Ozzy Osborne’s every whim was indulged, no matter how foolish; after repeatedly failing his driving test & tired of riding to the local pub on his lawnmower, he bought a horse. When he ran our of drugs, he snorted a line of ants. Wearing his wife’s dress, he urinated on the Alamo . . .
James Baldwin’s message was simple: We’re afraid of love because we’re afraid of exposing our true selves. To manage that fear we invent meaningless categories — black, white, homosexual, heterosexual — and “other” the group we don’t belong to in order to avoid a reckoning with ourselves. In America this manifests as “the race Problem.” Until white Americans — or Americans who “think they are white,” as Baldwin sometimes put it — stop posing as innocents and confront who they are, until the country faces its history, until white people learn to love, there will never be genuine equality.
He didn’t believe in reform: he believed in revolution. Anything less than a total social reckoning – – a complete psychological makeover of white America — was worthless. Louis Menand The New Yorker
The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters. Sue Monk Kidd
Hurt people hurt people.
The conscious mind is the editor & the subconscious mind is the writer.
Steve Martin
In 2017 Robert Fuller (1936-2025) facetiously thanked President Trump for “giving rankism a face — his own scowling, mocking face” — to become “the poster boy for rankism & for jump-starting a Dignity Movement.”
The awful thing in this life is this: everyone has their reasons.
“The Rules of the Game” Jean Renoir
Ann Harris, editor, believed in the power of books
to tell big stories and make a big difference.
THAT WISE OLD OWL
Wise old Owl
Sat on an oak
The more he saw
The less he spoke
The less he spoke
the more he heard.
Why can’t we be like the wise old Owl bird?
You are a soul wearing a human costume.
LOVE has the power to rescue us and not let go — otherwise it isn’e leve.
A child can educate just about anybody.
Don’t worry about the past and don’t try to solve the future. Garrison Keillor
MAN IS WHAT HE READS.
How delightful to find a friend in everyone. Joseph Brodsky
How lovely life can be if one takes time to be friendly. Julia Child
Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear.
A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous. Suzanne Collins
To acquire knowledge one must study;
but to acquire wisdom one must observe. Marilyn Savant