169 quotes found
“There are symbolic dreams-dreams that symbolize some reality. Then there are symbolic realities-realities that symbolize a dream”
“But was that not the task you set me? To defend the helpless against the strong?" "Indeed it was Master Weed. But who is to say who is helpless, and who is strong?" .........."If you seek the power...”
“A slave mentality which had been built into him by years of carrot-and-whip grading, a mule mentality which said, If you dont whip me, I wont work. He didnt get whipped. He didnt work.”
“Knowledge is what enables one to be wrong. (p. 11)”
“Yet does illustrating in a new way signify a new way of seeing?”
“News is something worth knowing that you didn't know already. (by an "earnest young woman" in his journalism class)”
“How do you explain to your friend's mother why a night out with friends has left her daughter dying from an ecstasy overdose?”
“But ask us to prove even to ourselves we are right in our belief, and we are in a quandary.”
“And listening to all the things they would do if they had these things, Wang Lung heard only of how much they would eat and sleep, and of what dainties they would eat that they had never tasted,and...”
“Given the obstacles to merging these fragile and diverse forms of storytelling into a single tale, it is, paradoxically, by venturing in the opposite direction -- by listening for the silences betw...”
“What was behind this smug presumption that what pleased you was bad or at least unimportant in comparison to other things? Little children were trained not to do just what they liked but but what...”
“We live by our labors from one harvest to the next, there is no certain telling whether we shall be able to feed ourselves and our children, and if bad times are prolonged we know we must see the w...”
“If these self-anointed leaders did not keep the people aroused with calls to preserve the Revolution, or to defend it from one imaginary foe after another, then the people might shake themselves aw...”
“There's still a question I must put to you," said the cunger woman. "Can you give up Joshua to keep him?”
“Be patient with everyone you meet, for you may never know whether your words were the last they ever heard.”
“I'm fighting alone, every day. I fight with the hell that I survived. I fight with the fact of my own humanity. I fight with the idea that death is the only way of escaping this fact.”
“Disasters are called natural, as if nature were the executioner and not the victim”
“There's a societal push for conformity in all ways. There's less tolerance of difference. And so maybe for some people having a label is better. It can confer a sense of hope and direction. (interv...”
“It seems fine to revolt in front of all,but apologizing fro the same in a similar situation makes you feel smallIt is an irony! that's what I call..”
“If you're as good as your word, words should be good enough.”
