Quote of the Day: “Harm”
“We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” —George Orwell
(via my friend James)
Thought of the Day: “Giving Thanks”
“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.”
Thought of the Day: “Happy Endings”
“What the American public wants is tragedy with a happy ending” —William Dean Howells
Thought of the Day: “See, the Thing About the Jews…”
“Anyone who is messhugge enough to call himself a Jew, is a Jew” —David Ben-Gurion (via this book)
Thought of the Day: “Useless Men”
The last post put me in a foul mood.
“In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.” —John Adams
(via The Writer’s Almanac)
Thought for Today: Letting Go
“The world is won by those who let it go! But when you try and try, The world is then beyond winning.” –Lao Tzu
Thought of the Day: “Minds”
“The empires of the future will be empires of the mind.” —Winston Churchill (via Business Pundit)
Thought of the Day: “Literature as Utopia”
“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importance compared with their “large loves and heavenly charities.” – Helen Keller
(in honor of the opening of Litquake)
Thought of the Day: “Fiction and its Function”
“Fiction is best as the bearer of bad news” —John Updike
Thought of the Day: “Two Kinds of People”
“The world is divided into two kinds of people. The people who divide the world into two kinds of people and the people who don’t.”
—Gloria Steinem (who at 72, still looks and sounds incredible).