#w

So, all during the '90s and, you know, for the first half of this decade, we had opportunities to get evacuation plans in place, better communications in place. ↗

— Michael Chertoff

#communications #decade #during #evacuation #first

J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus The Lord of the Rings to explore the forces of creation as he saw them: God and country, race and class, journeying to war and returning home. I’ve heard it said that he was trying to create some kind of original British mythology using the structure of other cultures’ myths, and maybe that was true. I don’t know. What I see, when I read his work, is a man trying desperately to dream. Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don’t have enough myths of our own, we’ll latch onto those of others — even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves. Tolkien understood this, I think because it’s human nature. Call it the superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast, or crushingly tight. ↗

— N.K. Jemisin

#epic-fantasy #tolkien #writing #dreams

The second is there are some communities that we thought originally would take mobile homes that have decided they don't want them. And we're not going to cram mobile homes down the throats of communities in Louisiana and the Gulf - and other parts of the Gulf Coast. ↗

— Michael Chertoff

#communities #cram #decided #down #going

We may have to force people to get together in terms of picking a particular type of technology and starting to build to that technology, as opposed to everybody exercising their right to buy their own system, you know, at will. ↗

— Michael Chertoff

#buy #everybody #exercising #force #get

We've certainly learned a lot of lessons from Katrina, from Rita. Rita was better than Katrina. We're doing a better job planning. We're closer - more closely aligned with the Department of Defense. These things would be positive things if we were to have another attack. ↗

— Michael Chertoff

#another #attack #better #better job #certainly

We're five people, five individuals who came together to create something, to make music and to complete each other musically, to form a perfect circle. ↗

— Maynard James Keenan

#circle #complete #create #each #five

First and foremost, I consider myself a songwriter. ↗

— Kenny Chesney

#first #foremost #i #myself #songwriter

I was standing onstage last year, and I felt like I wanted to be somewhere else. No matter how many people were out there, it all just felt like a blank sheet of paper. ↗

— Kenny Chesney

#else #felt #how #i #just

I work hard but I play hard. ↗

— Kenny Chesney

#i #play #work #work hard

I've always been drawn to the ocean. ↗

— Kenny Chesney

#been #drawn #i #ocean