“
I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a tea cup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.
”
”
Brennan Manning (The Ragamuffin Gospel)
“
Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a book in a year. Some people lift cars, too. Some people enter week-long sled-dog races, go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, fly planes through the Arc de Triomphe. Some people feel no pain in childbirth. Some people eat cars. There is no call to take human extremes as norms.
”
”
Annie Dillard (The Writing Life)
“
For Jenn
At 12 years old I started bleeding with the moon
and beating up boys who dreamed of becoming astronauts.
I fought with my knuckles white as stars,
and left bruises the shape of Salem.
There are things we know by heart,
and things we don't.
At 13 my friend Jen tried to teach me how to blow rings of smoke.
I'd watch the nicotine rising from her lips like halos,
but I could never make dying beautiful.
The sky didn't fill with colors the night I convinced myself
veins are kite strings you can only cut free.
I suppose I love this life,
in spite of my clenched fist.
I open my palm and my lifelines look like branches from an Aspen tree,
and there are songbirds perched on the tips of my fingers,
and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath
the first time his fingers touched the keys
the same way a soldier holds his breath
the first time his finger clicks the trigger.
We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.
But my lungs remember
the day my mother took my hand and placed it on her belly
and told me the symphony beneath was my baby sister's heartbeat.
And I knew life would tremble
like the first tear on a prison guard's hardened cheek,
like a prayer on a dying man's lips,
like a vet holding a full bottle of whisky like an empty gun in a war zone…
just take me just take me
Sometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much,
the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood.
We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways,
but you still have to call it a birthday.
You still have to fall for the prettiest girl on the playground at recess
and hope she knows you can hit a baseball
further than any boy in the whole third grade
and I've been running for home
through the windpipe of a man who sings
while his hands playing washboard with a spoon
on a street corner in New Orleans
where every boarded up window is still painted with the words
We're Coming Back
like a promise to the ocean
that we will always keep moving towards the music,
the way Basquait slept in a cardboard box to be closer to the rain.
Beauty, catch me on your tongue.
Thunder, clap us open.
The pupils in our eyes were not born to hide beneath their desks.
Tonight lay us down to rest in the Arizona desert,
then wake us washing the feet of pregnant women
who climbed across the border with their bellies aimed towards the sun.
I know a thousand things louder than a soldier's gun.
I know the heartbeat of his mother.
Don't cover your ears, Love.
Don't cover your ears, Life.
There is a boy writing poems in Central Park
and as he writes he moves
and his bones become the bars of Mandela's jail cell stretching apart,
and there are men playing chess in the December cold
who can't tell if the breath rising from the board
is their opponents or their own,
and there's a woman on the stairwell of the subway
swearing she can hear Niagara Falls from her rooftop in Brooklyn,
and I'm remembering how Niagara Falls is a city overrun
with strip malls and traffic and vendors
and one incredibly brave river that makes it all worth it.
Ya'll, I know this world is far from perfect.
I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon.
I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic.
But every ocean has a shoreline
and every shoreline has a tide
that is constantly returning
to wake the songbirds in our hands,
to wake the music in our bones,
to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave river
that has to run through the center of our hearts
to find its way home.
”
”
Andrea Gibson
“
Skill is successfully walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Intelligence is not trying.
”
”
Marilyn vos Savant
“
It would be more impressive if it flowed the other way (Commenting on Niagara Falls)
”
”
Oscar Wilde
“
All systems have failed me. In five
minutes I'll be fine again for a while, but right now the inside of my head feels like Niagara
Falls without the noise, just this mist and churning and no real sense of where earth ends and
heaven begins.
”
”
Douglas Coupland
“
No surgery in the world was going to offer him the particular history that went along with growing up female. No procedure was going to give him the joys or the terrors that must accompany pregnancy- that must, for teen girls, make sex a walk over Niagara Falls on a tightrope.
”
”
Chris Bohjalian (Trans-Sister Radio)
“
Niagara falls, Viagra rises.
”
”
Stewart Stafford
“
Entomologist Dr. Ovid Byron speaking to television journalist, Tina, who says, re: global warming, "Scientists of course are in disagreement about whether this is happening and whether humans have a role."
He replies:
"The Arctic is genuinely collapsing. Scientists used to call these things the canary in the mine. What they say now is, The canary is dead. We are at the top of Niagara Falls, Tina, in a canoe. There is an image for your viewers. We got here by drifting, but we cannot turn around for a lazy paddle back when you finally stop pissing around. We have arrived at the point of an audible roar. Does it strike you as a good time to debate the existence of the falls?
”
”
Barbara Kingsolver (Flight Behavior)
“
I'll remind her of how fat her arms looked in that slutty dress she wore at senior prom. That always makes her cry. Like goddamned Niagara falls.
”
”
Meg Cabot (Queen of Babble Gets Hitched (Queen of Babble, #3))
“
You’re surprised to learn, though, that Player isn’t with them but has been talking to you this whole time from his bedroom in Niagara Falls, Canada.
”
”
Sam Nisson (Endangered Operation)
“
What we consume now is not objects or events, but our experience of them. Just as we never need to leave our cars, so we never need to leave our own skulls. The experience is already out there, as ready-made as a pizza, as bluntly objective as a boulder, and all we need to do is receive it. It is as though there is an experience hanging in the air, waiting for a human subject to come alone and have it. Niagara Falls, Dublin Castle and the Great Wall of China do our experiencing for us. They come ready-interpreted, thus saving us a lot of inconvenient labour. What matters is not the place itself but the act of consuming it. We buy an experience like we pick up a T-shirt.
”
”
Terry Eagleton (How to Read a Poem)
“
In a society that is essentially designed to organize, direct, and gratify mass impulses, what is there to minister to the silent zones of man as an individual? Religion? Art? Nature? No, the church has turned religion into standardized public spectacle, and the museum has done the same for art. The Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls have been looked at so much that they've become effete, sucked empty by too many stupid eyes. What is there to minister to the silent zones of man as an individual? How about a cold chicken bone on a paper plate at midnight, how about a lurid lipstick lengthening or shortening at your command, how about a Styrofoam nest abandoned by a 'bird' you've never known, how about a pair of windshield wipers pursuing one another futilely while you drive home alone through a downpour, how about something beneath a seat touched by your shoe at the movies, how about worn pencils, cute forks, fat little radios, boxes of bow ties, and bubbles on the side of a bathtub? Yes, these are the things, these kite strings and olive oil cans and Valentine hearts stuffed with nougat, that form the bond between the autistic vision and the experiential world, it is to show these things in their true mysterious light that is the purpose of the moon.
”
”
Tom Robbins
“
I think you ought to write, in bed, and make use of your unhappiness. I do it. Many do. One should cook and eat one's misery. Chain it like a dog. Harness like Niagara Falls to generate light and supply voltage for electric chairs.
”
”
Saul Bellow
“
Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial of the gospel of grace. Our approach to the Christian life is as absurd as the enthusiastic young man who had just received his plumber’s license and was taken to see Niagara Falls. He studied it for a minute and then said, “I think I can fix this.”2
”
”
Brennan Manning (The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out)
“
Niagara Falls is the hanging tongue on the face of the earth, drooling endlessly over its own beauty.
”
”
Vinita Kinra
“
You don’t go to Niagara Falls or the pyramids every day, but you remember them forever. That’s what I offer. An unforgettable night, and a taxi ride home.
”
”
J.D. Hawkins (Insatiable: Part One (Insatiable, #1))
“
Human language falls short of expressing all that He is, even as a thimble lacks capacity to hold Niagara Falls.
”
”
Blake Western (There's No One Like Jesus)
“
Everyone collects souvenirs, whether they call them that or not. They're evidence that we’ve taken part in the great dance of life – been places, seen things. They’re connections between us and something grander and more eternal than we are. And they belong to us. Tourists shooting blurry mobile-phone-camera snapshots of the ‘Mona Lisa’ or Niagara Falls want to prove they were there, not to have art to hang on their walls.
”
”
Michael Hughes
“
The cure for unhappiness is happiness,
I don't care what anyone says.
”
”
Elizabeth McCracken (Niagara Falls All Over Again)
“
Yeah, thanks, man. That’ll be like catching Niagara fucking Falls with a fly net.
”
”
Cristin Harber (Winters Heat (Titan, #1))
“
Yeah, that’s her. Roly-poly little bitch. Fucked her in the ass the other day and, get this, she shit all over me. I’m talkin’, this wasn’t no little mess. This was Niagara fuckin’ Falls pourin’ outta her ass.
”
”
Madeline Sheehan (Unbeloved (Undeniable, #4))
“
So I do what I do best, or what I do worst, I suppose—my greatest strength is also my greatest weakness. I break it.
“I had the faucet on,” I say. “Really loud. And I pee pretty loud. I’m surprised you guys didn’t hear me, it was like Niagara Falls in here. Just really … very loud in volume. A lot of … liquids … flowing in a … noisy fashion.
”
”
Emma Mills (Foolish Hearts)
“
You cannot shoot your way a little bit into a war any more than you can go a little bit over Niagara Falls.
”
”
Thomas A. Bailey
“
If I had kept a journal, I could go back through it and check up on what memory reports plausibly but not necessarily truly. But keeping a journal then would have been like making notes while going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Eventless as our life was, it swept us along. Were we any less a Now Generation that the one that presently claims the title? I wonder. And it may be just as well that I have no diary to remember by. Henry James says somewhere that if you have to make notes on how a thing has struck you, it probably hasn't struck you.
”
”
Wallace Stegner (Crossing to Safety)
“
Sweetheart, you've just given me a hard on the size of Niagara Falls, so I think it's safe to say I'm not turned off, but I do think this will change how we spend your ten nights if you choose to come to me.
”
”
Michelle Hughes
“
That’ll be like catching Niagara fucking Falls with a fly net.
”
”
Cristin Harber (Winters Heat (Titan, #1))
“
I thought I loved Daren, and I did in a butterfly-and-hearts kind of way, but it was nothing like this. This is an asteroid shower on a summer night. A tidal wave crashing onto the breakers. Falling over the edge of Niagara Falls in an inner tube. Because I have fallen, irreparably for Gavin Murphy
”
”
Lex Martin (Dearest Clementine (Dearest, #1))
“
The cure for unhappiness is happiness,
I don't care what anyone says.
- Niagara Falls All Over Again
(via A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby)
”
”
Elizabeth McKraken
“
Niagara Falls Power Company chose to go with AC current to feed the industry of Buffalo, which became briefly known as the electric city of the future.
”
”
A.A. Gill (To America with Love)
“
One cannot go over Niagara Falls in a barrel only slightly.
”
”
A.C. Davis
“
It's interesting to speculate on the reasons that make men so anxious to debase themselves. As in that idea of feeling small before nature. It's not a bromide, it's practically an institution. Have you noticed how self-righteous a man sounds when he tells you about it? Look, he seems to say, I'm so glad to be a pygmy, that's how virtuous I am. Have you heard with what delight people quote some great celebrity who's proclaimed that he's not so great when he looks at Niagara Falls? It's as if they were smacking their lips in sheer glee that their best is dust before the brute force of an earthquake. As if they were sprawling on all fours, rubbing their foreheads in the mud to the majesty of a hurricane. But that's not the spirit that leashed fire, steam, electricity, that crossed oceans in sailing sloops, that built airplanes and dams...and skyscrapers. What is it they fear? What is they hate so much, those who love to crawl? And why?
”
”
Ayn Rand
“
Anything that just adds information you can't use is plain dangerous. Anyway, there's too much of everything of this kind, that's come home to me, too much history and culture to keep track of, too many details, too much news, too much example, too much influence, too many guys who tell you to be as they are, and all this hugeness, abundance, turbulence, Niagara Falls torrent. Which who is supposed to interpret? Me? I haven't got that much head to master it all. I get carried away. It doesn't give my feelings enough of a chance if I have to store up and become like an encyclopedia. Why, just as a question of time spent in getting prepared for life, look! a man could spent forty, fifty, sixty years like that inside the walls of his own being. And all high conversation would take place within those walls. And all achievement would stay within those walls. And all glamour too. And even hate, monstrousness, enviousness, murder, would be inside them. This would be only a terrible, hideous dream about existing. It's better to dig ditches and hit other guys with your shovel than die in the walls.
”
”
Saul Bellow (The Adventures of Augie March)
“
There is no pain - just travel.
On her knees, she stays still as a supplicant ready for communion. It is very quiet. All of a sudden there is no hurry. There will be time for everything. For the breezes that blow and for the rainwater drying in the gutters, for Maury to find a place of safety in the world, for Malcolm to come back from the dead and ask her about birds and jets. For the big things too, things like beauty and vengeance and honor and righteousness and the grace of God and the slow spilling of the earth from day to night and back to day again.
It is spread out before her, compressed into one single moment. She will be able to see it all -- if she can keep her sleepy eyes open.
It's like a dream where she is. Like a dream where you find yourself underwater and you are panicked for a moment until you realize you no longer need to breathe, and you can stay under the surface forever.
She feels her body falling sideways to the ground. It happens slow - and she expects a crash that never comes because her mind is jumping and it doesn't know which way is up anymore, like the moon above her and the fish below her and her in between floating, like on the surface of the river, floating between sea and sky, the world all skin, all meniscus, and she a part of it too.
Moses Todd told her if you lean over the rail at Niagara Falls it takes your breath away, like turning yourself inside out -- and Lee the hunter told her that one time people used to stuff themselves in barrels and ride over the edge.
And she is there too, floating out over the edge of the falls, the roar of the water so deafening it's like hearing nothing at all, like pillows in your ears, and the water exactly the temperature of your skin, like you are falling and the water is falling, and the water is just more of you, like everything is just more of you, just different configurations of the things that make you up.
She is there, and she's sailing out and down over the falls, down and down, and it takes a long time because the falls are one of God's great mysteries and so high they are higher than any building, and so she is held there, spinning in the air, her eyes closed because she's spinning on the inside too, down and down.
She wonders if she will ever hit the bottom, wonders will the splash ever come.
Maybe not - because God is a slick god, and he knows things about infinities. Infinities are warm places that never end. And they aren't about good and evil, they're just peaceful-like and calm, and they're where all travelers go eventually, and they are round everywhere you look because you can't have any edges in infinities.
And also they make forever seem like an okay thing.
”
”
Alden Bell (The Reapers are the Angels (Reapers, #1))
“
Dan, who was writing a book on the radical activity of the twenties and thirties, took the occasion of our trip to ask me about them. The whole thing seems to me so stale that I can't imagine anybody's now wanting to write about it, but we ran over the personalities and I told him a lot of stories. It seemed to me like that grisly museum of the early 1900's that I had had him visit at Niagara Falls: old stuffed two-headed calves, motheaten panthers attacking a stag, dried-up corpses from Indian graves, big bags made of rubber tires in which people had tried to shoot the falls--and around it all-powerful industrial life that no show of resistance could stop, which had ruined the landscape of the river and was crowding out everything else.
”
”
Edmund Wilson (Upstate: Records and Recollections of Northern New York)
“
Fred Olmsted sat at the edge of the stagecoach seat, chattering to his father about their trip. How exciting to see the towns and forests of western New York! Suddenly, Fred stopped talking. That roar in the distance could only be one thing. Niagara Falls!
”
”
Julie Dunlap (Parks for the People: A Story About Frederick Law Olmsted (Creative Minds))
“
I understand perfectly; it’s like the madman who goes over Niagara Falls in a coffee can because that’s as good a way as any to get dead.” “That’s right,” I tell him, knowing he don’t understand it at all—that it’s more because it’s as good a way as any to stay alive. . . .
”
”
Ken Kesey (Sometimes a Great Notion)
“
Artists don't think outside the box, because outside the box there's a vacumm. Outside the box there are no rules, there is no reality. You have nothing to interact with, nothing to work against. If you set out to do something way outside the box (designing a time machine, or using liquid nitrogen to freeze Niagara Falls), then you'll never be able to do the real work of art. You can't ship if you're far outside the box.
Artists think along the edges of the box, because that's where things get done. That's where the audience is, that's where the means of production are available, and that's where you can make impact.
