#america

Is there some lesson on how to be friends? I think what it means is that central to living a life that is good is a life that's forgiving. We're creatures of contact regardless of whether we kiss or we wound. Still, we must come together. Though it may spell destruction, we still ask for more-- since it beats staying dry but so lonely on shore. So we make ourselves open while knowing full well it's essentially saying "please, come pierce my shell. ↗

— David Rakoff

#friendship #inspirational #npr #the-scorpion-and-the-tortoise #this-american-life

My last girlfriend was Greek,” said the Iceman. “The shit her family ate. You would not believe. Like rice wrapped in leaves. Shit like that. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#family

Patriotism is as much a virtue as justice, and is as necessary for the support of societies as natural affection is for the support of families. ↗

— Benjamin Rush

#family

We have flattered ourselves by inventing proverbs of comparison in matter of blindness,--"blind as a bat," for instance. It would be safe to say that there cannot be found in the animal kingdom a bat, or any other creature, so blind in its own range of circumstance and connection, as the greater majority of human beings are in the bosoms of their families. Tempers strain and recover, hearts break and heal, strength falters, fails, and comes near to giving way altogether, every day, without being noted by the closest lookers-on. ↗

— Helen Hunt Jackson

#blindness #california #family #female-author #female-authors

Early on I set out to write the next Great American Novel, and then later on I set out the silverware and enjoyed my dinner in silence. 
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#dinner #eat #food #great-american-novel #silence

I'd love to work in America, some of my favourite films come from America. ↗

— Cillian Murphy

#come #favourite #films #i #love

The American grips himself, at the very sources of his consciousness, in a grip of care: and then, to so much of the rest of life, is indifferent. Whereas, the European hasn't got so much care in him, so he cares much more for life and living. ↗

— David Herbert Lawrence

#care #cares #consciousness #european #got

Gazing around, looking up at the lofty pinnacles above, which seemed to pierce the sky, looking down upon the world,--it seemed the whole world, so limitless it stretched away at her feet,--feeling that infinite unspeakable sense of nearness to Heaven, remoteness from earth which comes only on mountain heights, she drew in a long breath of delight, and cried: "At last! at last, Alessandro! Here we are safe! This is freedom! This is joy! ↗

— Helen Hunt Jackson

#beauty #california #climbing #female-author #heaven

That's what America's all about, man, if it's about anything. You can choose your own name. ↗

— Michael Ventura

#freedom #names #freedom

The source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think....Let us dare to read, think, speak, write. ↗

— David McCullough

#government #john-adams #liberty #mccullough #politics-freedom-liberty