Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[kennyc]

Someday we'll find it
The Rainbow Connection
The lovers, the dreamers, and me
- Jim Henson
September 24, 1936: Jim Henson was fascinated with puppets from childhood—he was just 18 when he debuted his puppets on local TV. Henson voiced some of his most famous characters: Ernie, Rowlf the Dog, and, of course, Kermit the Frog. He was born 77 years ago today.

Goodreads quote of the day today.

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."

Justice Stewart in his majority opinion in Katz v US

I'm teaching a class on the 4th Amendment right now and it is really jarring to literally watch the erosion of the protection through the timeline of the cases.

Yes it is disturbing. The last 12 years have been especially troubling, not just from the erosion put into law by Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Supreme Court, but also what seems to be growing indifference to it all among the American public.

[kennyc]

"Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window."
— William Faulkner

He said, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's duty is to write about these things. ... The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."


Faulkner was born today, 9/25/1897

[covingtoncat73]

“Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.”
― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

I love this as I do both (sort of-I walk while listening to audiobooks). Fun fact: The real estate agent mother of the protagonist in Love Among the Ruins is inspired by elements of my grandmother and mother. Grammy had no idea and I mentioned it after having to read the book for a college class and she was horrified. I knew the story of Percy writing her an ugly letter after she fired his wife.

[kennyc]

“I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice.”
― Andre Dubus

[covingtoncat73]

“I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth. And if that's sinful, then let me be damned for it!” --Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

[kennyc]

They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.
- Tim O'Brien from The Things They Carried

an incredible short story, very inventive and creative. I can't say I love his other work but man what a story!

[covingtoncat73]

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." - Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens

[covingtoncat73]

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

[kennyc]

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing......Only I will remain."

- Frank Herbert (born today 10/8/1920) Bene Gesserit Litany against fear from Dune.

[covingtoncat73]

“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

[BenG]

I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.

― Groucho Marx, as quoted in Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s Companion (1984) by Leslie Halliwell

[poohbear_nc]

I do what I am told, and tell what is done to me,
Making but one promise safely hedged in the Poet's
Paradox: I shall say "what was never said before."

John Hollander -- Refusing To Tell Tales [Number 1 of Powers of Thirteen]

[kennyc]

"Truth is a matter of the imagination."
— Ursula K. Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle #4))

Her Birthday today. Read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas:

http://harelbarzilai.org/words/omelas.txt

and from a commencement address at Mills College:

"Because you are human beings you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find you're weak where you thought yourself strong. You'll work for possessions and then find they possess you. You will find yourself — as I know you already have — in dark places, alone, and afraid.

"What I hope for you, for all my sisters and daughters, brothers and sons, is that you will be able to live there, in the dark place. To live in the place that our rationalizing culture of success denies, calling it a place of exile, uninhabitable, foreign."

“On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right?

There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.”

Martin Luther King Jr.