Quotes by Editors - Page 15

She had responded to the loss of her husband, to poverty, to disease, and to family cruelty with boldness and ingenuity, by opening herself to others, especially to her children and her Church, pouring into these precious vessels her knowledge, hope, and devotion.
Philip Zaleski
This is one of the difficulties and pleasures of studying the Inklings; Christians all, they offer, along with the expected 20th-century psychological explanations for behavior, unexpected spiritual ones.
Philip Zaleski
C.S. Lewis had come to demand of his nightly prayers a "realization," "a certain vividness of the imagination and the affectations" – a sure recipe for sleeplessness and misery.
Philip Zaleski
The Inklings were comrades who have been touched by war, who view life through the lens of war, yet who look for hope and found it, in fellowship, where so many other modern writers and intellectuals saw only broken narratives, disfigurement, and despair.
Philip Zaleski
A Christian atmosphere is no protection against preening egos.
Philip Zaleski
Obedience appears to me more and more the whole business of life, the only road to love and peace.
Philip Zaleski
Fidelity in marriage requires self-will and self-denial.
Philip Zaleski
Shame and suffering, as St. Bernard says, are the two ladder-uprights which are set up to heaven, and between those two uprights are the rungs of all virtues fixed, by which one climbs to the joy of heaven… In these two things, in which is all penance, rejoice and be glad, for in return for these, twofold blisses are prepared: in return for shame honour; in return for suffering, delight and rest without end.
Philip Zaleski
A Christian's duty, Lewis believed, is not simply to tolerate "X" but to make life with "X" an occasion to work on one's own character flaws.
Philip Zaleski
It's not easy being a missionary, even with the key to the cosmos in your hand.
Philip Zaleski
The teacher-student relationship evaporated, replaced by a rich and lively exchange of equals.
Philip Zaleski
He would henceforth worship and defend the very reason for Joy, the Almighty Maker of Joy.
Philip Zaleski
Lewis spoke for almost every member when he said, "There is no sound I like better than adult male laughter.
Philip Zaleski
The Christian life does not just evolve. It also requires specific decisions and public commitments to deepen our faith and obedience.
Mark Galli
The Dispatcher had played with his phones, calling from one to the other. Then he put them all down and announced that he had them on "hold," a curious expression since it was the first time in half an hour he hadn't been holding one.
Robert Lynn Asprin
They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry.
Karl French
[L]ike people, ideas have social lives. They’re one way when they’re by themselves, and another when they’re surrounded by their peers. Crammed together, they grow more uncertain, more interesting, more surprising; they come out of themselves and grow more appealing, and funnier. You wouldn’t want all of intellectual life to be that social--we couldn’t make progress that way. But there’s a special atmosphere that develops whenever truly different ideas congregate, and, on the whole, it’s too rare.
Joshua Rothman
Sweezy argued on the basis of Marx and Keynes that “accumulation is the primary factor” in capitalist development, yet noted that its influence was waning. “There is no mechanism in the system,” he explained, “for adjusting investment opportunities to the way capitalists want to accumulate and no reason to suppose that if investment opportunities are inadequate capitalists will turn to consumption—quite the contrary.
John Bellamy Foster
Millions for defense, but not one cent for survival.
Alfred Bester
Every criminal would be an artist if he had the talent, and every artist would become a criminal if he had the guts.
Adam Langer
Everyone loves a dead artist. It’s the living ones that people can’t tolerate.
Christopher Bollen
An envy of that one consummate partSwept me, who mock. Whether I laugh or weep, Some inner silences are at my heart.
Léonie Adams
Beer bottles, whiskey bottles, brown glass, green. They fell to the lawn and I'd feel serene. Adam was king to my stilted queen.
Kate Bernheimer
The kind of poetry to avoid in the pretty-pretty kind that pleased our grandmothers, the kind that Longfellow and Tennyson, good poets at their best, wrote at their worst.
Clifton Fadiman
That's the thing about parents, I'm beginning to realize. You don't have to see them all that much to imitate them.
Leigh Newman
What made them particularly unusual was the way Steve presented them. He was rational and fluent and had given much thought to the problems he was discussing, although he had not thought about the implications of the thing – that this was socially deviant conduct of the highest order, involving injuries and maiming and the destruction of property., I don’t think he understood the implications; I don’t think he would have acknowledged them as valid.
