More Good Quotes 2017

"I am always looking for fresh language for the important ordinary things we do."
--Krista Tippett, in an interview with Joan Halifax

"Normal, in our house, is like a blanket too short for a bed--sometimes it covers you just fine, and other times it leaves you cold and shaking; and worst of all, you never know which of the two it's going to be."
--Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

"Perhaps that you're searching far too much?  That in all that searching, you don't find the time for finding."
--Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

"I have never been compelled by Ellaria or the Sand Snakes—none of the actresses can maneuver around Game of Thrones’s script, which requires women—Lena Headey, Sophie Turner, and Maisie Williams are all brilliant at this—to get most of their character development done with their eyebrows rather than their words."
--Aaron Bady reviewing "Game of Thrones" at Los Angeles Review of Books

"Critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naïveté."
--Maria Popov, interview with Krista Tippett

"Radio Journalist Jacque Ooko loved politics, and she loved Kenya. She always told me that she dreamed of a home country that shed tribalism and punished corruption. Like all good journalists she was a skeptic, but not once did I ever see that erase her hope."
--Tribute by Eyder Peralta, npr.org

Dickens on Invasive Hunger

Upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afreshed, was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of this scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomies in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fired with some reluctant drops of oil.

From Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, Chapter 5:  A Wine Shop

Downed Pilot Savior--World War Z by Brooks

In the novel, World War Z: An Oral History of The Zombie War, Max Brook uses a documentary format to tell some great stories about the fictional Zombie War.  Survivors they their stories.

One very interesting story was from a Air Force Pilot, Colonel Christina Eliopolis.  A mid-air accident lead to her ejecting and parachuting into a zombie-infested area.

To support downed pilots, a network of Skywatchers existed.  Over the course of two days, Col. Eliopolis was supported by a Skywatcher in a nearby cabin with the call sign "Mets Fan."

Interviewer:  They never found your Skywatcher.

Eliopolis:  No

Or her cabin.

No

And the Government never had a record of a Skywatcher with the call sign Mets Fan.

You've done your homework.

I . . . 

You probably also read my after-action report, right?

Yes.

And the psych evaluation they racked on after my official debriefing.

Well . . . 

Well, it's bullshit, okay?  So what if everything she told me was information I'd already been briefed on; so what if the psych team "claim" my radio was knocked out before I hit the mud, and so the f*** what if Mets is short for Metis, the mother of Athena, the Greek goddess with the stormy gray eyes.  Oh, the shrinks had a ball with that one, especially when they "discovered" that my mother grew up in the Bronx.

And that remark she made about your mother?

Who the hell doesn't have mother issues?  If Mets was a pilot, she was a natural gambler.  She knew she had a good chance of scoring a hit with "mom."  She knew the risk, took her shot . . . Look, if they thought I'd cracked up, why didn't I lose my flight status?  Why did they let me have this job? Mybe she wasn't a pilot herself, maybe she was married to one, maybe she'd wanted to be one but never made it as far as I did.  Maybe she was just a scared, lonely voice that did what she could to help another scared lonely voice from ending up like her.  Who cares who she was, or is?  She was there when I needed her, and for the rest of my life, she'll always be with me.


Max Brook, World War Z: An Oral History of The Zombie War (New York, Broadway Paperbacks, 2006),pp 227-230.