#is

Sometimes when you're trying to do a record too close to home, you can get really distracted. ↗

— Norah Jones

#distracted #get #home #really #record

There is a strange emptiness to life without myths. I am African American — by which I mean, a descendant of slaves, rather than a descendant of immigrants who came here willingly and with lives more or less intact. My ancestors were the unwilling, unintact ones: children torn from parents, parents torn from elders, people torn from roots, stories torn from language. Past a certain point, my family’s history just… stops. As if there was nothing there. I could do what others have done, and attempt to reconstruct this lost past. I could research genealogy and genetics, search for the traces of myself in moldering old sale documents and scanned images on microfiche. I could also do what members of other cultures lacking myths have done: steal. A little BS about Atlantis here, some appropriation of other cultures’ intellectual property there, and bam! Instant historically-justified superiority. Worked great for the Nazis, new and old. Even today, white people in my neck of the woods call themselves “Caucasian”, most of them little realizing that the term and its history are as constructed as anything sold in the fantasy section of a bookstore. These are proven strategies, but I have no interest in them. They’ll tell me where I came from, but not what I really want to know: where I’m going. To figure that out, I make shit up. ↗

— N.K. Jemisin

#constructs #making-stuff-up #myth #personal-history #family

That was one of the things that interested me about the character. He doesn't want to be a hero, and has no real desire to save the earth or discover aliens. He's sniffing around looking to see what will fall in his lap. ↗

— Orlando Jones

#around #character #desire #discover #earth

As a musician, I've accomplished what I hoped to accomplish. ↗

— Rickie Lee Jones

#accomplished #hoped #i #musician

I was raised by a strong mother and I never felt like I had to be a role, you know, I was just me, who I am. ↗

— Rickie Lee Jones

#felt #had #i #i am #i was raised

Don't use tap water to make your colloidal silver. Use pure distilled water only. And don't take very large dosages or strong concentrations for long periods of time. ↗

— Stan Jones

#distilled #dosages #large #long #long periods

I mean, on the television, I've got to continue to be Star Jones Reynolds. And I enjoy that. But in my real life, I'm a wife now. You can't really be bossy when you're married. ↗

— Star Jones

#continue #enjoy #got #i #jones

I was in the middle of a crossroads, which is a nice way of saying crisis, physically, emotionally and spiritually. You know the physical part. We just talked about it. ↗

— Star Jones

#crisis #crossroads #emotionally #i #just

Every age sort of has its own history. History is really the stories that we retell to ourselves to make them relevant to every age. So we put our own values and our own spin on it. ↗

— Terry Jones

#every #history #make #our #ourselves

From 1918 on, trade unionists were to express from the platforms of their congresses the workers' desire for peace through a rational organization of the world. ↗

— Leon Jouhaux

#desire #express #organization #peace #platforms