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T Quotes

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All T Quotes

“Two TV sets are kept in front of each other, each tuned to a different channel. The presenter in one TV says, “How are you?” Then the presenter in other TV says, “I am fine.” This is a coincidence, not communication. People are TV sets tuned to their own unique channel. Communication is an illusion. This illusion breaks if you are in relationship with someone who is “very hard to communicate with.” Otherwise you keep living in the illusion your whole life.”

“Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping the outcomes [of the various societies' histories] towards success or failure: long-term planning and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives.”

“Two unusual examples of the Gemini type in the field of letters are Dante and Bernard Shaw. Dante wrote his Inferno so that he could show in luminous verbiage all his enemies roasting in the pits of perdition. The Shavian humor has about it the bite of shallowness. It is not the deep laughter of the gods who understand all, but the shallow titillating laughter of mortals who understand not even themselves.”

“Two unwritten rules of peacekeeping existed. You’d expect it would be easy to keep two rules, but I broke the first one. I had to break it to allow myself to live the passion that drove and controlled me, that distinguished one decision from another and determined where I drew my lines. I broke the rule to remain human.”

“Two visions of the world remain locked in dispute. The first believes all men are created equal by a loving God who has blessed us with freedom. The second vision believes that religion is opium for the masses. It believes that eternal principles like truth, liberty, and democracy have no meaning beyond the whim of the state. And [Vladimir] Lenin spoke for them.”

“Two voices are there: one is of the deep; It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep: And one is of an old half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep And, Wordsworth, both are thine.”

“TWO VOICES I own the dawn! the cockerel claims. The light still loiters with intent to take the night. Wind steals through woods, the democratic dew gives equal weight to everything. A few blank seconds and he starts again. He yawns and voice possesses him. I own all dawns! I stand on dignity! he shouts out, shut in the dark kingdom of his one-room flat. More pained possessive crazed each time he crows he has to wrench his larynx, curl his claws to let that shout surge through him. Glancing out I notice nothing answers except light, whose answer makes the earth's hairs stand on end and shadows fall full-length without a sound. What is the word for wordless, when the ground bursts into crickets? There's a creaking sound like speaking speeded up. A skeleton crawls across leaves, still in its cramped position. one minute stooping on a bending blade rubbing its painful elbows, next minute made of pinged elastic, flying hypertense, speaking in several languages at once. not like a mouth might speak, more like two hands make whispered contact through their finger-ends, like light itself which absent-mindedly brushes the grass and speaks by letting be, but when you duck down suddenly and stare into the startled stems, there's nothing there.”

“Two weeks after having Bandit I was in a recording studio. I hadnt yet really fully understood what being a dad was and, man, I was exhausted. But she is 17 months now. Shes running, shes been running for a long time. Shes inspired me a great deal for the record. She even goes Wow Daddy! when I play to her.”

“Two weeks after the arrested I was on the phone with my wife and we said a prayer and I was crying and just so happy, I can't even explain it. It was euphoric. People said I went from freedom my whole life to prison, but in reality, I went from imprisonment and bondage of sin and death my whole life, to finding freedom in a prison cell.”

“Two weeks ago, Aaron and Isaac, I learned your mother Laura has breast cancer. My heart feels impaled. These words, so useless and feeble. Laura is only thirty-five years old. Her next birthday will be in only three days. I write this letter to you, my sons, with the hope that one day in the future you will read it and understand what happened to our family. Together, your mother and I have created and nurtured an unbreakable bond that has transformed us into an unlikely team. A Chicano from El Paso, Texas. A Jew from Concord, Massachusetts. I want you to know your mother. She has given me hope when I have felt none; she has offered me kindness when I have been consumed by bitterness. I believe I have taught her how to be tough and savvy and how to achieve what you want around obstacles and naysayers. Our hope is that the therapies we are discussing with her doctors will defeat her cancer. But a great and ominous void has suddenly engulfed us at the beginning of our life as a family. This void suffocates me.”

“Two weeks ago my mountain of mail delivered forth a pipsqueak mouse of a letter from a well-known publishing house that wanted to reprint my story “The Fog Horn” in a high school reader. In my story, I had described a lighthouse as hav­ing, late at night, an illumination coming from it that was a “God-Light.” Looking up at it from the view-point of any sea-creature one would have felt that one was in “the Presence.” The editors had deleted “God-Light” and “in the Presence.” Some five years back, the editors of yet another anthology for school readers put together a volume with some 400 (count ‘em) short stories in it. How do you cram 400 short stories by Twain, Irving, Poe, Maupassant and Bierce into one book? Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito—out! Every simile that would have made a sub-moron’s mouth twitch—gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate writer—lost! Every story, slenderized, starved, bluepenciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe read like Shakespeare read like Dostoevsky read like—in the finale—Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been ra­zored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant’s attention—shot dead. Do you begin to get the damned and incredible picture? How did I react to all of the above? By “firing” the whole lot. By sending rejection slips to each and every one. By ticketing the assembly of idiots to the far reaches of hell.”

“Two weeks later General Kaledin received a deputation from his troops. 'Will you,' the asked, 'promise to divide the estates of the Cossack landlords among the working Cossacks?' 'Only over my dead body,' responded Kaledin. A month later, seeing his army melt away before his eyes, Kaledin blew out his brains. And the Cossack movement was no more...”

“Two weeks of thinking I’d sort it out tomorrow, what came next. Eating crisps in bed or in the bath and getting a headache from all the salt. Daytime telly on as if it can keep you warm—the kind that lets you know there’s worse things than death. There’s nowt so dangerous as a room with no view. Started seeing things in the popcorn ceiling. Every sad bastard thought come to life, stretching near forty years, and they went on and on, filling the room like a leaking oven, finding a gap under the door and flooding out till my head felt the size of the world.”