Tami > Tami's Quotes

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“There is nothing to make you like other human beings so much as doing things for them.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
― George Eliot

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“When you face writer's block, just lower your standards and keep going.”
― Sandra Tsing Loh

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“I was silently reciting to myself the 23rd Psalm, 'The Lord is my shepherd; I shal not want . . .' [. . .] The man with the tinted spectacles and the man from the police department were looking at me thoughtfully. They mistook my silence as a sign of weakening. I knew I had to show courage. In fact, I felt much better for having recited the words of the psalm. I had not been so free of fear the whole evening as I was in that moment standing beside the black jeep, a symbol of repression. I lifted my head and said in a loud and firm voice, 'I'm not guilty! I have nothing to confess.”
― Nien Cheng, Life and Death in Shanghai

“[Mr. Hu said:] There always comes a time when a man almost reaches the end of his endurance and is tempted to write down something, however untrue, to satisfy his inquisitors and to free himself from intolerable pressure. But one mustn't do it. [. . .] Once one starts confessing, they will demand more and more admissions of guilt, however false, and exert increasing pressure to get what they want. In the end, one will get into a tangle of untruths from which one can no longer extract oneself.”
― Nien Cheng, Life and Death in Shanghai

“Most of the writers I know work every day, in obscurity and close to poverty, trying to say one thing well and true. Day in, day out, they labor to find their voice, to learn their trade, to understand nuance and pace. And then, facing a sea of rejections, they hear about something like Barbara Bush’s dog getting a book deal.”
― Timothy Egan

“[...] Nor were the boards particularly interested in hiring devoted physicians like Kirkbride to run their asylums. Instead, they sought to hire superintendents who could manage budgets wisely and were willing to scrimp on spending for patients and, in the best manner of political appointees, grease the patronage wheels. [...] Treatment outcomes steadily declined.”
― Robert Whitaker, Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill