Words for the Living

The night befriends my waking hours as I stride through a funding application for my research that is due in less than a week. To take a break, and while I skim through reams of literature, some interesting quotes have come my way, some from past interviews and some from inspirational talent. Let them speak to you:

----------------------

“I would rather be amongst a pack of lions than lead a pack of sheep” (Ahmed Barakat).

“It is very important to understand that war is the result of a flawed peace” (Arundhati Roy from God of Small Things).

“Humans are beings that have knowledge as well as ignorance, memory as well as forgetfulness. In contrast with the rest of creation, they have to live with dignity, risk, and freedom, all at once” (Tarek Ramadan from In the Footsteps of the Prophet)

“This world is a form of pleasure ready to caress you, wound you, break you to pieces, so re-make yourself and remember. Always remember. Your ability to change” (mine).

“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood” (Audre Lorde from When Silence Speaks).

“(Nationalism is) a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands” (Howard Zinn, from The People’s History of the United States of America).

“Tonight it is raining in the tradition of my parents who wanted a daughter not a writer” (Suheir Hammad from poem Daughter).

“Break a vase, and the love that re-assembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole” (Derek Walcott from Omeros)

...goodnight folks … slumber is calling ...
Quest




.