ŷ������

“...the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon.”
― Noam Chomsky

“Houses, like people, are apt to become rather eccentric if left too much on their own; this house was the architectural equivalent of an old gentleman in a worn dressing-gown and torn slippers, who got up and went to bed at odd times of day, and who kept up a continual conversation with friends no one else could see.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“It [Ashfair House] was an old fashioned house—the sort of house in fact, as Strange expressed it, which a lady in a novel might like to be persecuted in.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“The instant he knew he loved her, she slipped down his body and out of his arms.”
― Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis

“1. Society needs laws. While anarchy can often turn a humdrum weekend into something unforgettable, eventually the mob must be kept from stealing the conch and killing Piggy. And while it would be nice if that "something" was simple human decency, anybody who has witnessed the "50% Off Wedding Dress Sale" at Filene's Basement knows we need a backup plan—preferably in writing. On the other hand, too many laws can result in outright tyranny, particularly if one of those laws is "." Somewhere between these two extremes lies the legislative sweet-spot that produces just the right amount of laws for a well-adjusted society—more than zero, less than fascism.”
― Jon Stewart, America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction

“You might think that, by now, people would have become accustomed to the idea of natural catastrophes. We live on a planet that is still cooling and which has fissures and faults in its crust; this much is accepted even by those who think that the globe is only six thousand years old, as well as by those who believe that the earth was "designed" to be this way. Even in such a case, it is to be expected that earthquakes will occur and that, if they occur under the seabed, tidal waves will occur also. Yet two sorts of error are still absolutely commonplace. The first of these is the idiotic belief that seismic events are somehow "timed" to express the will of God. Thus, reasoning back from the effect, people will seriously attempt to guess what sin or which profanity led to the verdict of the tectonic plates. The second error, common even among humanists, is to borrow the same fallacy for satirical purposes and to employ it to disprove a benign deity.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“As a Nobel Peace laureate, I, like most people, agonize over the use of force. But when it comes to rescuing an innocent people from tyranny or genocide, I've never questioned the justification for resorting to force. That's why I supported Vietnam's 1978 invasion of Cambodia, which ended Pol Pot's regime, and Tanzania's invasion of Uganda in 1979, to oust Idi Amin. In both cases, those countries acted without U.N. or international approval—and in both cases they were right to do so.”
― Jose Ramos-Horta, A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq

“How is a magician to exist without books? Let someone explain that to me. It is like asking a politician to achieve high office without the benefit of bribes or patronage.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“In the aftermath of the recent wave action in the Indian Ocean, even the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williamson [sic], proved himself a latter-day Voltairean by whimpering that he could see how this might shake belief in a friendly creator. Williamson is of course a notorious fool, who does an almost perfect imitation of a bleating and frightened sheep, but even so, one is forced to rub one's eyes in astonishment. Is it possible that a grown man could live so long and still have his personal composure, not to mention his lifetime job description, upset by a large ripple of seawater?”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Bloomberg does not support the measure to silence the useless and maddening car alarm: he would rather impose himself on people than on mechanical devices.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

“Classroom Activities
1. Using felt and yarn, make a hand puppet of Clarence Thomas. Ta-da! You're Antonin Scalia!”
― Jon Stewart, America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction

“Live knowing that you are already dust, long gone, already outside time and looking in, reviewing life, finally understanding every déja vu, your own guardian angel. Know that the scorched-black demons and the pristine, fluttering seraphs are in some sense naught but you yourself unpacked, unfolded in a higher space from whence the myriad gods unfurl, not bygone legends but your once and future selves, your attributes blossomed into their purest and most potent symbol-forms. And these, with all their beast-heats, crowns and lightings, all their different colors, are become combined into the single whiteness that is godhead. That is all.

This, then, is revelation. All is one, and all is deity, this beautiful undying fire of being that is everywhere about us; that we are. O man, o woman, know yourself, and know you are divine. Respect yourself, respect the least phenomenon of your existence as it were the breath of God. Know that our universe is all one place, a single firelit room, all time a single moment. Know that there has only ever been one person here. Know you are everything, forever. Know I love you.”
― Alan Moore, Promethea, Vol. 5

“Anyone who is truly crazy, in my book, wouldn't be able to understand the dialectic of crazy and not-crazy. Listen, I've worked for the pharmaceutical companies, they have a vested belief in making you believe that if you have a chemical imbalance you need them to be 'cured' of your current issues and personality. Indefinitely. Imagine diagnosing personality only in terms of its negative aspects. Does this strike you as a strategy designed for health? The only way to deal with a problem is to fucking deal with it. Get inside what positive motivation, what intention, makes you behave in the way you are... and how you could maybe satisfy that need in a healthier or at least more agreeable manner. America wants quick, easy and painless; being a real person is slow, difficult and very messy.”
― James Curcio, Join My Cult!

“Stun me. I mean it. Draw the gun and shoot. I want you to do it, Kendra. Show me what it feels like. I'm looking for more. Show me something I don't know. Stun me to my DNA. Come on, do it. Click the switch. Aim and fire. I want the volts the weapon holds. Do it. Shoot it. Now.”
― Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis

“In familiar surroundings our manners are cheerful and easy, but only transport us to places where we know no one and no one knows us, and Lord! how uncomfortable we become!”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“You still long for freedom, my friend, and that longing is your cage. You do not even realize what you are missing, or what it is that you are longing for, but something in you calls out to be aware. You have become parched in the desert of apathy, and thirst for the Bacchic springs forever out of your reach. And while your highest aspects thirst for freedom, so too your basest roots thrust outwards and strangle the hopes��”
― James Curcio, Join My Cult!

