2201) "Flatter me, and I may not believe you./ Criticize me, and I may not like you./ Ignore me, and I may not forgive you./ Encourage me, and I may not forget you."-William Arthur
2202) "And when somebody knows you well/ Well, there's no comfort like that/ And when somebody needs you/ Well, there's no drug like that"-Heather Nova, "London Rain (Nothing Heals Me Like You Do)"
2203) "A FRIEND is one/ To whome one may pour/ Out all the contents/ Of one's heart,/ Chaff and grain together,/ Knowing that the/ Gentlest of hands/ Will take and sift it,/ Keep what is worth keeping/ And with the breath of kindness/ Blow the rest away."-Arabian Proverb
2204) "Then, when it seems we will never smile again, life comes back."
2205) "Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet."-Plato
2206) "Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between notes and curl my back to loneliness."-Maya Angelou
2207) "After all this kind of fanfare, and even more, I came to a point where I needed solitude and just stop the machine of 'thinking' and 'enjoying' what they call 'living,' I just wanted to lie in the grass and look at the clouds...."-Jack Kerouac, On the Road
2208) "...because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones that are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn burn burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the star sand in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'AWWW!'"-Jack Kerouac, On the Road
2209) "When you see the light you realize that magic can happen anywhere at almost any time. All that's needed are enough people willing to believe and willing to dance together."-Dupreez Diamond
2210) "Every song falls short of the glory of what a song could be. That's why the urge is there to start again and yet again. Often it's the fault of rhyme. I've discovered a hundred times that there just aren't enough rhymes to say what I wanted to say, so I said something else instead. Sometimes it was a better thing, but the thing I meant to say went unsaid. So there's an opening for another song."-Robert Hunter
2211) "One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star."-Friedrich Nietzche
2212) "The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it's the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship."-Ralph Waldo Emerson
2213) "Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it."-Confucius
2214) "You aren't ever going to be anything in this world unless you do what you want to do, when you want to do it--don't plan anything, just go out and do it."-Jack Kerouac
2215) "Music is the ephemeral art. Arising from and receding to silence, music manifests as a living entity brought into being through the interaction of human organisms. Refusing to be objectified, music cannot be seen or grasped. A sound recording is itself only a footprint or kind of musical residue. Truly hearing and feeling live music is a direct connection to the pulse of life."-Soko
2216) "What good is five minutes of happiness when you're gonna spend the rest of your life crying."-Tabitha Maler
2217) "I'd rather spend one day in total freedom than 50 years in partial captivity."-SARK's barber
2218) "It seems that fears are all based on these things: illusion and future thinking, with a side order of 'What if.' 'What if that truck turns suddenly into our lane' 'What if I'm all alone at age 80?' What if? What if? What if? Yes, fears must be respected and learned about, but they must not paralyze us, or lure us into a half-life of being afraid all the time. I liked to think of my fears being driven away in a Rolls Royce (for it is true that once you face a fear, it loses all of its stuffing, and will sit quietly in the back seat and do as it's told.) I feel that fears drive us away from our true selves--innocent beings. I used to live in denial of my fears, and try to cover them up with a 'happy face.' I now see that my greatest growth is happening with an acceptance of my fears, of giving them voices and learning new ways to deal with them."-SARK
2219) "Dreams don't come true--dreams are true."-Ruby Montana
2220) "Be always ecstatic. Be filled with a divine intoxication."-Henry Miller
2221) "Whoever used the spitit that is in him creatively is an artist. To make living itself is an art, that is the goal."-Henry Miller
2222) "From now on I hope always to stay alert, to educate myself as best I can. But lacking this, in future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind and see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out. We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out."-Ray Bradbury
2223) "I/ I walk down the street./ There is a deep hole in the sidewalk./ I fall in/ I am lost...I am helpless/ It isn't my fault./ It takes forever to find a way out./ II/ I walk down the same street/ There is a deep hole in the sidewalk./ I pretend I don't see it./ I fall in again./ I can't believe I am in the same place./ But it isn't my fault./ It still takes a long time to get out./ III/ I walk down the same street/ There is a deep hole in the sidewalk/ I see it is there./ I still fall in...it's a habit./ My eyes are open/ I know where I am/ It is my fault./ I get out immediately./ IV/ I walk down the/ Same street./ There is a deep hole/ in the sidewalk./ I walk around it./ V/ I walk down another/ Street."-Portia Nelson, "Autobiography in Five Short Chapters"
2224) "But relationships are not bisexual; people are. Sexual orientation is based on attraction, not action."-Alex Gino
2225) "Always strive to be more than that what you are, if you wish to obtain that which you are not."-Paul Lawrence Dunbar
2226) "There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot."-Steven Wright
2227) "Conditions are never just right. People who delay action until all factors are favorable do nothing."-William Feather
2228) "And when I fall asleep/ the people in my life/ fly swiftly to my side/ and lean over my bed/ and open up their heads/ and let me look inside/ and when I fall awake/ I try to ask them why/ but there's no-one to reply/ And when I fall asleep/ the objects in my house/ move slowly to my side/ and whisper secret names/ the names they usually hide/ and when I fall awake/ I try to write them down/ but real names are like sand/ they spill out of my hands/ And all the nights asleep/ and all the counted sheep/ and all the little deaths/ and all the final breaths/ the rubbish I have read/ detritus in my head/ and just as I am sure/ I'm not dreaming after all/ I stay and dream some more"-Dave McKean
2229) "Treasure what you have./ Time is too slow for those who wait;/ Too swift for those who fear;/ Too long for those who grieve;/ Too short for those who rejoice;/ But for those who love time is eternity."
2230) "My parents just had their 33rd wedding anniversary,...They still love each other hellamounts, but they've both changed tremendously in those years (my dad more than my mom). If they were to meet now, they would not get together. BUT, the fact is they have 33 years of shared experiences- joy, wonder, and unbelievable pain- that have linked them in a way that no new love could even compare to, not with all the passion and fire in the world....Of course, the jaded cynic in me asserts that I'll mever find anyone w/ whom I can have a healthy, communicative, burying-kingdom relationship, but the hopeless romantic in me still whispers about greens under blacks, and the purples & reds I might find if I look even deeper. So, now the long-awaited point. I don't want to be in love but not at peace, but I don't want to be in love & at peace, either, cuz that would imply, to me, a certain amount of stagnant complacency....Too much change has not helped my parents' relationship, but it would not be any better off if they had stayed exactly the way they were when they were 20; they might get along better, but they would be bored stiff, with no history to mourn & celebrate. As it is put so eloquently in RENT, 'the opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation.' So, that's what I want, & it's what I want for my parents- to be in love & creation. Creation of art, of kisses never tried before, of levels of communication previously undiscovered & new words to describe those levels."-Arjuna Greist
2231) "I've realized there is more a sense of security if you jump in one camp or the other. The amount of speculation that bubbles fervently around me, it's a nightmare: 'Well, she says she's seeing him, but I think it's really a cover-up for seeing her.' Or, 'she's really straight, she's just playing.' For me, everybody--just chill out, relax! I've just been honest up till now, and I'll continue to be honest. There's no big betrayal."-Ani DiFranco
2232) "Love is the only thing that can be divided without being diminished."
2233) "I have six locks on my door, all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure, no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three."-Elayne Boosier
2234) "The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans suffer from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they are OK, then it's you."-Rita Mae Brown
2235) "My grandfather's a little forgetful, but he likes to give me advice. One day, he took me aside and left me there."-Ron Richards
2236) "I don't kill flies but I like to mess with their minds. I hold them above globes. They freak out and yell, 'Whoa, I'm way too high.'"-Bruce Baum
2237) "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl accidentally kills the first woman she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to kill the woman's sister for personal gain."-TV listing for The Wizard of Oz, Submited by J. Ward O'Brien
2238) "If this is a crush, then I don't know if I could take the real thing if it happens."-Holden in Chasing Amy
2239) "Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny."-Carl Schurz
2240) "The problem with doing nothing is not knowing when you're finished."-Benjamin Franklin
2241) "Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle of liberty is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips but few in their minds."-Dante Alighieri
2242) "I think it is very useful to know ourselves, but when we start naming and labeling, that is dangerous, that gets problematic. It negates that things are always changing. Besides, it's hard to pin a label onto something that's always moving."-Ani DiFranco
2243) "Are you more amazed at how things change/ Or how they stay the same/ And do you sit here on this porch and wonder/ How the time flies by/ Or does it seem to barely creep along/ With 75 Septembers come and gone"-Cheryl Wheeler, "75 Septembers"
2244) "These phone machines were a wonderful invention. I called mine all the time, just to see if I might be *missing* something. That private code--my own little piece of the mathematical dream--was access, or so it seemed, to the whole vast realm of the Possible."-Robert Cohen
2245) "'And while we're on the subject of things you're wrong about, let's move on to religion, okay? Listen, I've read everything in my time from the Gita to the Gospels, and when all is said and done, it's really just one thing. Essentially it's a psychological issue: Some people can tolerate not knowing why they're alive, and some can't. The rest is commentary.' 'And which is better?' I asked. 'Not knowing, or knowing?' 'Hell,' he said. 'Whatever works.'"-Robert Cohen
2246) "Not having been present but feeling you have is the fundamental experience of late-century life. Not living, but knowing. The triumph of the secondhand is almost a cliche by now, as inevitable and soporific as the Tonight Show. Everything is disposable but nothing disappears. It all gets recycled."-Robert Cohen
2247) "Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived, or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?"-Hunter S. Thompson
2248) "...in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future....The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizion, for each day to have a new and different sun."-Christopher J. McCandless
2249) "He saw that all the love in the world, which was sweet and fine, was not love at all without its work, and that work could not exist without the kindness of hope."-Jack Kerouac
2250) "If there is any peace, it will come through being, not knowing."-Henry Miller
2251) "I think animal testing is a terrible thing. They get all nervous and give silly answers."-Stephen Fry
2252) "We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be."-May Sarton
2253) "Some people, when you look in their eyes, there is nothing much happening, most people have varying degrees of something; but her, it was like there was a fire burning behind her eyes, they were so full and alive and intelligent."-Wesley Morgan
2254) "Sex on television doesn't hurt - unless you fall off."-Garrison Keillor
2255) "Those with the greatest awareness have the greatest nightmares."-Gandhi
2256) "It is not enough to be compassionate. You must act."-Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
2257) "When you're going through hell, keep going."-Winston Churchill
2258) "We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our touch, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit."-E.E. Cummings
2259) "Perhaps someday we will come to regard our children not as creatures to manipulate or to change but rather as messengers from a world we once deeply knew but which we have long since forgotten, who can reveal to us more about the true secrets of life, and also our own lives, than our parents were ever able to."-Alice Miller
2260) "Sometimes life gives us lessons sent in ridiculous packaging..."-Dar Williams, "The Pointless, Yet Poignant, Crisis of a Co-ed"
2261) "The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling."-Jack Kerouac
2262) "Peace will come when the power of love overcomes the love of power."-Jimi Hendrix
2263) "Mankind should put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind."-John F. Kennedy
