People Quotes (page 468)
Historical fact: people stopped being human in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has been passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joysticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds.
Jeffrey Eugenides
You know what the issue is? Do you want to know? It's what these guys have decided to call America. They have the audacity to say, 'There, you sons of bitches, don't lay a finger on it. That is a finished product.'"But any country is still in the making. Always. That's just history, people have to see that.
Barbara Kingsolver
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent. If the unheard, unspoken. Word is unspoken, unheard; Still is the spoken word, the Word unheard, The Word without a word, the Word within. The world and for the world; And the light shone in the darkness and. Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled. About the center of the silent Word. Oh my people, what have I done unto thee. Where shall the word be found, where shall the word. Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
T. S. Eliot
Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen...
Norton Juster
growing pale and sober with the thought that her fate was soon to be decided; for, like all young people, she was sure that her whole life could be settled by one human creature, quite forgetting how wonderfully Providence trains us by disappointment, surprises us with unexpected success, and turns our seeming trials into blessing.
Louisa May Alcott
If you can't, or won't, think of Seymour, then you go right ahead and call in some ignorant psychoanalyst. You just do that. You just call in some analyst who's experienced in adjusting people to the joys of television, and Life magazine every Wednesday, and European travel, and the H-bomb, and Presidential elections, and the front page of the Times, and God knows what else that's gloriously normal.
J. D. Salinger