Home

In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.

In baseball the object is to go home!
--George Carlin

Revision

Writers, for the most part, find themselves not in writing but in revision.
--Hilton Als

Marx

I don't think Marxism has a very specific clinical answer to what ails us economically. I think Marx was a much better diagnostician than he was a clinician.
--David Simon

The Present

For progressive people the present is the beginning of the future. For conservative people the present is the end of the past.
--Karl Mannheim

Last Chance

Look, I want to love this world
as though it's the last chance I'm ever going to get
to be alive
and know it.
--Mary Oliver (October)

Examined

Emerson, I am trying to live,
as you said we must, the examined life.
But there are days I wish
there was less in my head to examine,
not to speak of the busy heart.
--Mary Oliver (Percy, Waiting for Ricky)

Reaches Out

do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
--Mary Oliver (The Sun)

For Days

Nobody knows what the soul is.
It comes and goes
like the wind over the water--
sometimes, for days,
you don't think of it.
--Mary Oliver (Maybe)

Miracle

But these are the woods you love,
where the secret name
of every death is life again--a miracle
wrought surely not of mere turning
but of dense and scalding reenactment.
--Mary Oliver (Skunk Cabbage)

Exist

If one says that I am not good enough to live next door to him; if one says that I am not good enough to eat at a lunch counter, or to have a good, decent job, or to go to school with him merely because of my race, he is saying consciously or unconsciously that I do not deserve to exist.
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

School

You're like a little wild thing
that was never sent to school.
Sit, I say, and you jump up.
Come, I say, and you go galloping down the sand
to the nearest dead fish
with which you perfume your sweet neck.
It is summer.
How many summers does a little dog have?

Run, run Percy.
This is our school.
--Mary Oliver

Crime

One can be, indeed one must strive to become, tough and philosophical concerning destruction and death, for this is what most of mankind has been best at since we have heard of man. But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.
--James Baldwin

Moments

As the world is ending, I'm always glad to be entertained for a few moments. The best way to do that is with music.
--Kurt Vonnegut (March 2006)

Freedom

To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something--and it is only such love that can know freedom.
--Jiddu Krishnamurti

Work

I have long been of the opinion that if work were such a splendid thing, the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.
--Bruce Grocott

Compromise

This time, the fight that matters is within the Republican party, and that fight is over whether compromise itself is legitimate.
--James Fallows (September 2013)

Strategy

The strategy of truth is not, because it deals in truth, devoid of strategy. It is not enough, in this war of hoaxes and delusions and perpetuated lies, to be merely honest. It is necessary also to be wise.
--Archibald MacLeish

Hear

You can't steal a gift. Charlie Parker gave the world his music, and if you can hear it, you can have it.
--Dizzy Gillespie

Resaturate

What do you do with an insight like "love is everything"? I wondered aloud. "Is a platitude so deeply felt still just a platitude?"

No, I decided: "A platitude is precisely what is left of a truth after it has been drained of all emotion. To resaturate that dried husk with feeling is to see it again for what it is: the loveliest and most deeply rooted of truths, hidden in plain sight."
--Michael Pollan

Criminals

The American Constitution was not written to protect criminals. It was written to protect the government from becoming criminals.
--Lenny Bruce