”
”
Seth Godin
“
Here's what I think: when you're born, you're assigned a brain like you're assigned a desk, a nice desk, with plenty of pigeonholes and drawers and secret compartments. At the start, it's empty, and then you spend your life filling it up. You're the only one who understands the filing system, you amass some clutter, sure, but somehow it works: you're asked the capital of Oregon, and you say Salem; you want to remember your first-grade teacher's name, and there it is, Miss Fox. Then suddenly you're old, and though everything's still in your brain, it's crammed so tight that when you try to remember the name of the guy who does the upkeep on your lawn, your first childhood crush comes fluttering out, or the persistent smell of tomato soup in a certain Des Moines neighborhood.
”
”
Elizabeth McCracken (Niagara Falls All Over Again)
“
I’m trying to decide whether you put a hockey stick in bed between us or if you’re really happy to be waking up beside me.” He rubbed himself against my ass, groaning next to the shell of my hair. He’s a vocal guy and it does something to me. It’s like he flicks a switch somewhere and suddenly it’s Niagara Falls between my legs. “If I say it’s a hockey stick, will you play with it?” “Oh my God. You are so cringe. I hate hockey, would you believe?” “I could make you fall in love with hockey, Anastasia,” he whispered, sending goose bumps across my entire body. “With the right educational tools, of course, and the appropriate amount of practice.
”
”
Hannah Grace (Icebreaker)
“
Residents of Niagara Falls, New York complained that bitcoin miners powerful cooling fans, necessary to keep the computers from overheating, were drowning out the sound of the area's massive waterfalls. China, not exactly known for its environmentalism, banned mining due to its massive energy use.
Of course, it was welcomed by Texas.
”
”
Zeke Faux (Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall)
“
I thought if I knew more my problem would be simplified, and maybe I should complete my formal education. But since I’ve been working for Robey I have reached the conclusion that I couldn’t utilize even ten percent of what I already knew. I’ll give you an example. I read about King Arthur’s Round Table when I was a kid, but what am I ever going to do about it? My heart was touched by sacrifice and pure attempts, so what should I do? Or take the Gospels. How are you supposed to put them to use? Why, they’re not utilizable! And then you go and pile on top of that more advice and information. Anything that just adds information that you can’t use is plain dangerous. Anyway, there’s too much of everything of this kind, that’s come home to me, too much history and culture to keep track of, too many details, too much news, too much example, too much influence, too many guys who tell you to be as they are, and all this hugeness, abundance, turbulence, Niagara Falls torrent. Which who is supposed to interpret? Me? I haven’t got that much head to master it all. I get carried away. It doesn’t give my feelings enough of a chance if I have to store up and become like an encyclopedia. Why, just as a question of time spent in getting prepared for life, look! a man could spend forty, fifty, sixty years like that inside the walls of his own being. And all great experience would only take place within the walls of his being. And all high conversation would take place within those walls. And all achievement would stay within those walls. And all glamour too. And even hate, monstrousness, enviousness, murder, would be inside them. This would be only a terrible, hideous dream about existing. It’s better to dig ditches and hit other guys with your shovel than die in the walls.
”
”
Saul Bellow
“
Tourists hurried past them on the pedestrian-only street like chickens scampering to the feeder, cars scurrying through a tollgate, Niagara River rushing into the falls.
”
”
Dennis Vickers (Between the Shadow and the Soul)
“
January 23: Niagara is released, making Marilyn a star. She plays Rose Loomis, a femme fatale. The picture features her 116-foot walk to the falls.
”
”
Carl Rollyson (Marilyn Monroe Day by Day: A Timeline of People, Places, and Events)
“
History remembers the velvet hearted.
”
”
Elizabeth McCracken (Niagara Falls All Over Again)
“
Before we returned to Harvard, I convinced my parents to take a detour to Niagara Falls. The mood in the car was heavy, and at first I regretted having suggested the diversion, but the moment Dad saw the falls he was transformed, elated. I had a camera. Dad had always hated cameras but when he saw mine his eyes shone with excitement. “Tara! Tara!” he shouted, running ahead of me and Mother. “Get yourself a picture of this angle. Ain’t that pretty!” It was as if he realized we were making a memory, something beautiful we might need later. Or perhaps I’m projecting, because that was how I felt. There are some photos from today that might help me forget the grove, I wrote in my journal. There’s a picture of me and Dad happy, together. Proof that’s possible.
”
”
Tara Westover (Educated)
“
There's plenty to do without Steve. You can go to Niagara Falls - obviously - building a snowman, go tobogganing or cross-country skiing, make a snow angel, go ice skating."
Half an hour later Mackenzie had created an entire Operation White Christmas Pinterest board. When she was finished, she sat back, folder her arms across her chest and stared at Hollie with a satisfied grin. "Who said you need a man?
”
”
Nicki Edwards (Operation White Christmas: An Escape to the Country Novella)
“
Back inside, I’m shown an antique cabinet in which members of the community, famous for their homegrown produce, dried herbs.
The Oneida Community was an upstate tourist attraction right from the start, second, Valesky says, to Niagara Falls. I’m taking the same guided tour offered a hundred and fifty years ago to prim rubbernecks who came here to peep at sex fiends. I wonder how many of my vacationing forebears went home disappointed? They thought they were taking the train to Gomorrah but instead they got to watch herbs dry. Valesky opens a drawer in the herb cabinet so I can get a whiff. He mentions that back in the day, when one tourist was shown the cabinet she rudely asked her community-member guide, “What’s that odor?” To which the guide replied, “Perhaps it’s the odor of crushed selfishness.” Valesky grins. “How about that for a utopian answer?” To my not particularly utopian nose, crushed selfishness smells a lot like cilantro.
”
”
Sarah Vowell (Assassination Vacation)
“
Although both the U.S. and Canadian sides of the falls are well worth visiting, the best views, including nighttime illumination, are from the beautifully manicured flower gardens that line the Canadian side. However, to get up-close-and-personal with the falls, visit Niagara Falls State Park in New York, where there are several locations, including Prospect Point, Luna Island, Terrapin Point, and the Three Sisters Islands, that allow visitors to stand within a few feet of the raging rapids and at the brink of the falls.
”
”
Patricia Schultz (1,000 Places to See in the United States & Canada Before You Die)
“
I wanted to write an adventure story, not, it's true, I really did. I shall have failed, that's all. Adventures bore me. I have no idea how to talk about countries, how to make people wish they had been there. I am not a good travelling salesman. Countries? Where are they , whatever became of them.
When I was twelve I dreamed of Hongkong. That tedious, commonplace little provincial town! Shops sprouting from every nook and cranny! The Chinese junks pictured on the lids of chocolate boxes used to fascinate me. Junks: sort of chopped-off barges, where the housewives do all their cooking and washing on deck. They even have television. As for the Niagara Falls: water, nothing but water! A dam is more interesting; at least one can occasionally see a big crack at its base, and hope for some excitement.
When one travels, one sees nothing but hotels. Squalid rooms, with iron bedsteads, and a picture of some kind hanging on the wall from a rusty nail, a coloured print of London Bridge or the Eiffel Tower.
One also sees trains, lots of trains, and airports that look like restaurants, and restaurants that look like morgues. All the ports in the world are hemmed in by oil slicks and shabby customs buildings. In the streets of the towns, people keep to the sidewalks, cars stop at red lights. If only one occasionally arrived in a country where women are the colour of steel and men wear owls on their heads. But no, they are sensible, they all have black ties, partings to one side, brassières and stiletto heels. In all the restaurants, when one has finished eating one calls over the individual who has been prowling among the tables, and pays him with a promissory note. There are cigarettes everywhere! There are airplanes and automobiles everywhere.
”
”
J.M.G. Le Clézio (The Book of Flights)
“
My father and Paul would be outside, talking about boats or motors or forest fires or one of their expeditions, and my mother and Madame would be inside in the rocking chairs (my mother with the Niagara Falls cushion), trying with great goodwill to make conversation. Neither knew more than five words of the other’s language and after the opening Bonjours both would unconsciously raise their voices as though talking to a deaf person. “Il fait beau,” my mother would shout, no matter what the weather was like, and Madame would grin with strain and say “Pardon? Ah, il fait beau, oui, il fait beau, ban oui.” When she had ground to a stop both would think desperately, chairs rocking.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Surfacing)
“
Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!
