Debbie Notkin > Debbie's Quotes

“The dead are dead. The great and mighty go their way unchecked. The only hope in the world lies in the people of no account.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“I will tell my tale as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that truth is a matter of the imagination.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“Never be limited by other people's limited imaginations.”
― Mae Jemison

“Someday we will be only spirit, and all one; but here on earth we're made of earth, and sometimes flesh must touch.”
― John M. Ford, The Dragon Waiting

“Everything happens for a reason, but that doesn't mean there's a point.”
― Sue Grafton, C is for Corpse

“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“In order for this to happen, your entire frame of reference will have to change, and you will be forced to surrender many things that you now scarcely know you have.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that his justice will not sleep forever.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.”
― Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear

“It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.”
― William Carlos Williams, Asphodel, That Greeny Flower & Other Love Poems

“Every day was a lesson in how starved the eyes could grow for hue, for reds and golds; how starved the ears could grow for conga drums, for the blare of traffic, for dogs barking, for the baseball games chattering from TVs, for voices talking flatly, conversationally, with rising excitement in Spanish, for children playing in the streets, the Puerto Rican children whose voices sounded faster, harder, than Chicano Spanish, as if there were more metal in their throats.”
― Marge Piercy

“Seattle, the mild green queen: wet and willing, cedar-scented, and crowned with slough grass, her toadstool scepter tilted toward Asia, her face turned ever upward in the rain; the sovereign who washes her hands more persistently than the most fastidious proctologist.”
― Tom Robbins, Tibetan Peach Pie

“Black holes are a gift, both physically and theoretically. They are detectable on the farthest reaches of the observable universe. They anchor galaxies, providing a center for our own galactic pinwheel and possibly every other island of stars. And theoretically, they provide a laboratory for the exploration of the farthest reaches of the mind. Black holes are the ideal fantasy scape on which to play out thought experiments that target the core truths about the cosmos.”
― Janna Levin, Black Hole Survival Guide

“After you died I could not hold a funeral,
And so my life became a funeral.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“You? I know you! You trust beyond reason."
She met his eyes steadily. "Yes. It's how I get results beyond hope. As you may recall.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign