Posts tagged quotes

I am concerned about many of the political issues being examined in this, and every, presidential campaign. While not a very political person, I do want to be informed and aware of what’s happening in the government that leads the country I live in. I accept that I will disagree with many choices our president, congress and justices will make. That’s all part of the system; you can’t win every argument and other points of view are valid.

If I were to vote on one issue, it would be a woman’s right to choose. That issue is the line in the sand for me. I do not want the government to tell me what I can and cannot do with my body. I don’t want them to dictate what my sisters or the high school student I mentor or my niece can do with their bodies. Period.

The issues goes well beyond the women’s right to choose. It is an example of how our health and medical matters are managed in this country. Reform is needed and women’s health is one item on a long list of issues to be addressed. It also directly relates to education. Anyone who chooses to have a child should be able to have the opportunity to educate them, well. Let’s start with these and other reforms to take care of the people who exist and who need their government to support not merely their existence in this country, but support their right to a successful, healthy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Feel free to disagree with me. That’s fine. I’m not trying to convince you of anything, but merely want to share my personal opinion. It comes from my knowledge and experience of the real world around me. Thankfully many people have said what I am thinking better than I ever could and today I share their words with me.

If I ever choose to have a child I hope she or he will have the full rights any American, any human, deserves to have. This is a two way street - all people are created equal. I will vote for choice and equality on November 6, 2012.

*All images courtesy of 400 Years for Choice.

“It’s no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn’t even speak to each other if they met at a party.” —Nick Hornby

“Women don’t want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think— in a deeper voice.” —Bill Cosby

“Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go its pretty damn good.” —Woody Allen

“Sex is like air; it’s not important unless you aren’t getting any.”                   —John Callahan

“Seems to me the basic conflict between men and women, sexually, is that men are like firemen. To men, sex is an emergency, and no matter what we’re doing we can be ready in two minutes. Women, on the other hand, are like fire. They’re very exciting, but the conditions have to be exactly right for it to occur.” —Jerry Seinfeld

“We talked, I recall, about death or, rather, awakening after death. Whatever it would be like, we thought, our response to it would be ‘Why, of course! Of course it’s like this. How else could it have possibly been.’ We both chuckled at that. I said it would be a sort of coming home, and he agreed.”              

“As I stood there in that suddenly empty room, I was suddenly swept with a tide of absolute knowing that Davy still was. I do not mean that I thought her body might still live; I knew it didn’t. But past faith and belief, I knew quite overwhelmingly that she herself - her soul - still was.”

“We had spoken of ‘moments made eternity’, meaning what are called timeless moments, moments precisely without the pressure of time - moments that might be called, indeed, timeful moments. Of time-free moments. And we have clearly understood that the pressure of time was our nearly inescapable awareness of an approaching terminus - the bell about to ring, the holiday about to end … . Life is pressured by death, the final terminus. When we speak of Now, we seem to mean the timeless: there is no duration. Aware of duration, of terminus, spoils Now.”

“And yet, after all, the clock is not always ticking. Sometimes it stops and then we are happiest. Sometimes - more precisely, some-not-times - we find ‘the still point of the turning world’. All our most lovely moments perhaps are timeless.”

“Time is our natural environment. We live in time as we live in the air we breathe. And we love the air - who has not taken deep breaths of pure, fresh country air, just for the pleasure of it? How strange that we cannot love time. It spoils our loveliest moments. Nothing quite comes up to expectations because of it.” 

“Just as a sculptor might contemplate a block of stone, seeing ever more clearly what was within it and only then beginning to remove the stone hiding that form, so I, contemplating the past, saw every more clearly the essential form, moving in time, hidden within the block of seven thousand days. Art is first a seeing and then a revealing.”

Book cover courtesy of Russell and Duenes and C.S. Lewis photo courtesy of the Into the Wardrobe website.

“If the best part of life is, in fact, emotional, then one wanted the highest, purest emotions: and that meant joy. Joy was the highest. How did one find joy? In books it seemed to be found in love - a great love - though maybe for the saints there was joy in the love of God. He didn’t aspire to that though: he didn’t even believe in God. Certainly not! If he wanted the heights of joy, he must have, if he could find it, a great love. But in the books again, great joy through love seemed always to go hand in hand with frightful pain. Still, he thought, looking out across the meadow, still, the joy would be worth the pain - if, indeed, they went together. If there were a choice - and he suspected there was - a choice between, on the one hand, the heights and the depths and, on the other hand, some sort of safe, cautious middle way, he, for one, here and now chose the heights and the depths.

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Since the years had gone by, and he - had he not had what he chose that day in the meadow? He had had the love. And the joy - what joy it had been! And the sorrow. He had had - was having - all the sorrow there was. And yet, the joy was worth the pain. Even now he reaffirmed that long-past choice.”

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                       “We have a platform from which to risk.”

                    

“But like the snake, I have no arms - metaphorically speaking - to carry these things with. Besides, these things aren’t even mine. None of it is mine. My father is not mine - not in that way. His death and what he’s done are not mine. Nor are my upbringing nor my town nor its tragedies. How can these things be mine? Holding me responsible for keeping hidden this information is ridiculous. I was born into a town and a family and the town and my family happened to me. I owe none of it, I would kill or die to protect those who are part of it, but I do not claim exclusivity. Have it. Take it from me. Do with it what you will. Make it useful.”

“When you’re carrying a person, I just thought of this, when you’re carrying a person, why is it easier to carry them when they hold tight around your neck? Like, you’re supporting their full weight no matter what, correct? But when they grab you around the neck and suddenly it’s easier, like they’re pulling up on you, but either way you’re still carrying them, right? Why should it make a difference that they holding you, too —-“

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers