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Quote by Stanley Victor Paskavich

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Stanley Victor Paskavich

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“there’s no way I can sleep in any position with so much still unwritten about the glory of basements, where, with all the promise in crock pot boxes, small animals go to die, piles of laundry hide the machines, rusted tools fall into other rusted tools giving way to unsung sculpture, soiled playing cards and unmatched socks strewn atop a punched-out screen door make a shaggy parquet; and a famished, leggy fluorescent tube barely winks on the entire scene.”

“On this account I feel always, on a Saturday night, as though I also were released from some yoke of labour, had some wages to receive, and some luxury of repose to enjoy. For the sake, therefore, of witnessing, upon as large a scale as possible, a spectacle with which my sympathy was so entire, I used after, on Saturday nights, after I had taken opium, to wander forth, without much regarding the direction or the sistance, to all the markets, and other parts of London, to which the poor resort on a Saturday night, for laying out their wages. Many a family party, consisting of a man, his wife, and sometimes one or two of his children, have I listened to, as they stood consulting on their ways and means, or the strength of their exchequer, or the price of household articles. Gradually I became familiar with their wishes, their difficulties, and their opinions. Sometimes there might be heard murmers of discontent: but far oftener expressions on the countenance, or uttered in words, of patience, hope, and tranquillity. And taken generally, I must say, that, in this point at least, the poor are far more philosophic than the rich - that they show a more ready and cheerful submission to what they consider as irremediable evils, or irreparable losses. Whenever I saw occasion, or could do it without appearing to be intrusive, I joined their parties; and gave my opinion upon the matter in discussion, which, if not always judicious, was always received indulgently. If wages were a little higher, or expected to be so, or the quartern loaf a little lower, or it was reported that onions and butter were expected to fall, I was glad: yet, if the contrary were true, I drew from opium some means of consoling myself. For opium (like the bee, that extracts its materials indiscriminately from roses and from the soot of chimneys) can overrule all feelings into a compliance with the master key. Some of these rambles lead me to great distances: for an opium-eater is too happy to observe the motion of time.”

“Keep going. You can do it! The sky said, Leaning over, so I could hear her. When things are tough, I will give you a hand, The wind whispered. I will be with you, Sang the sea of blue. Keep going. You can do it! Wrote the young rose In my soul’s pose. You have it all Inside your core! Hummed the grove of trees, amid the Earth’s grand symphony. Keep going. You can do it!”

“Henry's also an insomniac. He suffers from Restless Leg Syndrome. I feel the sheets twitching as his legs move restlessly and think about how incredibly bourgeois we are, with our Sur La Table kitchenware, our Sundance catalogue lamps, our upper-middle class insomnia. Why can't we sleep, I wonder? We have enough to eat, we have a roof over our heads, we're not living in a mud hut sporting a thatch of gnarled leaves that barely cover our genitalia. I'm filled with self-loathing.”