#tru

The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings. ↗

— Franz Kafka

#beings #between #common #each #exists

No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. ↗

— Muhammad Ali Jinnah

#ever #men #participating #side #struggle

When you're a kid, you have this feeling like you're indestructible. Your mortality doesn't even occur to you. But as time goes by, you realize, 'I better cut this out or that out if I want to continue to exist.' ↗

— David Johansen

#continue #cut #even #exist #feeling

The true and solid peace of nations consists not in equality of arms, but in mutual trust alone. ↗

— Pope John XXIII

#arms #consists #equality #mutual #mutual trust

For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous. Acting upon a personal desire, whispering a hidden longing, revealing your true feelings - all the human actions we think of as essential to a character - had be censored by the self lest they be punished by the state. ↗

— Adam Johnson

#actions #censored #change #character #dangerous

Outside of the Constitution we have no legal authority more than private citizens, and within it we have only so much as that instrument gives us. This broad principle limits all our functions and applies to all subjects. ↗

— Andrew Johnson

#authority #broad #citizens #constitution #functions

Truth for anyone is a very complex thing. For a writer, what you leave out says as much as those things you include. What lies beyond the margin of the text? The photographer frames the shot; writers frame their world. Mrs Winterson objected to what I had put in, but it seemed to me that what I had left out was the story’s silent twin. There are so many things that we can’t say, because they are too painful. We hope that the things we can say will soothe the rest, or appease it in some way. Stories are compensatory. The world is unfair, unjust, unknowable, out of control. When we tell a story we exercise control, but in such a way as to leave a gap, an opening. It is a version, but never the final one. And perhaps we hope that the silences will be heard by someone else, and the story can continue, can be retold. When we write we offer the silence as much as the story. Words are the part of silence that can be spoken. Mrs Winterson would have preferred it if I had been silent. Do you remember the story of Philomel who is raped and then has her tongue ripped out by the rapist so that she can never tell? I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words. I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself. ↗

— Jeanette Winterson

#narrative #silence #storytelling #trauma #truth

If you take a lie and allow your desire for the truth, you'll end up with some truth - not fact, but something that gets you closer to the truth. That's what we want. When we go to a play, we need to be assured that the experience we're having. ↗

— Denis Johnson

#assured #closer #desire #end #experience

In the plays - that's where I go crazy. But my prose has a much lighter touch; it's not trying to thrill with language, just to be more truthful. I'm not concerned with the accuracy of anything. We don't get to the truth of anything with facts. ↗

— Denis Johnson

#anything #concerned #crazy #facts #get

The first casualty when war comes is truth. ↗

— Hiram Johnson

#casualty #comes #first #truth