People From My Neighbourhood Quotes

Even the smallest hole is enough to send a balloon spiraling to the ground. The falsification of memory is like that. All it takes is one individual who remembers the truth, said Romi, for the whole edifice to collapse.

Humans change over time. I certainly have. I’ve aged and become grumpy.

Before I went to college I read two books. I read a book “Moral Mazes” by Robert Jackall which is a study of how corporations work, and it’s actually a fascinating book, this sociologist, he just picks a corporation at random and just goes and studies the middle managers, not the people who do any of the grunt work and not the big decision makers, just the people whose job is to make sure that things day to day get done, and he shows how even though they’re all perfectly reasonable people, perfectly nice people you’d be happy to meet any of them, all the things that they were accomplishing were just incredibly evil. So you have these people in this average corporation, they were making decisions to blow out their worker’s eardrums in the factory, to poison the lakes and the lagoons nearby, to make these products that are filled with toxic chemicals that poisoned their customers, not because any of them were bad people and wanted to kill their workers and their neighbourhood and their customers, but just because that was the logic of the situation they were in. Another book I read was a book “Understanding Power” by Noam Chomsky which kind of took the same sort of analysis but applied it to wider society which you know we’re in a situation where it may be filled with perfectly good people but they’re in these structures that cause them to continually do evil, to invade countries, to bomb people, to take money from poor people and give it to rich people, to do all these things that are wrong. These books really opened my eyes about just how bad the society we were living in really is.

He tried to convince them that, since he was already in his late forties, their marriage might be more of a tea-drinking relationship.

Since this often seems to come up in discussions of the radical style, I'll mention one other gleaning from my voyages. Beware of Identity politics. I'll rephrase that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying "The Personal Is Political." It began as a sort of reaction to defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that year. I knew in my bones that a truly Bad Idea had entered the discourse. Nor was I wrong. People began to stand up at meetings and orate about how they 'felt', not about what or how they thought, and about who they were rather than what (if anything) they had done or stood for. It became the replication in even less interesting form of the narcissism of the small difference, because each identity group begat its sub-groups and "specificities." This tendency has often been satirised—the overweight caucus of the Cherokee transgender disabled lesbian faction demands a hearing on its needs—but never satirised enough. You have to have seen it really happen. From a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being reactionary; the Clarence Thomas hearings demonstrated this to all but the most dense and boring and selfish, but then, it was the dense and boring and selfish who had always seen identity politics as their big chance. Anyway, what you swiftly realise if you peek over the wall of your own immediate neighbourhood or environment, and travel beyond it, is, first, that we have a huge surplus of people who wouldn't change anything about the way they were born, or the group they were born into, but second that "humanity" (and the idea of change) is best represented by those who have the wit not to think, or should I say feel, in this way.

For the first time in ages, we had a no-gravity alert. ‘This is the Disaster Preparedness Office speaking. We have been informed that there is an eighty per cent chance that a no-gravity event will take place between two and five o’clock this afternoon. Please remain indoors during those hours. If you must go out for reason, please make sure you are well weighted down. This has been a message from the Disaster Preparedness Office.

You mean they’re ghosts?’ ‘Ha-ha-ha. Yep, you could say that, but women are women. They’re still fun to have around, even if they look sort of blurry and don’t have legs.

I, for instance, was triumphant over everyone; everyone, of course, was in dust and ashes, and was forced spontaneously to recognise my superiority, and I forgave them all. I was a poet and a grand gentleman, I fell in love; I came in for countless millions and immediately devoted them to humanity, and at the same time I confessed before all the people my shameful deeds, which, of course, were not merely shameful, but had in them much that was "sublime and beautiful" something in the Manfred style. Everyone would kiss me and weep (what idiots they would be if they did not), while I should go barefoot and hungry preaching new ideas and fighting a victorious Austerlitz against the obscurantists. Then the band would play a march, an amnesty would be declared, the Pope would agree to retire from Rome to Brazil; then there would be a ball for the whole of Italy at the Villa Borghese on the shores of Lake Como, Lake Como being for that purpose transferred to the neighbourhood of Rome; then would come a scene in the bushes, and so on, and so on — as though you did not know all about it?

The consequences of the regulation regarding the use of footpaths were rather serious for me. I always went out for a walk through President Street to an open plain. President Kruger’s house was in this street – a very modest, unostentatious building, without a garden and not distinguishable from other houses in its neighbourhood. The houses of many of the millionaires in Pretoria were far more pretentious, and were surrounded by gardens. Indeed President Kruger’s simplicity was proverbial. Only the presence of a police patrol before the house indicated that it belonged to some official. I nearly always went along the footpaths past this patrol without the slightest hitch or hindrance. Now the man on duty used to be changed from time to time. Once one of these men, without giving me the slightest warning, without even asking me to leave the footpath, pushed and kicked me into the street. I was dismayed. Before I could question him as to his behaviour, Mr Coates, who happened to be passing the spot on horseback, hailed me and said: ‘Gandhi, I have seen everything. I shall gladly be your witness in court if you proceed against the man. I am very sorry you have been so rudely assaulted.’ ‘You need not be sorry,’ I said. ‘What does the poor man know? All coloured people are the same to him. He no doubt treats Negroes just as he has treated me. I have made it a rule not to go to court in respect of any personal grievance. So I do not intend to proceed against him.’ ‘That is just like you,’ said Mr Coates, ‘but do think it over again. We must teach such men a lesson.’ He then spoke to the policeman and reprimanded him. I could not follow their talk, as it was in Dutch, the policeman being a Boer. But he apologized to me, for which there was no need. I had already forgiven him. But I never again went through this street. There would be other men coming in this man’s place and, ignorant of the incident, they would behave likewise. Why should I unnecessarily court another kick? I therefore selected a different walk. The incident deepened my feeling for the Indian settlers. I discussed with them the advisability of making a test case, if it were found necessary to do so, after having seen the British Agent in the matter of these regulations. I thus made an intimate study of the hard condition of the Indian settlers, not only by reading and hearing about it, but by personal experience. I saw that South Africa was no country for a self-respecting Indian, and my mind became more and more occupied with the question as to how this state of things might be improved.