2264) "You don't learn from experiences on your own. Sometimes you need other people to help show you the way."-Sara Shenkan
2265) "How peaceful life would be without love, how safe, how tranquil, and how dull."-The Name of the Rose
2266) "I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be."-Douglas Adams
2267) "What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen each other in all labour, to minister to each other in all sorrow, to share with each other in all gladness, to be one with each other in the silent unspoken memories."-George Elliot
2268) "The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions."-Alfred Adler
2269) "How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks."-Marcus Aurelius
2270) "It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis."-Margaret Bonnano
2271) "It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to."-William Clinton
2272) "I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination."-John Keats
2273) "So long as we are loved by others I should say that we are almost indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend."-Robert Louis Stevenson
2274) "If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love."-Percy Bysshe Shelley
2275) "Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it...It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more."-Erica Jong
2276) "'I hurt.'/ 'So What?' said the mother./ 'I grieve.'/ 'Your point?' said the dad./ I tell them all about my pain,/ And how I feel quite sad./ But no one really listens,/ No one really sees,/ No one was really quite prepared,/ Cause it was only me./ 'Oh my heart, my heart!'/ Cries the mother./ 'Oh damn, God Damn!'/ Cries the dad./ As they see my broken body./ They thought depression was a fad."-Beth Coulter, "Broken Toy"
2277) "oh darlin'/ you need to withhold your judgements/ from my flighty love life/ before you have some steel-toed faeries/ stompin' on your head/ your co-dependency/ could never comprehend/ my massive appreciation/ of the male species.../ ... or the female species, for that matter/ i'm just a kid in a candy store/ and i could stand drooling for hours/ without coming closer to a decision/ without getting a single thing/ into my mouth.../ if a hundred sparks set me on fire/ the number of flames/ wouldn't diminish the depth/ of any single burn/ i enjoy being burnt to a crisp/ with constantly burning embers/ stoking an ever present thirst/ it makes each single sip of water/ an answer to ferverent desparate prayer/ don't warn your friends to dig fire circles/ i'll burn them through just the same."-Jennifer Dawn Crispin
2278) "Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from poor judgement."
2279) "The measure of one's real character is what they would do if they would never be found out."
2280) "Blessed are those that can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused."
2281) "I quote others only to better express myself."-Michel de Montaigne
2282) "Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."-Martin Luther King, Jr.
2283) "While we're repealing those gun laws let's repeal those murder laws too/ We don't want some government red tape telling us what to do/ The jails are full, there is no doubt/ We don't wanna let one of those drug fiends out/ And if those illegal aliens are killing each other now and then/ It's cheaper than educating them/ And it makes good sense to me/ I'm tired of all those PC liberals, tired of the fuss they've made/ Every time some family man's just called a spade a spade/ Clutter our TV's, clutter our courts/ Every time some dame gets a poke in the shorts/ I'll be damned if I'll do my job for a faggot or some foreign slob/ They can find some democrat to rob/ It makes good sense to me/ Arts endowments waste of my hard earned loot/ Adios NPR, howdy Jesse and Newt/ Now if some pretty little lady gets herself knocked up good/ She'll have to have that baby just because we think she should/ In whose sick mind did it ever occur/ That a choice like that should be up to her/ They're a godless bunch, a cross we bear/ But as soon as that little tike draws air/ We can wash our hands of the whole affair/ Makes good sense to me/ Our contract here is well defined/ We can leave this bullshit far behind/ With a stingy hand and a narrow mind/ Makes good sense/ Makes good sense/ Makes good sense to me"-Cheryl Wheeler, "Makes Good Sense To Me"
2284) "There is a difference between saying, 'The accordion is flat' and 'You are a terrible musician and your mother is ugly.' Fun does not necessarily mean good. If a note is flat, it is flat no matter how much fun you had singing it."-Bonnianne
2285) "A dream is an answer to a question that we haven't yet learned how to ask."-Fox Mulder on X-Files
2286) "There is nothing more marvelous or madder than real life."-E.T.A. Hoffmann
2287) "Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing."-Bill Cosby
2288) "I love books. And isn't it funny that little black marks on paper can be so good?"-Dibs