Bill Buford
Memory was my drug of choice. -Pea Hicks
Larry Smith
If we are lucky enough, as I am, to be from time to time in quite close contact with young people, they can sometimes make it easier to hang on to this notion when they function, as every person does vis-a-vis every other person they come up against, as a mirror. Always we are being reflected in the eyes of others. Are we silly or sensible, stupid or clever, bad or good, unattractive or sexy...? We never stop being at least slightly aware of, if not actively searching for, answers to such questions, and are either deflated or elated, in extreme cases ruined or saved, by what we get. So if when you are old a beloved child happens to look at you as if he or she thinks (even if mistakenly!) that you are wise and kind: what a blessing! It's not that such a fleeting glimpse of yourself can convert you into wiseness and kindness in any enduring way; more like a good session of reflexology which, although it can cure nothing, does make you feel like a better person while it's going on and for an hour or two afterwards, and even that is well worth having. The more frequent such shots of self-esteem are, the more valuable they become, so there is a risk - remote, but possible - of their becoming addictive. An old person who doesn't enjoy having young people in her life must be a curmudgeon, but it is extremely important that she should remember that risk and watch her step. Or he, his.
Diana Athill
It was October in Pennsylvania and on the first morning the ground was frosted. As I walked to breakfast, some guy yelled out, ‘Thirteen inches in the Poconos.’‘Is that I porn film?’ I asked.
George Hodgman
They had buried him under our elm tree, they said -- yet this was not totally true. For he really lay buried in my heart.
Willie Morris
Having an achievement mindset is your competitive advantage
Maxine Phillips
It is hard to feel safe and comfortable when the only measures for what is safe and comfortable are normative ideas you don't abide by.
Samhita Mukhopadhyay
Sorrow has rushed over the world like the waters of the Deluge, and it will take time to recede. But already, there are small islands of - hope? Happiness? Something like them, at any rate.
Mary Ann Shaffer
Visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and next year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it.
Mary Ann Shaffer
Boredom is a powerful reason, and the prospect of fun is a powerful draw - especially when you are young.
Mary Ann Shaffer
Oh bell-dumb heart, it makes you a fool to think you were ever closer to opening up the world — to art, to breaking it apart — than those who came before. But knowing that can't make you read or breathe more slowly. Since when did you listen to anyone? To give up on motivation is to give up on the work we do with alphabet and light. It's not enough to hunt or haunt our parents' hearts; we must occupy our own.
Ander Monson
Taking a lifetime to grow up.
Larry Smith
Screw it. Bring on that sorry dragon!Comes down to it, I'll bet Hrundig knows a recipe for cooking the mangy beasts.
Eric Flint
I know this is scary. You're hungry and cold and you want to give up! But you can't turn on each other! Not now! Show me how brave you can be by pulling together! Do it for each other! That's the trick! Because when you reach out--when you extend yourself for other people-- that's when you're without fear!
Mark Waid
She swallowed his blood, a dark vintage from some forgotten cellar. She felt like Persephone in Hades, pomegranate seeds bursting against her teeth, juice rolling on her tongue, and the more she had, the more she hungered.
Holly Black
Could it really be this easy to land a handsome man? If so, why didn't I try it ages ago?
Steve Hockensmith
Has there always been someone like me to bury the bodies, to have regrets, to carry on after everyone else was dead?
Jeff VanderMeer
No trouble ever got fixed late at night," he said. "Midnight is for regrets.
Holly Black
Never be daunted in public' was an early Hemingway phrase that had more than once bolstered me in my timid twenties. I changed it resolutely to 'Never be daunted in private'.- M.F.K. Fisher "A Is for Dining Alone
Jenni Ferrari-Adler
What does an introvert do when he's left alone? He stays alone.
Jenni Ferrari-Adler
Plenty of things in the universe are old, my dear. That's like saying Florida is a metaphor for hell because they're both hot - though your grandfather would agree wholeheartedly with that, I suppose.
Sammy Nickalls
It is natural to speak of hymns as "poems," indiscriminately, for they have the same structure. But a hymn is not necessarily a poem, while a poem that can be sung as a hymn is something more than a poem. Imagination makes poems; devotion makes hymns. There can be poetry without emotion, but a hymn never. A poem may argue; a hymn must not. In short to be a hymn, what is written must express spiritual feelings and desires. The music of faith, hope and charity will be somewhere in its strain.
