#rican

The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat, Sir, let it come! ↗

— Patrick Henry

#elections

Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it." [Q&A with Larry McCaffery, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1993, Vol. 13.2] ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#darkness #fiction #human #humanity #mankind

I had the notion that I wanted to write the great dirty American novel, so I went to Roanoke College on the GI Bill. ↗

— Tom T. Hall

#bill #college #dirty #great #had

This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the right of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America ↗

— Paul Robeson

#america #equal-rights #fighting #injustice #race

He carried her over the Owl Creek mountain range without stopping,” he said, quietly this time. “He carried her until he reached one of the hot springs around what became Chapin, and then he walked into the water with her and held her there for three days. He had about given up when she opened her eyes and whispered his name. ↗

— Laura Anderson Kurk

#glass-girl #henry-whitmire #laura-anderson-kurk #love #meg-kavanagh

Country music is the poetry of the American spirit. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#country-music #poetry #spirit #experience

There are some of us who have to pay for our faith every step of the way and who have to work out dramatically what it would be like without it and if being without it would be ultimately possible or not. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#paul-elie #faith

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all. ↗

— Benjamin C. Bradlee

#american politics #bodies #clout #had #history

Never Let anyone tell you that you can't; show them that you can. ↗

— Gloria Mallette

#books #family #marriage #psychological-suspense #family

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