2289) "My life has been a roller coaster of virtual paradise and verifiable hell. If I have acquired any wisdom along the way, it is because I have made so many mistakes. I tell myself this is not altogether bad. The burnt child shuns the fire; and the individual with a resume of errors is bound to be a bit wiser than one who merely tiptoes through life, afraid to take chances. At least, I hope this is true."-Ken Carey
2290) "The poet, gentle Creature as he is,/ Hath, like the Lover, his unruly times,/ His fits when he is neither sick nor well,/ Though no distress be near him but his own/ Unmanageable thoughts..."-William Wordsworth
2291) "There is a comfort in the strenth of love;/ 'Twill make a thing endurable, which else/ Would overset the brain, or break the heart..."-William Wordsworth
2292) "...hate doesn't grow in a vacuum. It can't grow unless we allow it to. It grows on fear and it grows on silence."-Gabi Clayton
2293) "The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions."-Oliver Wendell Holmes, MD
2294) "Work is the curse of the drinking class."-Oscar Wilde
2295) "I drink to make other people interesting."-George Jean Nathan
2296) "In America the young are always ready to give those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience."-Oscar Wilde
2297) "After you've been to college for a while, you start to expect yourself to like or dislike a poem for certain stock specific reasons, because whenever you're in a poetry class and it's discussion time and you raise your hand to say that you like a poem, the professor will ask you What You Like About It and you have to have some kind of definitive answer, in order to get a class discussion going, otherwise you're going to look really dumb in front of a lot of other literary-type people. If you say, 'I don't know really, I just like it a lot,' then there'll be some awkward silence while the other students all think snickeringly in tandem, 'Man, that dude just doesn't get it.' What's the 'It,' though? I used to kind of be really nervous about establishing what 'It' was about a lot of poems that I liked, and then I'd get frustrated because I also always thought that it sounded really stupid to spout off the same specific reasons for liking poems -- because believe me, in class, you hear the same things over and over again, like 'I like the imagery' (that's #1) or 'the poem really flows,' or it's the metaphors or the symbolism or the sounds or the way that x plays off y, etc., etc. Whatever. Stock answers. It's in the same genus of stock response as the ones you hear out of bourgeois-types at art galleries: 'I love his use of color.' (That one makes me laugh endlessly -- Leo even says it in 'Titanic.') 'Wow, I really like the composition of this one.' 'Look at the play of light and shadow.' Uh-huh. Even on the off-chance that I DO like a painting because of its color or its contrasts, I'd at least try to find another way to say it than what they say on every museum tour and in every Introduction To Art. Or do I even NEED to say it? Or anything? One thing I've learned from college (and I probably didn't need to get the parents to shell out all the exorbitant amounts of tuition to get this particular nugget of wisdom) is that verbal appreciation can only go so far. At some point, you start liking a poem or a painting for reasons that you yourself just don't understand. You're just not supposed to be able to articulate exactly WHY you like certain things in art or literature or whatever. It just makes you feel a certain way, and if you try to put that feeling into what few and feeble words we have at our disposal, you sort of cheapen the whole thing."-Scott "Scotch" Herman
2298) "Good poetry can communicate before it is understood."-T.S. Eliot
2299) "Guys are not perfect, but we're simple. If we don't call you back, we really don't like you. If we don't call you back, but do all of a sudden, we want sex."-Chicks Suck Guy
2300) "each time you'd pull down the driveway i wasn't sure when i would see you again yours was a twisted blind sided highway no matter which road you took then oh you set up your place in my thoughts moved in and made my thinking crowded now we're out in the back with the barking dogs my heart the red sun your heart the moon clouded i could go crazy on a night like tonight when summer's beginning to give up her fight and every thought's a possibility and voices are heard but nothing is seen why do you spend this time with me maybe an equal mystery so what is love then is it dictated or chosen does it sing like the hymns of 1000 years or is it just pop emotion and if it ever was there and it left does it mean it was never true and to exist it must elude is that why i think these things of you...but you like the taste of danger it shines like sugar on your lips and you like to stand in the line of fire just to show you can shoot straight from your hip there must be 1000 things you would die for i can hardly think of two but not everything is better spoken aloud not when i'm talking to you oh the pirate gets the ship and the girl tonight breaks a bottle to christen her basking in the exploits of her thief she's a very good listener maybe that's all that we need is to meet in the middle of impossibility we're standing at opposite poles equal partners in a mystery we're standing at opposite poles equal partners in a mystery"-Emily Saliers, "Mystery"