All streaming into cozy hotels
All going to do the same thing tonight
The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen
The lobby zombies they knowing what
The whistling elevator man he knowing
The winking bellboy knowing
Everybody knowing! I'd be almost inclined not to do anything!
Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
running rampant into those almost climatic suites
yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of
bigamy a saint of divorce--
”
”
Gregory Corso
“
The True-Blue American"
Jeremiah Dickson was a true-blue American,
For he was a little boy who understood America, for he felt that he must
Think about everything; because that’s all there is to think about,
Knowing immediately the intimacy of truth and comedy,
Knowing intuitively how a sense of humor was a necessity
For one and for all who live in America. Thus, natively, and
Naturally when on an April Sunday in an ice cream parlor Jeremiah
Was requested to choose between a chocolate sundae and a banana split
He answered unhesitatingly, having no need to think of it
Being a true-blue American, determined to continue as he began:
Rejecting the either-or of Kierkegaard, and many another European;
Refusing to accept alternatives, refusing to believe the choice of between;
Rejecting selection; denying dilemma; electing absolute affirmation: knowing
in his breast
The infinite and the gold
Of the endless frontier, the deathless West.
“Both: I will have them both!” declared this true-blue American
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, on an April Sunday, instructed
By the great department stores, by the Five-and-Ten,
Taught by Christmas, by the circus, by the vulgarity and grandeur of
Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon,
Tutored by the grandeur, vulgarity, and infinite appetite gratified and
Shining in the darkness, of the light
On Saturdays at the double bills of the moon pictures,
The consummation of the advertisements of the imagination of the light
Which is as it was—the infinite belief in infinite hope—of Columbus,
Barnum, Edison, and Jeremiah Dickson.
”
”
Delmore Schwartz
“
Churchill warned them now: “When you are drifting down the stream of Niagara, it may easily happen that from time to time you run into a reach of quite smooth water, or that a bend in the river or a change in the wind may make the roar of the falls seem far more distant. But”—his voice dropped a register, and only those who strained could hear—“your hazard and your preoccupation are in no way affected thereby.
”
”
William Manchester (The Last Lion 2: Winston Spencer Churchill Alone 1932-40)
“
Antidepression medication is temperamental. Somewhere around fifty-nine or sixty I noticed the drug I’d been taking seemed to have stopped working. This is not unusual. The drugs interact with your body chemistry in different ways over time and often need to be tweaked. After the death of Dr. Myers, my therapist of twenty-five years, I’d been seeing a new doctor whom I’d been having great success with. Together we decided to stop the medication I’d been on for five years and see what would happen... DEATH TO MY HOMETOWN!! I nose-dived like the diving horse at the old Atlantic City steel pier into a sloshing tub of grief and tears the likes of which I’d never experienced before. Even when this happens to me, not wanting to look too needy, I can be pretty good at hiding the severity of my feelings from most of the folks around me, even my doctor. I was succeeding well with this for a while except for one strange thing: TEARS! Buckets of ’em, oceans of ’em, cold, black tears pouring down my face like tidewater rushing over Niagara during any and all hours of the day. What was this about? It was like somebody opened the floodgates and ran off with the key. There was NO stopping it. 'Bambi' tears... 'Old Yeller' tears... 'Fried Green Tomatoes' tears... rain... tears... sun... tears... I can’t find my keys... tears. Every mundane daily event, any bump in the sentimental road, became a cause to let it all hang out. It would’ve been funny except it wasn’t.
Every meaningless thing became the subject of a world-shattering existential crisis filling me with an awful profound foreboding and sadness. All was lost. All... everything... the future was grim... and the only thing that would lift the burden was one-hundred-plus on two wheels or other distressing things. I would be reckless with myself. Extreme physical exertion was the order of the day and one of the few things that helped. I hit the weights harder than ever and paddleboarded the equivalent of the Atlantic, all for a few moments of respite. I would do anything to get Churchill’s black dog’s teeth out of my ass.
Through much of this I wasn’t touring. I’d taken off the last year and a half of my youngest son’s high school years to stay close to family and home. It worked and we became closer than ever. But that meant my trustiest form of self-medication, touring, was not at hand. I remember one September day paddleboarding from Sea Bright to Long Branch and back in choppy Atlantic seas. I called Jon and said, “Mr. Landau, book me anywhere, please.” I then of course broke down in tears. Whaaaaaaaaaa. I’m surprised they didn’t hear me in lower Manhattan. A kindly elderly woman walking her dog along the beach on this beautiful fall day saw my distress and came up to see if there was anything she could do. Whaaaaaaaaaa. How kind. I offered her tickets to the show. I’d seen this symptom before in my father after he had a stroke. He’d often mist up. The old man was usually as cool as Robert Mitchum his whole life, so his crying was something I loved and welcomed. He’d cry when I’d arrive. He’d cry when I left. He’d cry when I mentioned our old dog. I thought, “Now it’s me.”
I told my doc I could not live like this. I earned my living doing shows, giving interviews and being closely observed. And as soon as someone said “Clarence,” it was going to be all over. So, wisely, off to the psychopharmacologist he sent me. Patti and I walked in and met a vibrant, white-haired, welcoming but professional gentleman in his sixties or so. I sat down and of course, I broke into tears. I motioned to him with my hand; this is it. This is why I’m here. I can’t stop crying! He looked at me and said, “We can fix this.” Three days and a pill later the waterworks stopped, on a dime. Unbelievable. I returned to myself. I no longer needed to paddle, pump, play or challenge fate. I didn’t need to tour. I felt normal.
”
”
Bruce Springsteen (Born to Run)
“
When you see the truth for the first time, it is what people call a peak moment, or a moment of clarity. You get a larger percentage of what each moment of life actually contains; you are filled with life. Your mind is the gatekeeper of life, and sometimes it lets a little true life in, but most of the time it does not.
Without the mind blocking life, you receive all of life, true life, and reflect it all back out.
Seeing Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon for the first time is a peak moment for most people. Why does it make you feel so alive? Nothing really happens to you. Why doesn’t it feel as good the second time you see it? You are seeing the same thing. The reason is, your mind opens up when something is special.
The truth is, every moment of life is special, and you can be completely open to life most of the time. You have to see the truth to see true life.
”
”
Michael Smith (The Present)
“
It is not that Combeferre was not capable of fighting, he did not refuse a hand-to-hand combat with the obstacle, and to attack it by main force and explosively; but it suited him better to bring the human race into accord with its destiny gradually, by means of education, the inculcation of axioms, the promulgation of positive laws; and, between two lights, his preference was rather for illumination than for conflagration. A conflagration can create an aurora, no doubt, but why not await the dawn? A volcano illuminates, but daybreak furnishes a still better illumination. Possibly, Combeferre preferred the whiteness of the beautiful to the blaze of the sublime. A light troubled by smoke, progress purchased at the expense of violence, only half satisfied this tender and serious spirit. The headlong precipitation of a people into the truth, a '93, terrified him; nevertheless, stagnation was still more repulsive to him, in it he detected putrefaction and death; on the whole, he preferred scum to miasma, and he preferred the torrent to the cesspool, and the falls of Niagara to the lake of Montfaucon. In short, he desired neither halt nor haste.
”
”
Victor Hugo (Complete Works of Victor Hugo)
“
ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER, 1884.
If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest
scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara—nor you, ye limitless prairies—nor
your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-
loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones—nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes—
nor Mississippi's stream:
—This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name—the
still small voice vibrating—America's choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen—the act itself the main, the
quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous'd—sea-board and inland
—Texas to Maine—the Prairie States—Vermont, Virginia,
California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West—the paradox and con-
flict,
The countless snow-flakes falling—(a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:)
the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity—welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
—Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify—while the
heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.
”
”
Walt Whitman
“
In this trembling moment, with light armor under several flags rolling across northern Syria, with civilians beaten to death in the streets of Occupied Palestine, with fires roaring across the vineyards of California and forests being felled to ensure more space for development, with student loans from profiteers breaking the backs of the young, and with Niagaras of water falling into the oceans from every sector of Greenland, in this moment, is it still possible to face the gathering darkness and say to the physical Earth, and to all its creatures, including ourselves, fiercely and without embar-rassment, I love you, and to embrace fearlessly the burning world?
