stop reading it, because it was just depressing, so she was like, But I want to know what’s going on, so I was like, Then you should do something about it. It’s a free country. You should do something. She was like, Nothing’s ever going to happen in a two-party system. She was like, da da da, nothing’s ever going to change, both parties are in the pocket of big business, da da da, all that? So I was like, You got to believe in the people, it’s a democracy, we can change things. She was like, It’s not a democracy.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
He held out the written pass. "This is what they want us to be," he said. "They want us to be nothing but a bill of sale and a letter explaining where we is and instructions for where we go and what we do. They want us empty. They want us flat as paper. They want to be able to carry our souls in their hands, and read them out loud in court. All the time, they're on the exploration of themselves, going on the inner journey into their own breast. But us, they want there to be nothing inside of. They want us to be writ on. They want us to be a surface. Look at me, I'm mahogany." I protested, "A man is known by his deeds." "Oh, that's sure," said Bono. "Just like a house is known by its deeds. The deeds say who owns it, who sold it, and who'll be buying a new one when it gets knocked down.
M.T. Anderson (The Pox Party (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #1))
I don’t know. D’you think? He’s pretty wide in the chest.” The girl looked at me, and I was frozen. So I said, “Yeah. I work out.” Violet asked me, “What are you? What’s your cup size?” I shrugged and played along. “Like, nine and a half?” I guessed. “That’s my shoe size.” Violet said, “I think he’d like something slinky, kind of silky.” I said, “As long as you can stop me from rubbing myself up against a wall the whole time.” “Okay,” said Violet, holding her hands up like she was annoyed. “Okay, the chemise last week was a mistake.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
I cried, sitting by her bed, and I told her the story of us. “It’s about the feed,” I said. “It’s about this meg normal guy, who doesn’t think about anything until one wacky day, when he meets a dissident with a heart of gold.” I said, “Set against the backdrop of America in its final days, it’s the high-spirited story of their love together, it’s laugh-out-loud funny, really heartwarming, and a visual feast.” I picked up her hand and held it to my lips. I whispered to her fingers. “Together, the two crazy kids grow, have madcap escapades, and learn an important lesson about love. They learn to resist the feed. Rated PG-13. For language,” I whispered, “and mild sexual situations.
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
I know what's wrong with me - I could never stand still for death! Which you've got to do by a certain age, or be ridiculous - you've got to stand there nobly and serene, and let death run his tape on your arms and around your belly and up your crotch until he's got you fitted for that black suit. And I can't, I won't!... So I'm left with wrestling with this anachronistic energy which God has charged me with and I will use it till the dirt is shoveled in my mouth! Life! Life! Fuck death and dying!
Arthur Miller (The Ride Down Mt. Morgan)
He was possessed of a belief that nothing existed, or to be more precise, that only when things were perceived could we be sure that they existed. He troubled himself in arguments, therefore, that when he was not in his chamber, and no one else was in his chamber, there was no one who could say beyond a shadow of a doubt that his desk still existed... or that the bed had not simply frayed into atoms...[Dr. 03-01] developed the habit of quietly leaving company quite suddenly and charging above-stairs to his bedchamber, throwing open the door, and crying "Ah ha!" He found, always, that matter had retained its dubious solidity in his absence; but this did not deter him.
M.T. Anderson (The Pox Party (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #1))
Hosiah Lister, now dead, rec'd his freedom." Consider, then, the full measure of my sadness, reading this inscription; not merely for Hosiah Lister, but for all of us, consider the dear cost of liberty in a world so hostile, so teeming with enemies and opportunists, that one could not become free without casting aside all casualty, all choice, all will, all identity; finding freedom only in the spacious blankness of unbeing, the wide plains of nonentity, infinite and still.
M.T. Anderson (The Pox Party (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #1))
When confronted by a ‘believer’ it is easy for me to contrast the views of the skeptic with those of the rationalist. I simply reach into my pocket and pull out my change. Holding a quarter aloft, I say, ‘This is a most remarkable coin, for it is heavier than all the sins of humanity committed since the beginning of the human race.’ I then hold up a nickel and say, ‘This coin is even more amazing, as it is brighter and shinier than the flames that proceeded from the Burning Bush discovered on Mt. Sinai by Moses.’ Then I raise a penny and state, ‘This portrait of President Lincoln is more realistic and true-to-life than any portrait of Satan ever painted.’ And finally, I hold out a bright, shiny dime and say, ‘And this dime is the most amazing of all because it is heavier and contains more precious metals than all the gold bricks in the streets of Heaven.’ I end with ‘Give to Caesar what is his, and hold the rest of it dear—for it is all you see and touch—and the Christian god can take care of all his things, for they amount to less than this 41 cents I hold here in my hand.
