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All I Quotes

“I ask him to pull the buttermilk sourdough; I'd taken several of my wet starters, fed them vigorously yesterday, and created three different dough variations early this morning, giving them time to rise. "The green bowl." "Yeah, okay," he grumbles. "And I'll take care of the onions," Xavier says. "Why do you need them?" "Ciabatta," Jude says. "Dough." I point to the door. He goes and I show Xavier the container of goat cheese. "I need something splashy. I thought a caramelized onion and Chèvre ciabatta." "Using the buttermilk starter as a base?" "I consistently get the biggest rooms with it." "You need a third ingredient, I think. Apricots?" I nod toward the other table. "Scott's going sweet already. I'll stay savory for contrast. Sun-dried tomato?" "Meh. Expected.”

“I ask, “How may I be of service? Why are you here to see me?” I put a slight emphasis on “me,” and they respond to that, first. “You ask us to come,” they intone, in unison. Considering for a moment, I chuckle. “Yeah, I guess so,” I reply. “But, why now? And, I can’t be the only one inviting you. So why come to me?” I repeat. They make those amused sounds again (at least, that’s what I think they are) and do not respond further. I shrug and ask, “Will you help us humans? I have lots of questions.” “We have lots of answers,” one of them says.”

“I ask how much the mafia pays to carry out murders. Fríjol tells me without stopping for a moment. One thousand pesos. That is about $85. The figure seems so ludicrous that I check it out in several other interviews up in the barrios with former and active gang members. They all say the same thing. One thousand pesos to carry out a killing. The price of a human life in Juárez is just $85. To traffic drugs is no huge step to the dark side. All kinds of people over the world move narcotics and don’t feel they’ve crossed a red line. But to take a human life. That is a hard crime. I can at least comprehend assassins killing to jump from poverty to riches. But for someone to take a life for just $85—enough to eat some tacos and buy a few beers over the week—shows a terrifying degradation in society. To try to get a handle on how this has happened, I talk to social worker Sandra Ramirez at a youth center in the westside slums. Sandra grew up in the barrios and worked on assembly lines before trying to steer young people away from crime. She says the teenage sicarios are the result of systematic alienation over the last two decades. The slums were a convenient place for factory workers but got nothing from the government. As the factory jobs slumped with the economy, the slums were left to rot. One 2010 study found that a stunning 120,000 Juárez youngsters aged thirteen to twenty-four—or 45 percent of the total—were not enrolled in any education nor had any formal employment. “The government offers nothing. It can’t even compete with a thousand pesos. It is only the mafia that comes to these kids and offers them anything. They offer them money, cell phones, and guns to protect themselves. You think these kids are going to refuse? They have nothing to lose. They only see the day-to-day. They know they could die and they say so. But they don’t care. Because they have lived this way all their lives.”

“I ask Mom if love ever made her feel alone. If it ever made her feel like she was starving in a room full of food. She laughs. 'Only every day.' She leans over to me, across the gap between us, so that the side of her head touches mine....She whispers something, but I can't hear the words. 'I never thought I'd be the type of person who would do that to someone,' I say. 'Now it's exactly what I am. Forever.' Mom nods. 'It's always like that.' 'What do you mean?' I ask. 'Whenever I've made a choice in my life, a real choice...I can always feel the change, after I choose. The better versions of myself, moving just out of reach.' It's exactly what I think. So there's nothing to say.... 'I'm always losing better versions of myself,' she says. 'I don't know. You just have to keep trying.' [Kaui, in conversation with her mother Malia]”

“I ask my assistants if they're retarded all the time. When the camera is on you, of course, actors have the ability to make it real. For me, if I'm not talking, it is a problem. I have so much more respect for actors after being in front of the camera, and I realize that the hardest part is when you're not talking. Listening is harder than just acting. Listening is the hardest part.”

“I ask myself a lot how other women can be against the ideology that has to do with women empowering other women. Going along with the access of power and the status quo and forging a special position and the thought process that goes: I am not like those women. When it comes to things like assault, for example, perhaps it makes them feel safer. It's the denial: I'm okay. This won't happen to me. Acknowledging that the world is a profoundly unsafe for women is a scary thought.”

“I ask myself how I could give in to this perpetual vertigo that I in fact provoked and feared. I floated among erratic clouds and talked to myself in front of the mirror in the vain hope of confirming who I was. My delirium was so great that during a student demonstration complete with rocks and bottles, I had to make an enormous effort not to lead it as I held up a sign that would sanctify my truth: I am mad with love.”

“I ask myself what is the sound of women? What is the word for that still thing I have hunted inside them for so long? Deep inside the avalanche of joy, the thing deeper in the dark, and deeper still in the bed where we are lost. Deeper, deeper down where a woman's heart is holding its breath, where something very far away in that body is becoming something we don't have a name for.”

“I ask of each Mason, of each member, of each brother, that he shall remember ever that there is upon him a peculiar obligation to show himself in every respect a good citizen; for after all, the way he can best do his duty by the ancient order to which he belongs is by reflecting credit upon that order by way in which he performs his duty as a citizen of the United States.”

“I ask of you your lives,” Elend said, voice echoing, “and your courage. I ask of you your faith, and your honor—your strength, and your compassion. For today, I lead you to die. I will not ask you to welcome this event. I will not insult you by calling it well, or just, or even glorious. But I will say this. “Each moment you fight is a gift to those in this cavern. Each second we fight is a second longer that thousands of people can draw breath. Each stroke of the sword, each koloss felled, each breath earned is a victory! It is a person protected for a moment longer, a life extended, an enemy frustrated!” There was a brief pause. “In the end, they will kill us,” Elend said, voice loud, ringing in the cavern. “But first, they shall fear us!”

“I ask particularly that those of you who are now in school will prepare yourselves to bear the burden of leadership over the next 40 years here in the United States, and make sure that the United States - which I believe almost alone has maintained watch and ward for freedom - that the United States meet its responsibility. That is a wonderful challenge for us as a people.”

“I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.”