Foreword Quotes

“Everytime you read, you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies.”
― Kathy Acker, Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia

“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons  attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“This is for all the teens/young adults/adults who feel like they’ve been left behind. You’re not behind. You have time to find yourself and love and adventure. It’s all out there, and when you’re ready to push yourself out of your comfort zone and look for it, you’ll find it.”
― Christine Riccio, Again, But Better

“It is almost as if you were frantically constructing another world while the world that you live in dissolves beneath your feet, and that your survival depends on completing this construction at least one second before the old habitation collapses.”
― Tennessee Williams, Camino Real

“During the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a woman with lips blue with cold who was standing behind me, and of course had never heard of my name, came out of the numbness which affected us all and whispered in my ear—(we all spoke in whispers there):
‘Could you describe this?’
I said, ‘I can!’
Then something resembling a smile slipped over what had once been her face.”
― Anna Akhmatova, Poem Without a Hero & Selected Poems

“Can the imagination, any more than the boy, be held prisoner ?"

- from the foreword to the 1976 edition of "The Painted Bird”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“What are you so angry about?" my mother had asked me the last time I had gone home to visit.

Why aren't you more angry, I had wanted to ask her. But I couldn't talk to my mother that way. She understood that I did not want to live her life, to work as a waitress, until my toes curled in and my feet hurt all the time, to marry a man who would beat my children and treat me as if I had no right to object to object to anything he chose to do. She didn't want that life for me either. She wanted me happy and successful, to live unafraid among people who loved me, and to do things she had never been able to do and tell her all about them.

So I told her, about the shelter, the magazine, readings and discussion groups. I told her about trying to write stories, though I hesitated to send send her all that I wrote. And there were far too many times when I would sit down to write my mama and stare at the paper unable to puzzle out how to explain how urgent and unimportant it was to change how women's lives were shaped. Not only that we should be paid equal money for equally difficult work, but that we should genuinely begin to think about what word we might choose to undertake, how we might live our daily lives. Why should I have to marry at all? Or explain myself if I chose to love a woman? Why could I not spend my hours writing stories instead of raising children or keeping house or working some deadly boring job just to cover the rent of an apartments where I was not safe anyway.”
― Dorothy Allison, The Women's Room

“In this case I read on. And on. First with the sinking feeling that it was not bad enough to quit, then with a prickle of interest, then a growing excitement, and finally an incredulity: surely it was not possible that it was so good.”
― Walker Percy, A Confederacy of Dunces

“For my parents—who taught me to believe that girls can save the world”
― Sarah J. Maas

“This book is one of my own special favorites. I saved it up for years, thinking about it, working it out, saying to myself: "One day, when I've plenty of time, and want to really enjoy myself- I'll begin it" I should say that of one's output, five books are work to one that is real pleasure. Crooked House was pure pleasure. I often wonder whether people who read a book can know if it has been hard work of a pleasure to write?
Again and again someone says to me: "How you must have enjoyed writing so and so!" This about a book that obstinately refused to come out the way you wished, whose characters are sticky, the plot needlessly involved, and the dialogue stilted - or so you think yourself. But perhaps the author isn't the best judge of his or her own work. However, practically everybody has liked Crooked House, so I am justified in my own belief that it is one of my best.
I don't know what put the Leonides family in my head - they just came. Then, like Topsy "they growed."
I feel that I myself was only their scribe.”
― Agatha Christie, Crooked House

“While each of these may be convenient at the time (and easier choices, culturally, than choosing menstrual retreat, natural birth, breastfeeding, mother-baby dependency, and unmedicated menopause), there is a downside. Each time we deny our female functions, each time we deviate from our bodies’ natural path, we move farther away from our feminine roots. This can create distress within our bodies and can set the scene for further problems, physically and emotionally, for ourselves and our families. - this quote is from the Foreword to Wild Feminine; the foreword is by Sarah J. Buckley, MD”
― Tami Lynn Kent, Wild Feminine: Finding Power, Spirit, & Joy in the Root of the Female Body

“Be ready. Be seated. See what courage sounds like. See how brave it is to reveal yourself in this way. But above all, see what it is to still live, to profoundly influence the lives of others after you are gone, by your words.”
― Abraham Verghese

“You’ll never get anywhere with your head in the clouds if you don’t turn those dreams into present-day forward motion. Show gratitude for where you came by not regretting what you could’ve and should’ve done today.⁣”
― Richie Norton

“A quien leyere
Si las páginas de este libro consienten algún verso feliz, perdóneme el lector la descortesía de haberlo usurpado yo, previamente. Nuestras nadas poco difieren; es trivial y fortuita la circunstancia de que tú seas el lector de estos ejercicios, y yo su redactor.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“God's given me a fierce passion for teaching girl's my age and younger, maybe even older, about purity, and the fact that it is not a physical thing but in fact that of the heart.”
― Abigail Ford, Riches and Glory: A Christian Romance Story

“Such ordeals always strike one with their strangeness, their digression from the normal flow of events, and often provoke a universal protest: "Why me?" Be sure that this is not a question but an outcry. The person who screams it has been instilled with an astonishing suspicion that he, in fact, has been the perfect subject for a very specific "weird," a tailor-made fate, and that a prior engagement, in all its weirdness, was fulfilled at the appointed time and place.”
― Thomas Ligotti, Noctuary

“...unless you value yourself, you won't have the motivation to exercise, get enough sleep, eat healthfully, and care for yourself.”
― Doreen Virtue

“To pore over the literary shortcomings of twenty years ago, to attempt to patch a faulty work into the perfection it missed on its first execution, to spend one's middle age in trying to mend the artistic sins committed and bequeathed by that different person who was oneself in youth – all this is surely vain and futile.”
― Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World

