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W Quotes

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All W Quotes

“When John Kennedy was assassinated I was twenty-three, a stockbroker on Wall Street and married, and I never ever thought that politics would be anything that I would be a part of. But I realized that I had to get involved. Then, when Martin Luther King was assassinated and the Vietnam War was raging, I felt that my world was falling apart. I had these two beautiful children - three and one - and I just said, "I have to make it better."”

“When Johnny came to Baltimore the same time I came we were rookies. He did have some pro experience. He did go with the Pittsburgh Steelers and they cut him. I had no pro experience. My thing was that hey I got to make this team. Johnny Unitas wasn't Johnny Unitas.He was just like every other quarterback. You couldn't see the things we know that evolved out of that years later. As the years went on I could really start to see him settle in that position. Fortunately for Johnny U., Weeb Ewbank was there and he worked with his quarterbacks. He had them knowing every aspect of the game.”

“When Josey woke up and saw the feathery frost on her windowpane, she smiled. Finally, it was cold enough to wear long coats and tights. It was cold enough for scarves and shirts worn in layers, like camouflage. It was cold enough for her lucky red cardigan, which she swore had a power of its own. She loved this time of year. Summer was tedious with the light dresses she pretended to be comfortable in while secretly sure she looked like a loaf of white bread wearing a belt. The cold was such a relief.”

“When Joy looked at humans, she saw animals so detached from the food chain that their own boredom was eating them alive. None of their instincts made sense to them; they were primates adorning themselves with skins and shiny things, all swagger and posturing with no idea what it's for. They were grotesque and ridiculous, and she loved them so, so much. They were all doing their best, and their best was just an appalling disaster. That was why she loved the nursing home; the residents were humans stripped of all their pumped-up self-regard, scared and forced to put their whole trust in someone else for the first time since childhood. How could you hate humanity after seeing them in that state, helpless and afraid, watching their strength trickle away? Even the worst of them, when reduced to that, become something that just needs to be fed and bathed and comforted. They begin that way, and they end that way, and you can't really get too mad about the stuff they do in the middle.”

“When judgement occurs, it sets up an interesting paradox. Other people’s judgements of us aren’t really about us; they’re about them and how they feel about themselves. After all, it’s their judgment.”

“When Julian ascended the throne, he declared his impatience to embrace and reward the Syrian sophist, who had preserved, in a degenerate age, the Grecian purity of taste, of manners and of religion. The emperor's prepossession was increased and justified by the discreet pride of his favourite.”

“When K. looked at the castle, often it seemed to him as if he were observing someone who sat quietly there in front of him gazing, not lost in thought and so oblivious of everything, but free and untroubled, as if he were alone with nobody to observe him, and yet must notice that he was observed, and all the same remained with his calm not even slightly disturbed; and really - one did not know whether it was cause or effect - the gaze of the observer could not remain concentrated there, but slid away.”

“When Kafka allows a friend to understand that he writes because otherwise he would go mad, he knows that writing is madness already, his madness, a kind of vigilence, unrelated to any wakefulness save sleep's: insomnia. Madness against madness, then. But he believes that he masters the one by abandoning himself to it; the other frightens him, and is his fear; it tears through him, wounds and exalts him. It is as if he had to undergo all the force of an uninterruptable continuity, a tension at the edge of the insupportable which he speaks of with fear and not without a feeling of glory. For glory is the disaster.”

“When Karl Marx elaborated upon the savage exploitation of workers by the capitalists, he described that due to extensive mechanization and division of labour, the work of the proletarians lost its exclusive character and became dull and monotonous increasing the repulsiveness of work while decreasing the wages. However, in the case of dowry extortion, the women are oppressed in multiple ways. The authoritative Brahminic ideology that propagates the dowry, forcibly extorts wealth from a woman and her family, mercilessly exploits her labour, and simultaneously deprives of her any wages or any monetary compensation for her extensive contribution behind the veil of labour of love and the rhetoric of sacrifices for the sake of family.”

“When Kate arrived, Alice offered her breakfast: strong coffee, coffee cake made from a sweet yeast dough, and bacon baked on a cookie sheet in the oven. When they finished eating, Alice handed Kate a black-and-white-speckled notebook filled with details about her childhood in North Carolina. With growing interest Kate read about the gentle slope of land upon which Alice's family built their farm and how in the mornings the dew looked like steam rising from the grass. She read about the pigs Alice's family raised, how they were finished on acorns, making their meat unbelievably silky. Kate read about Alice's mother's cooking, how she could turn the humblest ingredients into something magical: creamy chess pies, tender squirrel stew, butter nut cookies at Christmas time that were both salty and sweet.”