Connect

The only way out of domination is love, and the only way into really being able to connect with others, and to know how to be, is to be participating in every aspect of your life as a sacrament of love.
--bell hooks

Beg

If there is a god, he will have to beg for my forgiveness.
--Anonymous, carved into the wall of cell block 20 at Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp

Monkeys

We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns.
--Tom Waits

Here

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
--William Shakespeare

Refusal

Quixotic pessimism is thus marked by a refusal to let the odds of my success determine the value of my fight.
--Mariana Alessandri

Isn't Scary

Heck, I won't even use the self check out at the library. It isn't scary. It's just not the way I am interesting in living.
--Allison Sausalito

Forgive

Maybe the word forgive points in the wrong direction, since it's something you mostly give yourself, not anyone else: you put down the ugly weight of old suffering, untie yourself from the awful, and walk away from it.
--Rebecca Solnit

Mouth

That's the trouble with words, you never know whose mouth they have been in.
--Randeep Ramesh

So Sweet

That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.
--Emily Dickinson

America

Every serious work of art about America has the same theme: America is a great idea, the reality leaves something to be desired.
--Frank Bidart

Divide

We humans love to compartmentalize things. We love to divide our education system into separate subjects, just as we love to divide our shared planet into nations, and our books into separate genres. But the reality is that things are blurred.
--Matt Haig

Hard

Put your ear down next to your soul and listen hard.
--Anne Sexton

One Can't

One can't love and do nothing.
--Graham Greene

An Evil

There is always a certain glamour about the idea of a nation rising up to crush an evil simply because it is wrong. Unfortunately, this can seldom be realized in real life; for the very existence of the evil usually argues a moral weakness in the very place where extraordinary moral strength is called for.
--W.E.B. Du Bois

Sides

To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.
--Robert M. Pirsig

Ignorance

Ignorantia juris non excusat.
(Ignorance of the law excuses not.)
--Latin maxim

Expensive

Honesty is a very expensive gift. Do not expect it from cheap people.
--Warren Buffett

Exhausted

People I talk to nowadays, black and white alike, feel like they're living through a national psychotic break, and they're exhausted by it.
--Joy Reid

Democracy

Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing.
--Archibald MacLeish

Short, Precious

We are going to die, as is everyone we adore--I hate this! But the question is, how do we live as women and men in the face of this? Why do we let ourselves be so distracted and obsessed by meaningless bullshit in light of having one short, precious life?
--Anne Lamott

Arsonist

"Conservative" is not the right term for either of them anymore: that word has at least an implication of care and the preservation of legacy. "Arsonist" feels like the more accurate term.
--Zadie Smith

A Place

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.
--Marcus Aurelius