”
”
Barry Lopez
“
I had abandoned Elana; I deserved her uncertainty. I closed my eyes and focused on her touch. Perhaps she wouldn't have understood had I tried to explain it to her, but to me Elana was not only Elana--she was the sad-eyed love of mine who used to bag groceries at Woodley's in Buffalo; she was the sweet one who always sat across from me on the city bus in Niagara Falls; she was the girl I'd picked up hitchhiking in Mobile and dropped off in New Orleans, brash, full of sarcastic humor, but truly lonely and scared; she was the one I'd nabbed pinching Newports for her dad from the Marathon station I'd worked at in Bakersfield (I'd softened and paid for the pack myself); yes, she was the girl playing basketball with all the boys in the park, collecting cans by the side of the road, keeping secret pet kittens in an empty boxcar in the woods, walking alone at night through the rail yards, teaching her little sisters how to kiss, reading out loud to herself, so absorbed by the story, singing sadly in the tub, building a fort from the junked cars out in the meadow, by herself in the front row at the black-and-white movies or in the alley, gazing at an eddy of cigarette stubs and trash and fall leaves, smoking her first cigarette at dusk by a pile of dead brush in the desert, then wishing at the stars-she was all of them, and she was so much more that was just her that I still didn't know.
”
”
Davy Rothbart
“
You said she works at an ice-cream shop around here, right?” He made a big show of wiping the sweat off his brow. “Come to think of it, a nice double cone would really hit the spot in this heat.”
Zach’s expression was one of pure teenage mortification. “Yeah, because that’s exactly what will help my inability to talk to her—my older brother watching and critiquing all my moves.”
“I thought we’d already established that you don’t have any moves.”
“Now that’s funny. Picking on someone half your age. Hey, here’s an idea: I’ll introduce you to Paige as soon as I meet this so-called smart, witty, and hot woman you’re supposedly seeing. Sounds a lot like one of those made-up girlfriends who live in Niagara Falls.”
“She’s real. I’m seeing her tonight, in fact.” They hadn’t decided their specific plans yet, but Brooke had texted him last night, asking if he was free.
“Wow. You actually, like, beamed when you said that.”
“Get out of here,” Cade scoffed. “I did not.”
“What’s her name?”
Cade opened his mouth to answer, then paused.
Zach grinned. “Worried you can’t say it without beaming again?”
Ridiculous. “Her name is Brooke.” He deliberately maintained a straight face
Zach made a big show of studying him, presumably looking for any sign of this alleged “beaming.” He stepped closer and then, with a comically scrutinizing face, slowly looked at one side of Cade’s face, and then the other.
Cade never cracked once.
Finally, Zach gave up. “Dude, I’m impressed. You need to show me that trick.
”
”
Julie James (Love Irresistibly (FBI/US Attorney, #4))
“
Notice the granite slab you’re passing under with the lettering engraved by GT’s high-precision explosive forming process. They said nobody could work natural stone explosively so we went ahead and did it, thus bearing out the company motto at the head of the list.”
A dropout near Stal moved lips in an audible whisper as he struggled to interpret the obliquely viewed writing.
“Underneath are listed prime examples of human shortsightedness, like you’ll see it’s impossible for men to breathe at over thirty miles an hour, and a bumblebee cannot possibly fly, and interplanetary spaces are God’s quarantine regulations. Try telling the folk at Moonbase Zero about that!”
A few sycophantic laughs. Several places ahead of Stal the Divine Daughter crossed herself at the Name.
“Why is it so sheeting cold in here?” yelled someone up the front near the guide.
“If you were wearing GT’s new Polyclime fabrics, like me, you wouldn’t feel it,” the guide responded promptly.
Drecky plantees, yet. How much of this crowd are GT staff members hired by government order and kept hanging about on makeweight jobs for want of anything better to do?
“But that cues me in to another prime instance of how wrong can you be? Seventy or eighty years back they were saying to build a computer to match a human brain would take a skyscraper to house it and Niagara Falls to cool it. Well, that’s not up on the slab there because they were only half wrong about the cooling bit—in fact Niagara Falls wouldn’t do, it’s not cold enough. We use liquid helium by the ton load. But they were sheeting wrong about the skyscraper. Spread around this balcony and I’ll show you why.”
Passive, the hundred and nine filed around a horseshoe gallery overlooking the chill sliced-egg volume of the vault. Below on the main floor identical-looking men and women came and went, occasionally glancing upwards with an air of incuriosity. Resentful, another score or so of the hundred and nine decided they weren’t going to be interested no matter what.
”
”
John Brunner (Stand on Zanzibar)
“
Fallin"
I got the feelin I'm fallin'
Like a star up in the blue
Like I was fallin' off Niagara
In a paddle boat canoe
I got the feelin' I'm a fallin'
And it's all because of you
Like I was walkin' on a tight rope
Swingin' in the breeze
And though I tried to keep my balance
When I weaken in my knees
I got the feelin' I'm a fallin'
Lover, help me please
Like a leaf falls from the branch
Like a rock from an avalanche
Like the rain on a stormy day
I never thought I'd fall this way
I thought that love could never touch me
Yeah, I was ridin' high
And then my ivory tower toppled
And I tumbled from the sky
I got the feelin' that I'm fallin'
And you're the reason why
Like a life that he married for
Like the walls of Jericho
Like Delilah's holy town
And Samson tore it down
I thought that love could never touch me
Yeah, I was ridin' high
And then my ivory tower toppled
And I tumbled from the sky
I got the feelin' that I'm fallin'
And you're the reason why
And you're the reason why
And you're the reason why
And you're the reason why
”
”
Connie Francis
“
Listen,” I said. “There was once this legendary French acrobat named Charles Blondin, okay? He was famous in the nineteenth century for doing these impossible daredevil tightrope-walking stunts. He strung a rope across Niagara Falls, a thousand feet long. And this crowd gathered and he walked on the tightrope over the falls, hundreds of feet above the gorge, and the crowd went crazy when he got to the other side, clapping and cheering.” Gabe gave me a skeptical glance. “Yeah?” “And then he said to the crowd, ‘Do you believe I can do it again?’ and the crowd cheered, ‘Yes!’ And he did it. And the crowd cheered even louder, and he said, ‘Do you believe I can do it wearing a blindfold?’ And some people in the crowd got scared and shouted, ‘No, don’t do it,’ and others said, ‘Yes! You can do it!’” “And he fell,” Gabe said. I shook my head. “He did it, and the crowd cheered even louder, and he said, ‘Do you believe I can do it on stilts this time?’ And the crowd shouted out, “Yes! You can do it!’ And he did it, and the crowd roared and got even wilder. So then he said, ‘Do you believe I can do it pushing a wheelbarrow along the rope?’ And the crowd roared and cheered and said, ‘Yes!’ And Blondin said, ‘You really think I can? You believe it?’ And they shouted, ‘Yes! Yes, you can!’ ” Despite himself, despite his teenage cynicism, he was actually listening. For a moment he almost seemed to be a child again, listening to a bedtime story. “Is this true?” “Yes.” “He actually did it?” “Yep. He did it. He walked across the tightrope hundreds of feet above the gorge pushing a wheelbarrow, and when he made it to the other side the audience had grown huge and frenzied and totally worked up and they cheered. Really went crazy. So Blondin said, ‘Do you believe I can do it again but this time pushing a man in this wheelbarrow?’ And the crowd roared and said, ‘Yes!’ He said, ‘You really believe I can do it?’ And they all went, ‘Yes, definitely! You can do it! We believe in you! Yes! Absolutely!’ By that time the crowd was completely behind him. They thought he could do anything. So Blondin said, ‘Then who will volunteer to sit in the wheelbarrow?’ And the crowd suddenly went quiet. Totally silent. And he said, ‘What’s the matter? You don’t believe in me anymore?’ And they were silent for a long time before someone from the crowd finally said, ‘Yes, we believe in you. But not that much.’ ” “Huh. Did anyone ever volunteer to get in the wheelbarrow?” I shrugged. “How’d the guy die?” “In bed. Forty years later. From diabetes.
”
”
Joseph Finder (Vanished (Nick Heller, #1))
“
I, Prayer (A Poem of Magnitudes and Vectors)
I, Prayer, know no hour. No season, no day, no month nor year.
