Quotes Versus Single Quotes

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recalls that the stories she wrote as a seven year old in Nigeria were based on the kinds of stories she read, featuring characters who were white and blue eyed, they played in the snow, the ate apples. According to Adichie, this wasn´t just about experimentation or an active imagination, because all I had read were books in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify. We learn so many things from reading stories, including the conventions of stories such as good versus evil, confronting our fears and that danger often lurks in the woods. The problem is that, when one of these conventions is that children in stories are white, english and middle class, than you may come to learn that your own life does not qualify as subject material. Adichie describes this as "The danger of a single story" a danger that extends to stories which, whilst appearing to be diverse, rely on stereotypes and thus limit the imagination

Children who find a single important life in the ordinary, unimportant, and unheroic are less likely to succumb to the human fallacy of Us versus Them [Betty Levin, "Polars Bears and Lemmings"].

Imposing trade, economic, or other kinds of sanctions on an intransigent or authoritarian regime, whose head lives in an ivory tower, is not desirable as an effective weapon, because sanctions directly hit the common people, pushing more of them to the edge. Dear leaders, we must stop warmongering and give peace plenty of chances. Killing fellow humans is disgusting. Reach out to your so-called enemies and engage them in discourses to foster reconciliation. The world counts on your statesmanship. It is a well-established fact that a single leader can change the mood the world over. Leaders can make a mess, create, and fuel tension, or bring peace and order. The world does not need aggressive, combative leaders; it is starving for skilled diplomats and peacemakers.” Excerpts from Chapter 10, “War: A Senseless Option Versus Sensible Alternatives” of AWAY FROM THE MADDING WORLD: A Thoughtful Analysis of the Causes of Human Woes, and Remedial Suggestions If our political leaders had offered Vladimir Putin some concessions, instead of provoking, humiliating, and infuriating him, the current brutal Ukraine war could have been averted. End this conflict thru compromises. Everyone is suffering – physically, emotionally, or economically. Let us not forget several of the players in this suicidal game are nuclear powers, and Putin’s nuclear threats must be taken seriously. I’m afraid another Hitler is in the making!

So it is, while Southerners form societies to preserve the perfection of black-eyed peas and argue vehemently the merits of ham bone versus pickled pork in red beans and rice, the mention of succotash stirs less excitement in the Yankee heart than finding a dime in a pay-phone coin return. The best New England can offer by way of chauvinistic boasting about the stuff comes from the diary of a Vermont farmer, whose single culinary reference for an entire year was a laconic “This day I din’d upon Succotash” (quoted by Evan Jones in American Food).

You could take seriously a president that quoted T. S. Eliot. But none do, and none ever would. No president would ever dare to say anything intelligent. There would be a revolution on the spot. The rednecks’ heads would explode. America would implode. God forbid that a president should ever say a single clever thing. All that the president is allowed to say is, “God bless America. One nation under God.” … the mantra of morons. Imagine a different America where the president said, “I think, therefore I am. … The unexamined life is not worth living. … God is dead.

Come," he said softly. "Come with me." Come with me. It was almost as if it were something else entirely. Not an invitation to Sunday dinner, but something far more intimate. Something that existed- that involved- only the two of them. Something that involved warmth, heat, and overwhelming maleness versus softness and closeness. Every sense inside her sharpened. Clamored in a way that was entirely new to Fionna. Seeing him thus, so handsome he drove the air from her lungs- why, it made even a single breath a monumental struggle. She longed to give in. To let herself be swept by the man and her urges and dash the consequences.