“Susan’s and Jennifer’s job searches are likely made harder by the color of their skin. In the early 2000s, researchers in Chicago and Boston mailed out fake résumés to hundreds of employers, varying only the names of the applicants, but choosing names that would be seen as identifiably black or white. Strikingly, “Emily�� and “Brendan�� were 50 percent more likely to get called for an interview than “Lakisha�� and “Jamal.�� A few years later, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin conducted a similar study in Milwaukee, but with a unique twist. She recruited two black and two white actors (college students, posing as high school graduates) who were as similar as possible in every way. She sent these “job applicants�� out in pairs, with virtually identical fake résumés, to apply for entry-level jobs. Her twist was to instruct one of the white and one of the black applicants to tell employers that they had a felony conviction and had just been released from prison the month before. Even the researcher was surprised by what she found: the white applicant with a felony conviction was more likely to get a positive response from a prospective employer than the black applicant with no criminal record. When the study was replicated in New York City a few years later, she and her colleagues saw similar results for Latino applicants relative to whites.”
― Kathryn Edin, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America

“Everything you think about is a meditation, and you could say that the very form of your consciousness follows what you put your attention to. So Chi is really just focused attention, and it is attention, or awareness, that brings about results of whatever kind, rather than some nebulous energy or vril force. But energy is a good metaphor.”
― James Curcio, Join My Cult!

“The term �����پ��貹ṭṭ����Բ� can be explained as a compound of sati, "mindfulness" or "awareness", and �ܱ貹ṭṭ����Բ�, with the u of the latter term dropped by vowel elision. The Pāli term �ܱ貹ṭṭ����Բ� literally means "placing near", and in the present context refers to a particular way of "being present" and "attending" to something with mindfulness. In the discourses [of the Buddha], the corresponding verb �ܱ貹ṭṭ�󲹳󲹳پ� often denotes various nuances of "being present", or else "attending". Understood in this way, "�����پ��貹ṭṭ����Բ�" means that sati "stands by", in the sense of being present; sati is "ready at hand", in the sense of attending to the current situation. �����پ��貹ṭṭ����Բ� can then be translated as "presence of mindfulness" or as "attending with mindfulness."

The commentaries, however, derive �����پ��貹ṭṭ����Բ� from the word "foundation" or "cause" (�貹ṭṭ����Բ�). This seems unlikely, since in the discourses contained in the Pāli canon the corresponding verb �貹ṭṭ�󲹳󲹳پ� never occurs together with sati. Moreover, the noun �貹ṭṭ����Բ� is not found at all in the early discourses, but comes into use only in the historically later Abhidhamma and the commentaries. In contrast, the discourses frequently relate sati to the verb �ܱ貹ṭṭ�󲹳󲹳پ�, indicating that "presence" (�ܱ貹ṭṭ����Բ�) is the etymologically correct derivation. In fact, the equivalent Sanskrit term is ����ṛt��ܱ貹���ٳ���Բ�, which shows that �ܱ貹���ٳ���Բ�, or its Pāli equivalent �ܱ貹ṭṭ����Բ�, is the correct choice for the compound.”
― ������������, �����پ��貹ṭṭ����Բ�: The Direct Path to Realization

“They taught me in the Army to make plans based upon the other guy's capabilities, and not based upon his stated intentions. And an employer is capable of firing you at any time.”
― Stephen Morrill, How to Start a Home-Based Writing Business

“It is slow, gradual pressure that is the formula for both genius and earthquakes. Life tells us our secrets in these cracks, the way events conspire with each other in hidden grottos. This movement is at times very subtle, over a long time, like plate tectonics. If you don't have the right eyes, you might miss these patterns altogether. Although our lives do not occur in geological scales of time, it is still the gradual pressure and our minute reactions, our habits, that actually speak of our true natures. Our true will and intent is contained in potential within each of us, though in many it is buried very, very deep.”
― James Curcio, Join My Cult!

“A biologist with a history of tooth decay invents a symbiotic microbe which lives in the human mouth and feeds by cleaning our teeth. It secreted calcium, which is poisonous to it, controlling its growth and preventing it from eating the teeth themselves. So this guy, he wants to spread the thing to the world, but it'd never fly, FDA and human squeamishness and all, so he becomes a party animal. He throws wild partys at the lab, kisses female grad students, where's, babies. He backwashes in sodas left on tables. He bums drags of cigarettes. He grants humanity eternally clean and healthy teeth but dies of a terrible cocktail of STDs.”
― James Curcio, Join My Cult!

“Afterwards, over drinks, one of the barbarians asked me what I dreamt of. I, of course, was taken aback. They say barbarians don't dream. But I told him... "I dream of tangible nothing," I said.
"So you mean nothing as something, then?" the barbarian replied over the rim of his gin-and-tonic.
"I mean unity, dissolving into non-self," I said, just to be confusing.”
― James Curcio, Join My Cult!

“People don't suffer from Asperger's. They suffer because they're depressed from being beat up and left out all the time”
― Justin Mulvaney