No boundary, no barrier or limitation–no blockade hinders Me.
There is no border or wall I cannot breach.
I move inexorably forward; distance holds Me not.
I span the cosmos in the twinkling of an eye.
I knowest it all.
I am the most powerful force in the Universe.
Who then is My equal?
Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook?
None is so fierce that dare stir him up.
Surely, I may’st with but a Word.
Who then is able to stand before Me?
I am the wind, the earth, the metal.
I am the very empyrean vault of Heaven Herself.
I span the known and the unknown beyond
Eternity’s farthest of edges.
And whatsoever under Her wings is Mine.
I am a gentle stream, a fiery wrath
penetrating; wearing down mountains
–the hardest and softest of substances.
I am a trickling brook to fools of want
lost in the deserts of their own desires.
I am a Niagara to those who drink in well.
I seep through cracks. I inundate.
I level forests kindleth unto a single burning bush.
My hand moves the Universe by the mind of a child.
I withhold treasures solid from the secret stores
to they who would wrench at nothing.
I do not sleep or eat, feel not fatigue, nor hunger.
I do not feel the cold, nor rain or wind.
I transcend the heat of the summer’s day.
I commune. I petition. I intercede.
My time is impeccable, by it worlds and destinies turn.
I direct the fates of nations and humankind.
My Words are Iron eternaled—rust not they away.
No castle keep, nor towers of beaten brass,
Nor the dankest of dungeon helks,
Nor adamantine links of hand-wrought steel
Can contain My Spirit–I shan’t turn back.
The race is ne’er to the swift, nor battle to the strong, nor wisdom to the wise or wealth to the rich.
For skills and wisdom, I give to the sons of man.
I take wisdom and skills from the sons of man
for they are ever Mine.
Blessed is the one who finds it so, for in
humility comes honor,
For those who have fallen on the battlefield
for My Name’s sake, I reach down to lift them up
from On High.
I am a rose with the thorn.
I am the clawing Lion that pads her children.
My kisses wound those whom I Love. My kisses are faithful.
No occasion, moment in time, instances, epochs, ages or eras hold Me back.
Time–past, present and future is to Me irrelevant.
I span the millennia. I am the ever-present Now.
My foolishness is wiser than man’s
My weakness stronger than man’s.
I am subtle to the point of formlessness yet formed.
I have no discernible shape, no place into which the
enemy may sink their claws.
I AM wisdom and in length of days knowledge.
Strength is Mine and counsel, and understanding.
I break. I build. By Me, kings rise and fall.
The weak are given strength; wisdom to those who seek and foolishness to both fooler and fool alike.
I lead the crafty through their deceit.
I set straight paths for those who will walk them.
I am He who gives speech and sight - and confounds and removes them.
When I cut, straight and true is my cut.
I strike without fault. I am the razored edge of
high destiny.
I have no enemy, nor friend.
My Zeal and Love and Mercy will not relent
to track you down until you are spent–
even unto the uttermost parts of the earth.
I cull the proud and the weak out of the common herd.
I hunt them in battles royale until their cries unto Heaven are heard.
I break hearts–those whose are harder than granite.
Beyond their atomic cores, I strike their atomic clock.
Elect motions; not one more or less electron beyond electron’s orbit that has been ordained
for you do I give–for His grace is sufficient for thee until He desires enough.
Then I, Prayer, move on as a comet,
Striking out of the black.
I, His sword, kills to give Life.
I am Living and Active, the Divider asunder
of thoughts and intents.
I Am the Light of Eternal Mind.
And I, Prayer,
AM Prayer Almighty.
”
”
Douglas M. Laurent
“
Niagara. Used to be a place honeymooners would go. Maybe you seen some movies. All this water, pouring over the cliffs, a thousand rivers falling down all at once, like somehow there was a mistake in the crust of the earth and someone had taken away half of a lakebed. And the force of it, water against water, so strong you can feel the spray on your cheeks a half a mile distant. I never seen anything like it. See, that’s the kind of thing that just keeps on going, century after century, no matter what us puny humans are doin all a-scurry over the surface of the earth.
”
”
Alden Bell (The Reapers Are the Angels (Reapers, #1))
“
Orang selalu berkata cinta itu buta. Sebenarnya cinta itu penipu yang bijaksana. Sebanyak mana kita mendekati orang yang kita cintai, sebanyak itu juga dia menjauhi kita. Dari cinta sebetulnya kita tidak akan temui apa-apa, melainkan igauan. Atau barangkali calaran-calaran luka sepanjang masa. - Basri
#CintaHariHariRusuhan
”
”
Faisal Tehrani (Cinta Hari-Hari Rusuhan)
“
Here was a creation only God could have designed."
My Heart Belongs in Niagara Falls, NY
”
”
Amanda Barratt
“
The kingdom of poetry"
This is like light.
This is light,
Useful as light, as charming
And enchanting…
…Poetry is certainly
More interesting, more valuable,
and certainly more charming
Than Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, the Atlantic Ocean
And other much admired natural phenomena.
It is useful as light, and as beautiful
It is preposterous
Precisely, making it possible to say
One cannot carry a mountain, but a poem can be carried all over.
It is monstrous.
Pleasantly, for poetry can say, seriously or in play:
“Poetry is better than hope,
“For poetry is patience of hope, and all hope’s vivid pictures,
“Poetry is better than excitement, it is far more delightful,
“Poetry is superior to success, and victory, it endures in serene blessedness
“Long after the most fabulous feat like fireworks has mounted and fallen.
“Poetry is far more powerful and far more enchanting animal
“Than any wood, jungle, ark, circus or zoo possesses.”
For poetry magnifies and heighten reality:
Poetry says of reality that if it is magnificent, it is also stupid:
For poetry is, in a way, omnipotent;
For reality is various and rich, powerful and vivid, but it is not enough
Because it is disorderly and stupid or only at times, and erratically, intelligent:
For without poetry, reality is speechless or incoherent:
It is inchoate, like the pomp and the bombast of thunder:
Its peroration verge upon the ceaseless oration of the ocean:
For reality glows and glory, without poetry,
Fake, like the red operas of sunset
The blue rivers and the windows of morning.
The arts of poetry makes it possible to say: Pandemonium.
For poetry is gay and exact. It says:
“The sunset resembles a bull-fight.
“A sleeping arm feels like soda, fizzing.”
Poetry resurrect the past from the sepulchre, like Lazarus.
It transforms a lion into a sphinx and a girl.
It gives a girl the splendor of Latin.
It transforms the water into wine at each marriage in Cana of Galilee.
For it is true that poetry invented the unicorn, the centaur and the phoenix.
Hence it is true that poetry is an everlasting Ark.
An omnibus containing, bearing and begetting all the mind’s animals.
Whence it is that poetry gave and gives tongue to forgiveness
Therefore a history of poetry would be a history of joy, and a history of the mystery of love
For poetry provides spontaneously, abundantly and freely
The petnames and the diminutives which love requires and without which the mystery of love cannot be mastered.
For poetry is like light, and it is light.
It shines over all, like the blue sky, with the same blue justice.
For poetry is the sunlight of consciousness:
It is also the soil of the fruits of knowledge
In the orchards of being:
It shows us the pleasures of the city.
It lights up the structures of reality.
It is a cause of knowledge and laughter:
It sharpens the whistles of the witty:
It is like morning and the flutes of morning, chanting and enchanted.
It is the birth and the rebirth of the first morning forever.
Poetry is quick as tigers, clever as cats, vivid as oranges,
Nevertheless, it is deathless: it is evergreen and in blossom; long after the Pharaohs and the Caesars have fallen,
It shines and endures more than diamonds,
It is because poetry is the actuality of possibility, it is
The reality of the imagination,
The throat of exaltation,
The processions of possessions,
The motion of meaning and
The meaning of morning and
The mastery of meaning.
The praise of poetry is like the clarity of the heights of the mountains.
The heights of poetry are like the exaltation of the mountains.
It is the consummation of consciousness in the country of the morning!
