Always Specific

Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart's revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific.
--Jonathan Franzen

Hero

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.
--Umberto Eco

Language

All language is but a poor translation.
--Franz Kafka

Your One

Tell me what is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
--Mary Oliver

Be Present

Simply to be present is to comfort.
--Judith April

Triumph

In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over Communism; in this country, capitalism over democracy.
--Fran Lebowitz

Journey

You don't have the answers. Neither do I. That's the point. That's why you start doing things you're not sure why you're doing: because your time has come to set out on a journey.
--Cary Tennis

Remembered

But wouldn't we all want to be remembered for making countless people's days brighter?
--Joe Posnanski (column about Harmon Killebrew, May 16, 2011)

Easy

Beware the easy griefs that fool and fuel nothing.
--Gwendolyn Brooks

More Alike

The three religions of the book--Judaism, Christianity and Islam--can all be divided between Fundamentalists (the letter of the law) and Progressives (the spirit of the law). In that sense, Jews, Christians and Muslims are more alike on either side of that divide.
--Pam Wings

True

The true New Yorker is someone with the secret belief that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.
--John Updike

What The...

There are days when only an "Excuse me, what the fuck?" will do.
--Stephanie Zacharek

Contact

It is important always to remember that virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact with people at every level of our lives.
--Pope Benedict XVI

True Collective

A.A., uniquely among organizations in America, has successfully resisted the usual commercialization that is the fate of every other successful movement in America. A.A. works in part because nobody makes money on it. It is the true collective.
--Jack Hanover

As Far As I

She plays an astrophysicist named Jane, and, as far as I could tell, does all her own astrophysics without the aid of a double.
--A. O. Scott

Famous

When famous people go to sleep at night, it's us they dream of...The famous ones--they're the real people. We're the creatures of their dreams.
--John Guare

Create It

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
--Franz Kafka

Guaranteed

Whenever America uses violence in a way that makes its citizens cheer, beam with nationalistic pride, and rally around their leader, more violence is typically guaranteed.
--Glenn Greenwald

Collapse

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling--their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
--Arundhati Roy