Admiral Tait Primary was a school that people from my home neighbourhood could only dream of. The teachers knew what they were doing and the library had the right books for my daughter to read. It was expensive though, and I dreaded what would happen when she finally reached high school. If I didn't get my life sorted soon, she'd be forced into a former Group B school in the high-density areas: a sure way to flunk and get pregnant before she was nineteen. There were nights where I couldn't sleep worrying that my baby would not have the sort of future she deserved. [74]

Over the last decade, entire neighbourhoods have lost their identity to the ever-growing clothing retail market. Since my first visit to the Marais quarter of Paris in 2003, I have seen the area shift from a charming, off-beat district featuring a mix of up-and-coming designers, traditional ateliers, bookstores and boulangeries to what amounts to an open-air shopping mall dominated by international brands. In the last five years, an antique shop has been replaced by a chic clothing store and the last neighbourhood supermarket transformed into a threestorey flagship of one of the clothing giants. The old quarter is now only faintly visible, like writing on a medieval palimpsest: overhanging the gleaming sign of a sleek clothes shop, on a faded ceramic fascia board, is written ‘BOULANGERIE’. In economically developed countries, people’s motivations for spending money have long since shifted from needs to desires. There’s no denying we need places to live in, food to nourish us and clothes to dress ourselves in, and, while we’re at it, we might as well do these things with a certain degree of refinement to help make life as pleasurable as possible. But when did the clothing industry turn into little more than a cash machine whose main purpose seems to be its own never-ending growth? Just as clothing retail shops are sucking the identity out of entire neighbourhoods, so that the architecture becomes little more than a backdrop for their products, the production of the garments they sell is eating away at the Earth’s resources and the life of the workers who are producing them. Fashion has become the second most polluting industry in the world. And with what result? Our wardrobes are cluttered with so many clothes that the mere sight of them becomes overwhelming, yet at the same time we feel a constant craving for the next purchase that will transform our look.

The Zombie Firetruck by Stewart Stafford Sirens moan, grave duty's flash of red, A mortuary whiff of something dead, Hoses trained with brains they suck, Your friendly neighbourhood zombie firetruck! All that remained of the human fire team, From the zombie pandemic of 2017, Still in their uniforms, their only treasures, Apocalyptic times call for end-time measures. When they reached the fire, people did scoff, They lurched, staggered, body parts fell off, As they wandered around, fire hoses forlorn, These knightly living dead faced a blazing dawn. The chief, hat off to his skeleton crew, In a voice once alive, now croaky like flu: 'To the hydrant, my ghouls, let's save Gothik Town, Or they'll call Ghostbusters, we'll be the clowns!' A glowering inferno, a cremation scene, Zombie firefighters, brave and light green. Through smoke and ash, they gravely stand, Composed decomposition with skeletal hand. Axeman Bony Ed led their clattering charge, Into the smoke, his cadavers did barge, The townsfolk looked on in dead of night, And disbelief, tiredness and mild fright. There soon followed medic Cemetery Phil, Decaying Murphy, Old Salty, and Dead Drill, Slab Stevens, Madly Hyde and Molly Voodoo, Determined to shake their initial hoodoo. A mother and baby backed by burning drapes, Team Macabre charged up the fire escape, Saving both and getting everyone out, Drank Brainer Ade as they leaked like a spout. Somehow, undead teamwork saved the day, No lives were lost as the water sprayed, Doused the flames, cool flatlined heroes, Much zombie kudos, no longer scary zeroes. The crowd cheered, did they ever doubt it? High fives lost hands but new ones sprouted, Frankenstein proud in their flapping flesh, Sure to get medals at the HalloweenFest. With a final groan and a clatter of bones, The zombie firetruck headed back home. Rotten yet proud, in their reanimated way, The risen would fight fires another day. © 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.

Since the shadow belonged to a very old man, it toured easily? So when Kiyoshi started running, it began to gasp and wheeze in the most theatrical way. Then it verbally attacked him. ‘The dammed thing’s always threatening me,’ Kiyoshi grumbled. ‘Accused me of trying to kill it, says it’ll send me to hell.

According to him, the best remedy for loneliness was an medicine made from a combination of antibiotics eye and boiled broccoli. A prescription was required for the antibiotics, but Dr Miranda said he could give me one whenever I needed it.

If you've moved elsewhere, I wrote after getting home from Amren's apartment, you could have at least given me the keys to this house. I keep leaving the door unlocked when I go out. It's getting to be too tempting for the neighbourhood burglars. No response. The letter didn't even vanish. I tried again after breakfast the next day- the morning of Starfall. Cassian says you're sulking in The House of Wind. What un-High-Lord-like behaviour. What of my training. Again, no reply. My guilt and- and whatever else it was- started to shift. I could barely keep from shredding the paper as I wrote my third one after lunch. Is this punishment? Or do people in your Inner Circle not get second chances if they piss you off? You're a hateful coward.