”
”
Delmore Schwartz
“
But the limp tent sputtering to life transfixes Thaddeus. It morphs and undulates like a lava flow. Forms rise in the fabric only to collapse as the gas reaches toward equilibrium. "It's just the wind," Cheryl says, but he ignores her. His home is turmoil. Right now poison pours over Cheryl's clothes and into Stevie's old room. Next will be the garage, or would that have been first? Ultimately, the order matters little to him. Gas will eventually coil around everything like a cat settling down for a nap: his law books in the attic, the photograph in the family room of Stevie leaning over the rail at Niagara Falls pretending to slip, the Hawaiian leis from a family vacation he can't quite remember, entire drawers full of odd knickknacks and fading memorabilia that attest to a life well lived, tangible proof of memories made even if the memories themselves rise more sluggishly and infrequently than they used to—all of it, ultimately, choking on gas. But how many of the termites?
”
”
Dan Lopez (The Show House)
“
From My Heart Belongs in Niagara Falls, New York; Adele's Journey:
Drew speaking; Why must there always be sorrow and poverty and heartache? I don’t know, Lord. But I’ll do all I can to trust You. I guess trust is really a choice, like Reverend Darfield says. It’s not always easy, but it’s the path we have to take, regardless of how difficult.
”
”
Amanda Barratt
“
It’s worth it, I thought. Just for this, for a few moments of the almost sublime, even if I had to half talk my way into it, and allow myself the cliché of being impressed by Niagara Falls.
”
”
Adam Haslett (Imagine Me Gone)
“
June 2: Filming of Niagara begins in Buffalo, with Marilyn playing Rose Loomis, the femme fatale murdered by her co-star, Joseph Cotten. Marilyn stays at the General Brock Hotel in Niagara Falls. Joseph Cotten arranges a cocktail party for cast and crew in his hotel room. Marilyn arrives in a terry cloth robe and drinks orange juice. When a guest observes that “Sherry Netherlands Hotel, New York” is embroidered on the robe, Marilyn replies, “Oh, that. I thought I had stolen this robe, until I paid my bill.” Cotten is amused with her and calls her a “pretty clown, beguiling and theatrically disarming.” On this occasion she is charming. On weekends Marilyn goes to New York City to be with DiMaggio.
”
”
Carl Rollyson (Marilyn Monroe Day by Day: A Timeline of People, Places, and Events)
“
Niagara Falls is a magnificent fall of dancing, singing, glowing, and flowing liquid love that exists to reconnect broken hearts.
”
”
Debasish Mridha
“
Niagara Falls Commission, which had been charged with developing a power plant that would harness the force of the falls. The commission had solicited and rejected proposals from around the world, reviewing schemes that ranged from using pneumatic pressure to constructing bizarre devices of
”
”
Sean Patrick (Nikola Tesla: Imagination and the Man That Invented the 20th Century)
“
Ferrets and falls were the theme of the holiday. The falls part did not disappoint. In fact, it more than made up for the disastrous ferret segment. Griff finally understood why Luna insisted they visit Niagara on the return trip. When you stood out on the walkway, gazing at Horseshoe Falls, at the overwhelming power of it, your own thoughts didn’t matter. It was cleansing, in its way. They walked up and down the promenade for hours in the bitter cold. It was too incredible to step away. Eventually they needed to warm up. Griff had booked the hotel. When they entered the room, Luna saw that it had a full view of the falls. Griff ordered room service while Luna stood in front of the window, feeling so happy it started to turn on her. Happiness could easily shift gears into guilt or shame. She was on the precipice of the shift. Griff could see it happening. He stood next to Luna, put his arm around her. “You think it’s just going to be bullshit, a cliché, a tourist trap from hell,” he said. “And yet it’s—” “It’s all that and still the most beautiful thing you’ll ever see,” said Luna. “You want to stay another night?” Griff asked. “Do you?” “I could stay here forever,” he said.
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Lisa Lutz (The Accomplice)
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When Scripture, prayer, worship, ministry become routine, they are dead. When I conclude that I can now cope with the awful love of God, I have headed for the shallows to avoid the deeps. I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a teacup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.
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Brennan Manning (The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out)
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Oh God, Thatcher, I’m dripping wet right now. You’ve soaked me like Niagara Falls. Please, please plunge your sinful tongue inside of me.
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Krista Ritchie (Tangled Like Us (Like Us, #4))
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Well, it may be north, but near Niagara Falls we have a microclimate that lets us produce ice wine, from grapes picked very late when they have shriveled and frozen. They make a wonderful dessert wine. It’s very concentrated, so we sell it in small bottles.
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Martin Walker (The Dark Vineyard (Bruno, Chief of Police #2))
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This trip to Niagara was the family’s second; the first had occurred nine years earlier, when Lincoln returned home from his Massachusetts campaign swing. The majesty of the falls inspired him to meditate on “the indefinite past.” He marveled that when “Columbus first sought this continent—when Christ suffered on the cross—when Moses led Israel through the Red-Sea—nay, even, when Adam first came from the hand of his Maker—then as now, Niagara was roaring here.” Mastodons and mammoths, “now so long dead, that fragments of their monstrous bones, alone testify, that they ever lived, have gazed on Niagara. In that long—long time, never still for a single moment. Never dried, never froze, never slept, never rested.
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Michael Burlingame (Abraham Lincoln: A Life)
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My information on that conference is second-hand, but the key conversation at the conference was quoted as follows: • Malta group: “We haven’t been able to stabilize the diborane-acetylene product. How do you people do it?” • Niagara Falls group: “We couldn’t. Our stuff wasn’t stable either.” • Malta group: “Good grief! Why didn’t you tell us?” • Niagara Falls group: “You never asked.” Instances like this, of course, account for the credibility gap that sometimes exists between chemists and chemical engineers.
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Andrew Dequasie (The Green Flame)
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Keeping a secret from leaking in St. Helena was like trying to stop Niagara Falls with a tampon.
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Marina Adair (Need You for Always (Heroes of St. Helena, #2))
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Those signs start at the top of the state, between the population centers, facing north on the interstate, nestled among all the other billboards that are only designed to reach out-of-state travelers driving south into Florida. So now you got signs for truck stops, motels with free Wi-Fi, citrus stands, fast food, and pictures of car crashes with jagged red lettering to remind people that they might be in pain from something that happened in Cleveland. I mean how does that work? Are this many people suddenly making major medical decisions on vacation? When you’re driving to Niagara Falls, do you see a hundred miles of billboards for joint-replacement surgery, ‘Call 1-800-HIP-OUCH’? . . . Or is it an impulse thing: ‘Let’s see, I’ve been on the road for hours, so I need to stop for gas, use the restroom, get a Big Mac and develop a drug problem.
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Tim Dorsey (The Riptide Ultra-Glide (Serge Storms #16))
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... She was a clock, I could tell by the ticking in her wrist. (I'd secretly slipped my thumb down, to feel her pulse as we danced. It was perfectly steady and wreaking havoc with mine.) I could keep time by you, I thought.
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Elizabeth McCracken (Niagara Falls All Over Again)
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22. Faith in God is like believing a man can walk over Niagara Falls on a tightrope while pushing a wheelbarrow. Trust in God is like getting in the wheelbarrow! To believe God can do something miraculous is one thing; to risk His willingness to do it in your life is another.
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James C. Dobson (Life on the Edge: The Next Generation's Guide to a Meaningful Future)
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1801 - August: Cane Ridge, North America (Barton Stone) Impressed by the revivals in 1800, Barton Stone (1772-1844), a Presbyterian minister, organised similar meetings in 1801 in his area at Cane Ridge, north‑east of Lexington. A huge crowd of around 12,500 attended in over 125 wagons including people from Ohio and Tennessee. At that time Lexington, the largest town in Kentucky, had less than 1,800 citizens. Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist preachers and circuit riders formed preaching teams, speaking simultaneously in different parts of the camp grounds, all aiming for conversions. James Finley, later a Methodist circuit rider, described it: The noise was like the roar of Niagara. The vast sea of human being seemed to be agitated as if by a storm. I counted seven ministers, all preaching at one time, some on stumps, others in wagons and one standing on a tree which had, in falling, lodged against another. ... I stepped up on a log where I could have a better view of the surging sea of humanity. The scene that then presented itself to my mind was indescribable. At one time I saw at least five hundred swept down in a moment as if a battery of a thousand guns had been opened upon them, and then immediately followed shrieks and shouts that rent the very heavens.
