“Put 'em who threaten possessions and power together with 'em who offend our tastes in sex and dope. Those who're touched, put 'em in asylums. Pack off old ones to 'senior communities,' nursing homes. Our children? Keep'em prisoner, baby-sitter as warden. School? Good for fifteen to twenty years. Army afterward. Liberated, we live in prison. No this, no that. Kill us before we die!”
Source: M: Writings '67–'72
“Rich old people are more attractive than poor old people, so by all means, try to get rich before age sets in. Otherwise, you'll just be playing catch-up for the rest of your life and that will just wear you out, let me tell you.”
Source: The Sweet Potato Queens' Big-Ass Cookbook
“In the casual opinion of most Americans, I am an old man, and therefore of little account, past my best, fading in a pathetic diminuendo while flashing his AARP card; like the old in America generally, either invisible or someone to ignore rather than respect, who will be gone soon, and forgotten, a gringo in his degringolade.
Naturally I am insulted by this, but out of pride I don’t let my indignation show. My work is my reply, my travel is my defiance. And I think of myself in the Mexican way, not as an old man but as most Mexicans regard a senior, an hombre de juicio, a man of judgement; not ruco, worn out, beneath notice, someone to be patronized, but owed the respect traditionally accorded to an elder, someone (in the Mexican euphemism) of La Tercera Edad, the Third Age, who might be called Don Pablo or tio (uncle) in deference. Mexican youths are required by custom to surrender their seat to anyone older. They know the saying: Mas sabe el diablo por viejo, que por diablo - The devil is wise because he’s old, not because he’s the devil. But “Stand aside, old man, and make way for the young” is the American way.
As an Ancient Mariner of a sort, I want to hold the doubters with my skinny hand, fix them with a glittering eye, and say, “I have been to a place where none of you have ever been, where none of you can ever go. It is the past. I spent decades there and I can say, you don’t have the slightest idea.”
Source: On The Plain Of Snakes: A Mexican Journey
“I see you on television. You’ll jump through hoops to provide fast relief from painful athlete’s foot fungus.”
“That’s not me,” I tell her. “I get you a great deal on a new or used vehicle.”
Source: The Unteachables
“The experience of watching your garden grow gives you some idea of how future AI systems will feel when observing human life.”
Source: Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence
“they climbed their ladders to wheedle and prune the trees into holiness”
Source: In the Cities of Coin and Spice
“As adolescence begins, the second genetically programmed growth of synapses is followed by a long decade of brain remodeling that involves the programmed destruction of neurons and their connections that are not being used. The parcellation process in which connections are pruned is thought to be a 'use -it-or-lose-it' neural reshaping that is exacerbated by stress. Such a period of brain change is also marked by vulnerability , as underlying neural deficits, unrealized before adolescence, may becomes exposed during the pruning process.”
Source: The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being
“Christians are the branches, the ones who bear the grapes and thus the most visible producers in the grape-growing operation. But the branches cannot produce grapes on their own. If they are cut off the vine, they are useless. And they must be pruned every spring and protected from predators.”
Source: Life in the Trinity: An Introduction to Theology with the Help of the Church Fathers
“Laurel had watched him prune. Holding the shears in both hands, he performed a sort of weighty sarabande, with a lop for this side, then a lop for the other side, as though he were bowing to his partner, and left the bush looking like a puzzle.”
Source: The Optimist's Daughter
“Stand back. Forget what you read on the Internet. Attend to the tree before you. Observe the growth pattern of the tree. In Pruning, as in any good design, negative space plays an important role. Well-Pruned trees have an airy quality. Yuki Nara of the website Way of Maple says that a bird can fly through a well pruned Japanese maple- good standard for a fruit tree, too.”
Source: Grow a Little Fruit Tree: Simple Pruning Techniques for Small-Space, Easy-Harvest Fruit Trees