Remain Quotes (page 42)
[on her Amish friends]I do know this family has borne losses and grief, just like the rest of us. But if they are generally content, must such a life inevitably be dismissed as mythical, or else merely quaint? ... It sounds like a community type that went extinct a generation ago. But it didn't, not completely. If a self-sufficient farming community has survived here, it remains a possibility elsewhere.
Barbara Kingsolver
Swathed in silk, I feel like a caterpillar in a cocoon awaiting metamorphosis. I always supposed that to be a peaceful condition. At first it is. But as I journey into the night, I feel more and more trapped, suffocated by the slippery bindings, unable to emerge until I have transformed into something of beauty. I squirm, trying to shed my ruined body and unlock the secret to growing flawless wings. Despite enormous effort, I remain a hideous creature, fired into my current form by the blast...
Suzanne Collins
Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignation with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through one's marked cards- the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been...
Joan Didion
I stand for the square deal," Roosevelt said. "But when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service. One word of warning, which, I think, is hardly necessary in Kansas. When I say I want a square deal for the poor man, I do not mean that I want a square deal for the man who...
Theodore Roosevelt
We cannot indefinitely avoid depressing subject matter, particularly it it is true, and in the subsequent quarter century the world has had to hear a story it would have preferred not to hear - the story of how a cultured people turned to genocide, and how the rest of the world, also composed of cultured people, remained silent in the face of genocide. (v)
Elie Wiesel
Tell them about how you're never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there's always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don't speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.
Audre Lorde
The voice of the light remains ever so faint; images quiet as ancient constellations float across the domw of my dawning mind. They are indistinct fragments that never merge into a sensate picture. There would be a landscape I have not seen before, unfamiliar melodic echoes, whisperings in a chaos of tongues.
Haruki Murakami
ROXANE: Live, for I love you! CYRANO: No, In fairy tales When to the ill-starred Prince the lady says 'I love you!' all his ugliness fades fast-- But I remain the same, up to the last! ROXANE: I have marred your life--I, I! CYRANO: You blessed my life! Never on me had rested woman's love. My mother even could not find me fair: I had no sister; and, when grown a man, I feared the mistress who would mock at me. But I have had your friendship--grace to you A woman's charm has passed...
Edmond Rostand