#liter

When I listen to you, God when I do what you ask me to, I am like a tree planted by a river, a tree full of fruit with leaves that are always green. Ps 1(paraphrased) ↗

— Marie-Helene Delval

#inspirational #prayer #inspirational

I am a bomb but I mean you no harm. That I still am here to tell this, is a miracle: I was deployed on May 15, 1957, but I didn’t go off because a British nuclear engineer, a young father, developed qualms after seeing pictures of native children marveling at the mushrooms in the sky, and sabotaged me. I could see why during that short drop before I hit the atoll: the island looks like god’s knuckles in a bathtub, the ocean is beautifully translucent, corals glow underwater, a dead city of bones, allowing a glimpse into a white netherworld. I met the water and fell a few feet into a chromatic cemetery. The longer I lie here, listening to my still functioning electronic innards, the more afraid I grow of detonating after all this time. I don’t share your gods, but I pray I shall die a silent death. ↗

— Marcus Speh

#humanity #inspirational #literary #pacific-islands #speh

I've been thinking about all the things I might have done differently. All the choices I didn't make. All the decisions that made and unmade me, all the actions and inactions I did or didn't take. With the shades drawn and the garbage overflowing, I've been thinking about all the bold steps I never took, all the gut instincts I didn't listen to, all the people I let down. I've been thinking about the cruel mathematics of my life, looking at my sums and wishing I'd shown my work. ↗

— Jonathan Evison

#literary #inspirational

As long as people believe in the written word and a good story.. They will believe in me. ↗

— Solange nicole

#literary-criticism #inspirational

Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off. ↗

— W.H. Auden

#intelligence

I guess the two Manifesto, Communicating Vessels, Mad Love, and some of his poetry made a significant mark on me but as far as bringing a literary element into the music I see it as a much broader assimilation. ↗

— Trevor Dunn

#assimilation #bringing #broader #communicating #element

All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science. But that passion is unrequited. Surveys suggest that some 95 percent of Americans are “scientifically illiterate.” That’s just the same fraction as those African Americans, almost all of them slaves, who were illiterate just before the Civil War—when severe penalties were in force for anyone who taught a slave to read. Of course there’s a degree of arbitrariness about any determination of illiteracy, whether it applies to language or to science. But anything like 95 percent illiteracy is extremely serious. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#literacy #science #social-conditions #education

That's the thing about the script, is that how these people were affected by their decision, and how it could ultimately kill them, and I mean literally. ↗

— Kevin Williamson

#affected #could #decision #how #i

Nobody is capable of of free speech unless he knows how to use language, and such knowledge is not a gift: it has to learned and worked at. [p.93] ↗

— Northrop Frye

#literary-criticism #education

Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for us to endure nobly. ↗

— Matthew Quick

#feelings-of-weakness #happiness #life #literature #movie