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Quote by Steven Magee

“When I watch rioters throwing missiles at riot police, I think to myself: What kind of idiot would want to be a police officer?”

Quote by Steven Magee

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Steven Magee

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“Do you ever feel as if you wear armor, day after day? That when people look at you, they see only the shine of steel that you've so carefully encased yourself in? They see what they want to see in you—the warped reflection of their own face, or a piece of the sky, or a shadow cast between buildings. They see all the times you've made mistakes, all the times you've failed, all the times you've hurt them or disappointed them. As if that is all you will ever be in their eyes.”

“Once Rayya got clean and sober, she never judged people, no matter how badly they were acting out. She never condemned them—not even when she was angry or frustrated with them, not even when she was setting boundaries with them—because she knew what it was like to be at the very bottom. She knew what it was like to be feared and despised. She knew what it was like to live completely outside of your own integrity, a million miles away from your heart. As she said to me once, “Until you’ve stolen money from your father’s wallet to buy heroin while he was sick in a hospital bed, you don’t know what it feels like to need to be forgiven.” She also used to say, “Mercy is what I owe, because mercy is what I always needed—and mercy is what I have been given.”

“The military estate is the most honored. But what is war, what is needed for success in military affairs, what are the morals of military society? The aim of war is killing, the instruments of war are espionage, treason and the encouragement of it, the ruin of the inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to supply the army; deception and lying are called military stratagems; the morals of the military estate are absence of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty, depravity, and drunkenness. And in spite of that, it is the highest estate, respected by all . . . the one who has killed the most people gets the greatest reward . . . They come together . . . to kill each other, they slaughter and maim tens of thousands of men, and then they say prayers of thanksgiving for having slaughtered so many people . . . and proclaim victory, supposing that the more people slaughtered, the greater the merit. How does God look down and listen to them! . . . Ah, dear heart, lately it has become hard for me to live. I see that I've begun to understand too much. And it's not good for man to taste of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil . . . Well, it won't be for long!”

“The Russian reader in old cultured Russia was certainly proud of Pushkin and of Gogol, but he was just as proud of Shakespeare or Dante, of Baudelaire or of Edgar Allan Poe, of Flaubert or of Homer, and this was the Russian reader's strength. I have a certain personal interest in the question, for if my fathers had not been good readers, I would hardly be here today, speaking of these matters in this tongue.”

“Then there were times when Vassy compulsively yet touchingly would get very drunk and break down in great heaving sobs when we got home. No one could possibly understand what it meant to be a 'fucking Russian in America,' he sobbed. 'My fucking country, my beloved Russia,' he would cry. 'No one understands my country. You judge us, you condemn us, you believe we have swords in our teeth. You're so conditioned, so brainwashed, even more than we are. At least Russians know about America, not only bad things. And you here imagine Russia as a concentration camp! You don't like Commies! That's your problem. Now I hear Americans think 'Russian' is the same as evil, stupidity, idleness. That's dangerous! What about our culture, our music, our ingenuity, our patience, endurance--these are qualities, not drawbacks! Yes, we are fucking different, why not? Why should we be the same? Instead of trying to change each other, why don't we simply tolerate our differences and enjoy similarities?”