Quote of the Week: Buddha

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

Quote of the Week: Leroy Sievers

I used to read a blog on NPR called “My Cancer.” In that blog, Leroy Sievers, a journalist, producer, cancer-survivor and now blogger, chronicled his life with colon cancer. The posts he made were succint and to the point, but nevertheless, they were so real. And so tragic. And so real. Unfortunately, Sievers passed away last week, but according to the comment count on the entry where news came of his passing (1258) he will be truly missed. I wrote a post about it on LA Cityzine last week, but here I have included one of his quotes.

“Being a cancer patient is hard work. And you’re on the job 24/7. There are no breaks. You don’t get weekends or holidays off. If you don’t feel it physically, you live with it mentally. It can be unrelenting. I think that’s what I’ve been feeling.

Boxers get that break between rounds. Football players can catch their breath in the huddle. Sometimes those few seconds can make all the difference in the world, can mean the difference between victory and defeat. I just need a time-out.

Except there are no time-outs in this game. Somewhere deep down in yourself, you have to try to find the strength to just keep going. Sometimes I find it, sometimes I don’t. And if you don’t find it one day, maybe it will be there the next. But it’s hard. Probably the hardest thing I have ever had to do.”

Photo via NPR by Tyrone Turner

Quote of the Week: Dalai Lama

If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry. Do not think only of your own joy, but vow to save all beings from suffering. This is sharing in its highest form and purity beyond all poisons of this world.

Quote of the Week: Barack Obama

The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

So history reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is never easy. True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.

Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words “never again” in Darfur?

Will we acknowledge that there is no more powerful example than the one each of our nations projects to the world? Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law? Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don’t look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?

People of Berlin - people of the world - this is our moment. This is our time.

People of Berlin - and people of the world - the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again. - Obama’s speech in Berlin on Thursday. Read the full transcript of this amazing speech here.

Writepudding fully endorses Obama. Yes we can!

Photo by Patrick Dentler

Quote of the Week: Morrissey

Interviewer: Did you hear t.A.T.u.’s version of “How Soon Is Now?”

Morrissey: Yes, it was magnificent. Absolutely. Again, I don’t know much about them.

Interviewer: They are teenage Russian lesbians.

Morrissey: Well, aren’t we all?

Can I love this man anymore than I already do?

Quote of the Week: Madeleine

In an old house in Paris, that was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines. In two straight lines they broke their bread, and brushed their teeth, and went to bed. They smiled at the good, and frowned at the bad, and sometimes they were very sad. They left the house at half past nine, in two straight lines, in rain or shine … the smallest one was Madeline!

Quote of the Week: Walt Disney

Too many people grow up. That’s the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don’t remember what it’s like to be 12 years old. They patronize, they treat children as inferiors. Well I won’t do that.

Quotable Quotes and Things

There are certain quotes you read or melodies you hear that stay with you for life. They define you and you define them. They become a part of you, reminiscent of some mantra that you keep close to your heart. I’m very attached to quotes, lyrics and melodies of songs. When I hear one that’s just so fantastic, I feel like a small part of the Universe explodes, because it’s so great. Like when you listen to Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 1. It melts me, that song. It’s like everything turns into slow motion. If you’re ever in a bad mood, or you’ve been crying, or you just don’t feel well, listening to Gymnopedie No. 1 will make things just a little bit better. It’s therapy.

If you look at the “Quotes” category of this blog, you can see that I really do love quotes. Today, a co-worker and I were discussing quotes. I don’t like calling the people I work with “co-workers,” if I’m being honest. They’re more friends than just people I work with, but I digress. He mentioned a quote that I can’t stop thinking about.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.

It’s by Rainer Maria Rilke, the German poet I was first introduced to in English class in high school. I can’t remember what poem it was of his that we read, but I just knew that I loved it. In college, I read “The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God,” in a religion class that I took. The quote above was taken from Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet.” It’s so simple, yet so significant. It’s been a long time since I just stopped and thought about anything semi-philosophical.

A lot of my other favorites come from Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” quite possibly my favorite book of all time.

He suddenly recalled the famous myth from Plato’s Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split them in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

Still, I have more, like this one from William Saroyan…

Try as much as possible to by wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

Or this one from Robert Fulghum…

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge-myth is more potent than history-dreams are more powerful than facts-hope always triumphs over experience-laughter is the cure for grief-love is stronger than death.

Going back to songs, Camera Obscura’s “Country Mile” usually fills my eyes up with tears. For the first few weeks of my new job, I would listen to it while I was dying a slow death in traffic. Traffic is not only bad because, well it’s traffic, but because it gives you time to think and examine and over analyze certain aspects of your life that you usually don’t think about or want to think about.

I wish you could be here with me
I would show you off like a trophy
The road it winds, it twists, it turns, oh my stomach burns

I won’t be seeing you for a long while
Oh I hope it’s not as long as these country miles
I feel lost, I feel lost.

Or Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love”

I’d go hungry, I’d go black and blue
I’d go crawling down the avenue
There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do
To make you feel my love

The storms are raging on the rollin’ sea
And on the highway of regret

The winds of change are blowing wild and free
You ain’t seen nothing like me yet

If you haven’t heard Adele’s version of “Make You Feel My Love” yet, you should be ashamed of yourself.

All these quotes and songs, they’re just snippets of things that inspire me, that I stand for and believe in, that help me. I can’t explain it, but whatever I’m going through, they make the stress and pain or whatever it is that I’m feeling, a lot less intense. To know that four lines of words helped you overcome some kind of angst, or taught you something knew or changed your perception of things, well, that’s why I decided to be a writer.

Quote of the Week: And You Will Tell Them, Yes.

All your life you are told the things you cannot do. All your life they will say you’re not good enough or strong enough or talented enough; they will say you’re the wrong height or the wrong weight or the wrong type to play this or be this or achieve this. THEY WILL TELL YOU NO, a thousand times no, until all the no’s become meaningless. All your life they will tell you no, quite firmly and very quickly.
AND YOU WILL TELL THEM YES. - Nike Ad

Quote of the Week: Drew Carrey

“Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so? There’s a support group for that. It’s called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.”