E. Haldeman-Julius
സൂതരെ, മാഗതരെ, അതുകൊണ്ട് കുരുവംശത്തിൻറെ ഗാഥകൾ നമ്മുക്കിനിയും പാടാം. കുരുവിനെയും കുരുപുത്രൻ പ്രതീപനെയും വാഴ്ത്താം. പ്രതീപപുത്രൻ ശാന്തുനുവിനെയും വാഴ്ത്താം. നമ്മുക്ക് ഗംഗയെ വാഴ്ത്താം. പിറവിയും പ്രേമവും പാപവും മരണവും കണ്ട വിഷ്നുപദോദ്ഭവയായ ഗംഗയെ വാഴ്ത്താം. ഗംഗയിൽ ശാന്തുനുവിനുണ്ടായ അതിവിഖ്യാതപുത്രൻ, വ്രതകാഠിന്യം കൊണ്ട് ദേവകളെ കൂടി അമ്പരപ്പിച്ച മഹാപുരുഷൻ ഭീഷ്മരെ വാഴ്ത്താം. മത്സ്യഗന്ധിയിൽ ശാന്തുനുവിനു പിറന്ന വിചിത്രവീര്യനെ വാഴ്ത്താം. വിചിത്രവീര്യക്ഷേത്രങ്ങളിൽ കൃഷ്ണദ്വൈപായനനിയോഗത്തിൽ പിറന്ന ദൃതരാഷ്ട്രരേയും പാണ്ഡുവിനെയും വാഴ്ത്താം. കൃഷ്ണദ്വൈപായനൻ ദാസിക്ക് കനിനേകിയ ധർമ്മതുല്യൻ വിദുരരെ വാഴ്ത്താം. പിന്നെ നമ്മുക്ക് യുധിഷ്ടരനെ വാഴ്ത്താം . ചന്ദ്രവംശത്തിലെ സംവരണന് സൂര്യപുത്രി തപിയിലുണ്ടായ കുരുവിനെ നമ്മുക്ക് വാഴ്ത്താം . തോഴരെ സൂര്യവംശമഹിമകൾ നമ്മുക്കിനിയും പാടാം.
M.T. Vasudevan Nair
A man in a topiary maze cannot judge of the twistings and turnings, and which avenue might lead him to the heart; while one who stands above, on some pleasant prospect, looking down upon the labyrinth, is reduced to watching the bewildered circumnavigations of the tiny victim through obvious coils - as the gods, perhaps, looked down on besieged and blood-sprayed Troy from the safety of their couches, and thought mortals weak and foolish while they themselves reclined in comfort, and had only to snap to call Ganymade to theeir side with nectar decanted. So I, now, with the vantage of my years, am sensible of my foolishness, my blindness, as a child. I cannot think of my blunders without a shriveling of the inward parts - not merely the disiccation attendant on shame, but also the aggravation of remorse that I did not demand explanation, that I did not sooner take my mother by the hand, and- I do not know what I regret. I sit with my pen, and cannot find an end to that sentence.
M.T. Anderson (The Pox Party (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #1))
I am not sure whether you could call this abuse, but when I was (long ago) abroad in the world of dry men, I saw parents, usually upscale and educated and talented and functional and white, patient and loving and supportive and concerned and involved in their children’s lives, profilgate with compliments and diplomatic with constructive criticism, loquacious in their pronouncements of unconditional love for and approval of their children, conforming to every last jot-tittle in any conceivably definition of a good parent, I saw parent after unimpeachable parent who raised kids who were (a) emotionally retarded or (b) lethally self-indulgent or (c) chronically depressed or (d) borderline psychotic or (e) consumed with narcissistic self-loathing or (f) neurotically driven/addicted or (g) variously psychosomatically Disabled or (h) some conjunctive permutation of (a) … (g). Why is this. Why do many parents who seem relentlessly bent on producing children who feel they are good persons deserving of love produce children who grow to feel they are hideous persons not deserving of love who just happen to have lucked into having parents so marvelous that the parents love them even though they are hideous? Is it a sign of abuse if a mother produces a child who believes not that he is innately beautiful and lovable and deserving of magnificent maternal treatment but somehow that he is a hideous unlovable child who has somehow lucked in to having a really magnificent mother? Probably not. But could such a mother then really be all that magnificent, if that’s the child’s view of himself? ...I think, Mrs. Starkly, that I am speaking of Mrs. Avril M.-T. Incandenza, although the woman is so multileveled and indictment-proof that it is difficult to feel comfortable with any sort of univocal accusation of anything. Something just was not right, is the only way to put it. Something creepy, even on the culturally stellar surface.
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)