“One can slide between poor and rich, the difference as slight as between paper and parchment, one voice and a choir, arms hanging by sides and a hug.”
Source: Borrowed Names: Poems About Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madam C.J. Walker, Marie Curie, and Their Daughters
“Suppose a country starts its independence with the three economic characteristics that globally make a country prone to civil war: low income, slow growth, and dependence upon primary commodity exports. It is playing Russian roulette. That is not just an idle metaphor: the risk that a country in the bottom billion falls into civil war in any five-year period is nearly one in six, the same risk facing a player of Russian roulette.”
Source: The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
“En el aspecto social, la inclusión es el principio básico. Nuestro lema son los pobres primero y para los pobres los mejores instrumentos, los mejores maestros, las mejores infraestructuras. La cultura para los pobres no puede ser una pobre cultura. Debe ser grande, ambiciosa, refinada, avanzada, nada de sobras. Además, ellos multiplican su efecto, porque son enormemente agradecidos ante el esfuerzo. No es práctico incorporar a su vida esa faceta como si fuera un florero.”
“Last year I pledged to give the majority of my wealth back to the society that helped generate it, to do it thoughtfully, to get started soon, and to keep at it until the safe is empty. There's no question in my mind that anyone's personal wealth is the product of a collective effort, and of social structures which present opportunities to some people, and obstacles to countless others.”
“When they had gone Demelza said:' There is so much wealth in London! Did you see that- those diamonds! And yet there is so little.'
'Little what?'
'Wealth. Those faces as we came in! They would fight for a sixpence. Sometimes I think- what little I've seen, Ross - it's as if London's half at war with itself.”
Source: The Angry Tide
“Death by Starvation or Boredom”
Many toil for scraps and cheap wages, surviving one fragile breath at a time— just one more breath...
While others, bloated with excess, labor only to escape boredom, pretending they’re saving a world drowning in the greed they created, and the power they refuse to let go.
The first walks a tightrope between breath and hunger. The second, cushioned by comfort, drifts closer to spiritual starvation, their soul numbed by excess.
And here lies the cruel symmetry— fate, with its blunt hands, levels the field by offering death either way: starvation... or boredom.
But the greatest tragedy belongs to those who die of both.”
Source: سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]
“Taxi Driver”
There’s a strange kind of liberation in being just a taxi driver— the freedom tucked inside that word: just.
Because you’re just a driver, no one truly sees you. Yet you see it all— the absurdities, the shallows, the beauty, sorrow, joy, heartbreak—passengers unknowingly exposed.
They grant you a diluted respect, sometimes half-fake, sometimes not at all— because you’re just a taxi driver.
But they leave you be. No one's scheming to steal your seat. They want you in that seat. They ride with you because, for now, it’s a seat they don’t desire.
Still, like all fleeting liberations, this too carries disappointment— a bittersweet sting.
You realize the only reason they leave you alone is because you've escaped into a seat they never wanted in the first place. And that hurts.”
Source: سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]
“That such Shantytowns exist is a sorrowful reflection upon the state of society. The throwing into jail of men broken by experience and the burning of their wretched places of habitation will not solve the economic problem. Nor is it likely to lead to the solution of the most macabre mystery in Cleveland’s history.”
Source: Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher: Hunting America's Deadliest Unidentified Serial Killer at the Dawn of Modern Criminology
“If you are rich and full-fed, don’t laugh
at the impulsiveness of the poor.
They were not acting from their souls,
but they were acting out of some necessity.”
Source: The Essential Rumi
“Respect other people's feelings. It might mean nothing to you, but it could mean everything to them.”