#l

Merrill Krause - "My brothers have scared off just about any fellow who showed interest in getting to know me." Granny Lassiter - "Well, if a man can't stand up to those brothers of yours, you needn't even consider him. A man ought to be able to hold his own with his wife's family. ↗

— Tracie Peterson

#brothers #funny #humor #family

Just then, Larry recalled a conversation he had with a friend in Ireland, about the situation in Nepal between the King and the Maoists. The friend was sided with the Maoists, which was more or less his political leanings in any case, and stated that at least they were trying to help the people. So Larry had remarked upon the rising death rate, and how the Maoists are just as brutal as the security forces, yet the friend simply shrugged and said you have to expect some collateral damage in a revolution. Oh how he hates that phrase, as that makes it sound like the people’s lives are meant to be expendable, something that a person’s life should never be. Of course, it is very easy to disregard people you have never met, and who are certainly not your friends or family members. After all, in the eyes of an outsider, who is in no danger whatsoever, the people caught up in the situation are nothing more than simply statistics. ↗

— Andrew James Pritchard

#maoists #people-s-lives #politics #revolt #death

What distinguishes genocide from murder, and even from acts of political murder that claim as many victims, is the intent. The crime is wanting to make a people extinct. The idea is the crime. ↗

— Philip Gourevitch

#family

To have my life accepted as just another ordinary life, to have it viewed as common and regular, was a singular moment. ↗

— Katherine A. Briccetti

#families #lesbian-partners #sperm-donors #family

Peter." The fine hair along her spine rising, Vicky could feel the power in a name. This is who you are, it said. Come back to us. ↗

— Tanya Huff

#identity #power-in-a-name #who-you-are #family

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal and then leap in the dark to our success. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#inspiration #inspirational

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent. ↗

— Martin Luther King Jr.

#democracy #freedom #marxism #radicalism #rebellion

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars, and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance." The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights like this, I held her in my arms. I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky. She loved me, sometimes I loved her. How could I not have loved her large, still eyes? I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her. To hear the immense night, more immense without her. And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass. What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her. The night is full of stars and she is not with me. That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away. My soul is lost without her. As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her. My heart searches for her and she is not with me. The same night that whitens the same trees. We, we who were, we are the same no longer. I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her. My voice searched the wind to touch her ear. Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once belonged to my kisses. Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes. I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her. Love is so short and oblivion so long. Because on nights like this I held her in my arms, my soul is lost without her. Although this may be the last pain she causes me, and this may be the last poem I write for her. ↗

— Pablo Neruda

#sadness #love

Was that really all there was to love? Darkness undone, a hand on your forehead. In the meantime all you could do was wait--tired, alone, the minutes as long or short as a lifetime--for the face in your dream to appear. ↗

— Eric Puchner

#love #sickness #dreams

If we all knew each morning that there was going to be another morning, and on and on and on, we's tend not to notice the sunrise, or hear the birds, or the waves rolling into the shore. We'd tend not to treasure our time with the people we love. Simply the awareness that our mortal lives had a beginning and will have an end enhances the quality of our living. Perhaps it's even more intense when we know that the termination of the body is near, but it shouldn't be. ↗

— Madeleine L'Engle

#death #life #mortality #death