#to

How shall I speak of Doom, and ours in special, But as of something altogether common? ↗

— Donald Justice

#common #doom #how #i #ours

If he could sleep on it. He would make his bed with white sheets And disappear into the white, Like a man diving, If he could be certain That the light Would not keep him awake, The light that reaches To the bottom. ↗

— Donald Justice

#bed #bottom #certain #could #disappear

And thus to my final and most melancholy point: a great number of Stalin's enforcers and henchmen in Eastern Europe were Jews. And not just a great number, but a great proportion. The proportion was especially high in the secret police and 'security' departments, where no doubt revenge played its own part, as did the ideological attachment to Communism that was so strong among internationally minded Jews at that period: Jews like David Szmulevski. There were reasonably strong indigenous Communist forces in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, but in Hungary and Poland the Communists were a small minority and knew it, were dependent on the Red Army and aware of the fact, and were disproportionately Jewish and widely detested for that reason. Many of the penal labor camps constructed by the Nazis were later used as holding pens for German deportees by the Communists, and some of those who ran these grim places were Jewish. Nobody from Israel or the diaspora who goes to the East of Europe on a family-history fishing-trip should be unaware of the chance that they will find out both much less and much more than the package-tour had promised them. It's easy to say, with Albert Camus, 'neither victims nor executioners.' But real history is more pitiless even than you had been told it was. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#camus #communism #czechoslovakia #david-szmulevski #east-germany

One globe seemed all too small for the youthful Alexander. ↗

— Juvenal

#globe #seemed #small #too #youthful

I used to have some fish, some nice little carp, but they got too big for the tank. I don't have any pets now. ↗

— Tom Felton

#big #carp #fish #got #i

As you grow older and young people come up to you with their history books, you realize that some of the things I have been able to do have been impactful. But for me, I try to keep everything in perspective and stay humble. ↗

— Jackie Joyner-Kersee

#been #books #come #everything #grow

Ask any athlete: We all hurt at times. I'm asking my body to go through seven different tasks. To ask it not to ache would be too much. ↗

— Jackie Joyner-Kersee

#ask #asking #athlete #body #different

What commercialism has brought into Linux has been the incentive to make a good distribution that is easy to use and that has all the packaging issues worked out. ↗

— Linus Torvalds

#brought #commercialism #distribution #easy #good

I set my sights on making an Olympic team, not realizing how tough it was going to be. ↗

— Jackie Joyner-Kersee

#how #i #making #olympic #olympic team

The entire affective world, constructed over the years with utmost difficulty, collapses with a kick in the father's genitals, a smack on the mother's face, an obscene insult to the sister, or the sexual violation of a daughter. Suddenly an entire culture based on familial love, devotion, the capacity for mutual sacrifice collapses. Nothing is possible in such a universe, and that is precisely what the torturers know… From my cell, I'd hear the whispered voices of children trying to learn what was happening to their parents, and I'd witness the efforts of daughters to win over a guard, to arouse a feeling of tenderness in him, to incite the hope of some lovely future relationship between them in order to learn what was happening to her mother, to get an orange sent to her, to get permission for her to go to the bathroom. ↗

— Jacobo Timerman

#esma #sadism #sexual-abuse #torture #family