Hezekiah Butterworth
It's no fun to think about infinity and no cinche to write about it. Again, it helps to look for some human link.
William Zinsser
Herein lies the great difference between divine weakness and human weakness, the wounds of Christ and the wounds of man. Two human weaknesses only intensify each other. But human weakness plus Christ's weakness equals a supernatural strength.
Christian Wiman
The angels heralded the birth of the Savior, John the Baptist heralded the coming of the Savior, and we herald the gospel of the Savior.
Katy Kauffman
When we wallow in anxiety and doubts, we subject ourselves to fear. When we focus on the greatness of God, we make fear subject to faith.
Katy Kauffman
No," Foyle roared. "Let them hear this. Let them hear everything.""You're insane, man. You've handed a loaded gun to children.""Stop treating them like children and they'll stop behaving like children. Who the hell are you to play monitor?""What are you talking about?""Stop treating them like children. Explain the loaded gun to them. Bring it all out into the open." Foyle laughed savagely. "I've ended the last star-chamber conference in the world. I've blown that last secret wide open. No more secrets from now on.... No more telling the children what's best for them to know.... Let 'em all grow up. It's about
Alfred Bester
I should try to pass along the good that has happened to me. That’s my responsibility as being part of this planet.
Jameson Currier
Unwed white girls who became pregnant in the postwar years were considered psychologically disturbed but treatable, whereas their black counterparts were presumed to be biologically hypersexual and deviant. Historian Rickie Solinger demonstrates that in the 1950s an unwed white girl who became pregnant could go to a maternity home before her pregnancy showed, deliver the baby and give it up for adoption, and return home to her community with no one the wiser. (White parents concocted stories of their daughters being given the opportunity to study for a semester with relatives.) She could then resume the role of the "nice" girl.Unwed pregnant black girls, on the other hand, were barred from maternity homes; they were threatened with jail or termination of welfare; and they were accused of using their sexuality in order to be eligible for larger welfare checks. Politicians regarded unwed pregnant black girls as a societal problem, declaring--as they continue to declare today--that they did not want taxpayers to support black illegitimate babies, and sought to control black female sexuality through sterilization legislation.
Leora Tanenbaum
I believe it’s incredibly important to write against [racial] stereotypes. If we give in and make sure that all black women characters are asexual, gentle, and kind we wind up with another set of stereotypes.
Justine Larbalestier
Bennie's corner of Brooklyn looked different every time Sierra passed through it. She stopped at the corner of Washington Avenue and St. John's Place to take in the changing scenery. A half block from where she stood, she'd skinned her knee playing hopscotch while juiced up on iceys and sugar drinks. Bennie's brother, Vincent, had been killed by the cops on the adjacent corner, just a few steps from his own front door. Now her best friend's neighborhood felt like another planet. The place Sierra and Bennie used to get their hair done had turned into a fancy bakery of some kind, and yes, the coffee was good, but you couldn't get a cup for less than three dollars. Plus, every time Sierra went in, the hip, young white kid behind the counter gave her either the don't-cause-no-trouble look or the I-want-to-adopt-you look. The Takeover (as Bennie had dubbed it once) had been going on for a few years now, but tonight its pace seemed to have accelerated tenfold. Sierra couldn't find a single brown face on the block. It looked like a late-night frat party had just let out; she was getting funny stares from all sides--as if she was the out-of-place one, she thought. And then, sadly, she realized she was the out-of-place one.
Daniel José Older
The Sons of the Serpent - they want you angry. At the world. They need us all to feel like victims. And it's an easy get, because times suck. Every day is a battle. We all feel like we're on the wrong end of the wrecking ball. We feel at the mercy of forces beyond our control, and that makes us scared. And that's rocket fuel for S.O.B.'s like the Serpents. They prey on us when we're frightened. They tell us our enemies are the immigrants down the street, or the food stamp family next door. They encourage us to turn our fear into rage, and we fall for it because it's 'empowering.' Except it's not. We don't become 'empowered.' We become weaponized.
Mark Waid
When black fury meets white denial, you have the combustible and fundamentally changed race relations we live in today.
Ferial Haffajee
A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason.
Noah Webster
The Republican and Democratic parties both feed out of the same bag provided by the monied system, and where the list frequently differs the same interests are represented.
George Seldes