“A friend of mine tells a story about some Israeli students who were called up in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. As soon as they were notified, they went back to their rooms at University, and each packed his gear, a rifle, and a book of Yehuda Amichai’s poems.”
― Chana Bloch, The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

“For me personally, The Organic Creative Process helped me to discover what kind of actor I want to be; but this is a process that goes beyond acting. It actually revealed to me what I want to do in my life and that I have to work hard to make it real.”
― Giovanni Morassutti, Accidentally On Purpose: Reflections on Life, Acting and the Nine Natural Laws of Creativity

“[…] that being brave doesn’t mean you aren’t scared. Being brave means you are scared, really scared, badly scared, and you do the right thing anyway.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“The results of her painstaking investigation confirm the suspicion long held by anthropologists, that much of what we ascribe to human nature is no more than a reaction to the restraints put upon us by our civilisation.”
― Franz Boas, Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation

“Building and supporting these local economies is critical to our bottom line. As repeatedly proven by Building Alliances for Local Living Economies (BALLE), spending at a locally owned business on average keeps 68 out of every 100 dollars circulating within the community. When spending on things from outside our communities, however, only 43 dollars stay local.”
― Richard W. Jelier Ph.D.

“But a very badly-built novel which excelled in pathetic or humorous character, or which displayed consummate command of dialogue—perhaps the rarest of all faculties—would be an infinitely better thing than a faultless plot acted and told by puppets with pebbles in their mouths.”
― George Saintsbury

“But please remember: this is only a work of fiction.
The truth, as always, will be far stranger.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

“These correlated truths are the substance of this project. With that, I can do nothing else but present you with a singular call to action: Much like Littlewood Charter School, the United States of America is a house on fire. It is up to the youth to put it out.”
― Shanti Hershenson, Good Kids, Bad Choices

“Wide cobbled roads and slanted structures merge into the next. Each tall house is made from mismatched bricks and wood; the buildings there are the oldest of the city, and they too are worn by time. Sagging into the old stonework as if their old wooden bones can no longer hold the weight. Though the splintered beams remain, chunks of plaster chip away from rough brickwork and the old tiles wriggle restless beside lopsided chimneys. On the narrow streets below, vendors set up wooden stalls down the centre, cover themselves with slender awnings, and call out to passing customers. The gentle clop of stallion hooves draws along a rickety carriage; its tender huffs drown by the chattering of voices and whispers of lost tales. Of gossip told at noonday and secrets shared at vigil when the night is upon them. The smell of baked breads and sweet honey tea permeates the air as the wind hisses along. Bells chime as doors open and footprints mark out routes between shops.”
― E. K. Cross, Tales of Market Street

“I didn’t plan on writing a four‑story cycle. In fact, for a long time I didn’t plan on writing much of anything after Reunion: A Story in 1998. That novella felt complete — Jim grieving at Marty’s grave, Mark heading off to show a house, Jim returning to New York alone. The door seemed closed. I figured I’d written my one good piece of fiction and that was that.

But stories have a way of tapping you on the shoulder when they want to be told. And sometimes they tap for decades.

Before I get to that, though, I need to talk about South Miami High — because that place, which I never wanted to attend, ended up shaping the emotional landscape of these stories more than I ever expected.

I was supposed to be a Southwest kid. Tropical Elementary fed into Riviera Junior High, and Riviera fed into Southwest Senior High. That was the plan. That was the path. That was where everyone I knew was going. But in the spring of 1980 — around the time of the McDuffie riots — the School Board decided that disabled students who had trouble getting to class on time at Southwest (which didn’t have an elevator then) would be transferred to South Miami instead. I didn’t want to go. I couldn’t get the transfer rescinded. And I didn’t want to attend Coral Park, which would have been my school if I were able‑bodied. So I arrived at SMSH with a chip on my shoulder and a bad attitude.

My first day didn’t help.

I hadn’t slept the night before. I got to my bus stop an hour early. The driver didn’t stop because she was expecting a kid in a wheelchair — which I wasn’t.

I waited until nine in the morning, woke my mother, and she drove me to school. We got lost. I arrived late. The office didn’t have my schedule. I sat alone in the auditorium until Mr. Passman came down from the second floor and hauled me off to Business Math — a cruel joke for someone who hates math. By the time I made it to lunch, I was exhausted, depressed, and wondering what I’d done to deserve this detour in life.

And then I saw him. A tall man in a gray suit, white hair, handlebar mustache, walkie‑talkie in hand — someone who clearly mattered. I nodded politely, because even on a terrible day, I knew how to be respectful. I started to walk past him, and he said: “Good morning, Captain! I’m Dr. Burchell, and welcome to South Miami.”

I’d seen his name on the postcard announcing the first day of school, but I never expected to meet him — certainly not on that day. Yet there he was, greeting me with humor and warmth, noticing the knockoff fatigue jacket I wore with the Americal Division patch and captain’s bars. In that moment, the school I didn’t want to attend became a little less foreign. A little less hostile. A little more mine.

It’s funny how small moments like that stay with you. They become part of the emotional soil you write from, even decades later.”
― Alex Diaz-Granados, The Jim Garraty Chronicles: A Life Told in Four Movements

“Anyway, I do hope you enjoy this... . I am not at all a “successful” writer, and I have had a (pardon me) *shit[-]ton* of trouble getting these [few little writings] published[,] or, in many cases, even finished, so just know that having this work out in the world is itself a labor of love. I appreciate you for taking the time to read my work, however old it might be now. It’s a true kindness.

You deserve nothing but the very best in life. Remember that.”
― Vincent St. Clare, Easy Noumenon: Early Poems

“And so, resisting the temptation to wallow in artistic remorse, I prefer to leave both well and ill alone and to think about something else.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World