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Geoff Waugh (Revival Fires: History's Mighty Revivals)
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Let us take some simple examples: When you were going to be married, you had vivid, realistic pictures in your mind. With your power of imagination, you saw the minister, rabbi, or priest. You heard him pronounce the words, you saw the flowers and the church, and you heard the music. You imagined the ring on your finger, and you traveled through your imagination on your honeymoon to Niagara Falls or Europe. All this was performed by your imagination.
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Joseph Murphy (Believe in Yourself)
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His tremendous struggles caused such a commotion that our position could only be compared to that of men shooting Niagara in a cylinder at night.
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Frank T. Bullen
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And the single action scam was dispensing cash like water gushing down Niagara Falls.
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Joe Bruno
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NIAGARA FALLS. Niagara, thou mighty flood. I've seen thee fall, I've heard thee roar, And on the frightful verges stood, That overhang thy rocky shore. I've sailed o'er surging waves below, And view'd the rainbow's colour'd light, And felt the spray, thy waters throw, When leaping, with resistless might. I've seen the rapids in their course, Like madden'd, living things rush on, With wild, unhesitating force, To where thy mighty chasms yawn. And there to take the awful leap, And fall, with hoarse and sullen roar, Into th' unfathomable deep, Which rolleth on, from shore to shore. Niagara, thou'rt mighty, grand, Thou fill'st human souls with awe, For thee, and for that mighty Hand, Which maketh thee, by nature's law. Thou'rt great, thou mighty, foaming mass Of water, plunging, roaring down, But so are we, yea, we surpass Thee, and we wear a nobler crown. Thy mighty head is crowned with foam, And rainbows wreathe thy robes of blue; Our earthly forms—our present home— Are insignificant to you. But look, thou mighty thund'rer, thou, Tho' puny be our forms to thine, These forms possess, yea, even now, A spark, a ray of life divine. Rush on, O waters! proudly hurl Thyself to roaring depths below, And let the mists of ages curl, And generations come and go. But know, stupendous wonder, know, Thy rocks would crumble, at the nod Of Him, who lets thy waters flow; Thy Maker, but our Friend and God. Thy rocks shall crumble, fall they must; Thy waters, then, shall plunge no more, But we shall rise, e'en from the dust, To live upon another shore.
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Thomas Frederick Young (Canada and Other Poems)
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I saw them before you were born. I came here first in 1900. [Reporter: “Do they look the same?”] Well, the principle seems the same. The water still keeps falling over. 1943, NIAGARA FALLS.
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Winston S. Churchill (Churchill By Himself)
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Underwater, another fourteen stories of liquid driven down and out of sight. You could toss anything you wanted in there—thick logs, buoys, rowboats—and it would disappear and die, reappearing as something less downstream. Death, taxes, and Niagara Falls, his father once told him, were the only three things in this world that were absolutely certain. These
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Michael Clarkson (The Age of Daredevils)
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Bad poetry is almost always bad because it attempts to claim for itself the real power of whatever it describes in ten lines: a sky full of stars, first love, or Niagara Falls.
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Annie Dillard (Living by Fiction)
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On a scale of the Saraha Desert to Niagara Falls … How we are you right now?
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Linda Kage (Consolation Prize (Forbidden Men, #9))
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Yet The Falls exerted its malevolent spell, that never weakened. If you grew up in the Niagara region, you knew. Adolescence was the dangerous time. Most Niagara natives kept their distance from The Falls, so they were immune. But if you drifted too near, even out of intellectual curiosity, you were in danger: beginning to think thoughts unnatural to your personality as if the thunderous waters were thinking for you, depriving you of your will. Clyde
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Joyce Carol Oates (The Falls (P.S.))
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On May 17, 1913, Domingo Rosillo and Agustín Parlá attempted the first international flights to Latin America, by trying to fly their airplanes from Key West to Havana. At 5:10 a.m., Rosillo departed from Key West and flew for 2 hours, 30 minutes and 40 seconds before running out of gas. He had planned to land at the airfield at Camp Columbia in Havana, but instead managed to squeak in at the camp’s shooting range, thereby still satisfactorily completing the flight.
Parlá left Key West at 5:57 in the morning. Just four minutes later, at 6:01 a.m., he had to carefully turn back to the airstrip he had just left, since the aircraft didn’t properly respond to his controls. Parlá said, “It would not let me compensate for the wind that blew.” When he returned to Key West, he discovered that two of the tension wires to the aircraft’s elevators were broken.
Two days later, Parlá tried again and left Key West, carrying the Cuban Flag his father had received from José Martí. This time he fell short and had to land at sea off the Cuban coast near Mariel. Sailors from the Cuban Navy rescued him from his seaplane.
Being adventuresome, while attending the Curtiss School of Aviation in 1916, Parlá flew over Niagara Falls. In his honor, the Cuban flag was hoisted and the Cuban national anthem was played. The famous Cuban composer, pianist, and bandleader, Antonio M. Romeu, composed a song in his honor named “Parlá over the Niagara” and Agustín Parlá became known as the “Father of Cuban Aviation.
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Hank Bracker
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Kate has been in here every few days for the past eighteen months or so. Helped him behind the counter on many occasions. They flirt shamelessly with each other, and threaten to leave me and Amelia behind so that they can run off to Niagara Falls together. Jess has asked about Kate each time I’ve stopped by the past few days.
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Rysa Walker (Splinter (The Chronos Files))
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OF THE STOLEN MUSIC THE MYSTERY AT THE BALL PARK THE CHOCOLATE SUNDAE MYSTERY THE MYSTERY OF THE HOT AIR BALLOON THE MYSTERY BOOKSTORE THE PILGRIM VILLAGE MYSTERY THE MYSTERY OF THE STOLEN BOXCAR THE MYSTERY IN THE CAVE THE MYSTERY ON THE TRAIN THE MYSTERY AT THE FAIR THE MYSTERY OF THE LOST MINE THE GUIDE DOG MYSTERY THE HURRICANE MYSTERY THE PET SHOP MYSTERY THE MYSTERY OF THE SECRET MESSAGE THE FIREHOUSE MYSTERY THE MYSTERY IN SAN FRANCISCO THE NIAGARA FALLS MYSTERY THE MYSTERY AT THE ALAMO THE OUTER SPACE MYSTERY THE SOCCER MYSTERY THE MYSTERY IN THE OLD ATTIC THE GROWLING BEAR MYSTERY T
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Gertrude Chandler Warner (Houseboat Mystery (The Boxcar Children Mysteries))
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Let's get this guy Jason Harris who is a scammer and fake. I am Jason S Harris owner of Take A Chance and Reven Devil but this hacker-fake coward has entered incorrect information about his Alias name I cannot properly enter my full profile. He says I'm from Niagara Falls but I am not, I am from Toronto Ontario and have government ID to prove it.
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Jason S Harris
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Aldo isn’t hurt?” “No. He’s fine. He’ll be pissed he wasn’t here when you woke up, but ending this was important to him. He had to be the one.” “We had a fight.” Roman sat back, nodding. “I know. He told me. He blames himself, and if it’s any consolation, he was coming to see you before this happened. He hated fighting with you.” A tear slipped down my cheek. “I have to go.” “Go where?” he asked, leaning forward. “You’re in no condition to get out of bed.” “I have to leave Niagara Falls.” He looked shocked. “Why?” I had no idea why I was confiding in Roman. It had to be the meds messing with my head. “I love him, and he’ll never love me back. I can’t stay and watch him be with someone else.” I winced as a fresh wave of pain washed over me. He leaned to the right and tapped a button on the machine that was beeping. “That will help. Probably knock you out soon too.” He hunched forward. “So, listen to me carefully. I have never seen Aldo care for someone the way he cares for you. You make him different. Better. He laughs and smiles. The same way Luca does because of Justine. He might not be able to say the words yet, but he feels them, Violet. Give him time. What happened tonight has shaken him. He was a man possessed when I got here. Terrified of losing you. You mean more than you know. More than he knows. Don’t walk away from him. I swear it will end him.” I stared at him, the medicines doing their job and easing the pain, but clouding my train of thought. Was Roman saying Aldo was in love with me? “Yes, he is,” he responded as if I had asked him that out loud. Maybe I had.
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Melanie Moreland (Aldo (Men of the Falls #1))