“To walk into Bill Olsen's poems is to enter a mind so weirdly curious, you can't be released to sadness, not yet: it's just too surprising. But this book-half microscope, half telescope-shadows grief, our shared and ordinary life where an old neighbor obsessively gathers twigs to wish back the tree, where the moon is regularly ‘sawn in half,’ where sprinklers give off ‘little wet speeches.’ What else? It's brilliantly instead and odd.” GivingMindLittlesBookWishWalksGriefHalfTreeSadnessMoonSpeechOrdinaryShadowBillsNeighborCuriousOddSurprisingWetOrdinary LifeTelescopesMicroscopesTwigs Author:Marianne Boruch
“We, all of us in the First World, have participated in something of a binge, a half century of unbelievable prosperity and ease. We may have had some intuition that it was a binge and the earth couldn't support it, but aside from the easy things (biodegradable detergent, slightly smaller cars) we didn't do much. We didn't turn our lives around to prevent it. Our sadness is almost an aesthetic response - appropriate because we have marred a great, mad, profligate work of art, taken a hammer to the most perfectly proportioned of sculptures.” WorldFirstsMayArtEarthTurnsEasyHalfSupportTakenOur LivesSadnessCenturyCarMadResponseProsperityIntuitionEaseAppropriateWorks Of ArtAestheticConsumerismUnbelievableSculptureHammersOverconsumptionEasy ThingsBingeBiodegradable Author:Bill McKibben
“Most men spend the first half of their lives making the second half miserable.” MenFirstsHalfSadnessMiseryMiserable Author:Jean de la Bruyere
“In my heart, there was joy mixed with sadness: joy that the nations atlast acknowledged that we are a nation with a state, and sadness that we lost half of the country, Judea and Samaria, and , in addition, that we [would] have[in our state] 400,000 [Palestinian] Arabs.” HeartCountryStatesJoyLostNationsHalfSadnessMy HeartPalestinian Author:David
“The great sadness of my life is that I never achieved the hour newscast, which would not have been twice as good as the half-hour newscast, but many times as good.” Has BeensLife IsHoursHalfSadnessGood WorkWorkoutHalf Hours Author:Walter Cronkite
“Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists... When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.” IfsLoveLifeFeelsFirstsHas BeensTwoBookTodayLostHalfImagineSadnessSadAbsenceVolumeMissing SomeoneIncompleteOther HalfFeeling LonelyLack Of LoveIncompletenessAbsence Love Author:Edmond de Goncourt
“When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and joy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us; every experience had that degree of directness and absoluteness which joy and sadness still have in the mind of a child” WorldYearsMindChildrenStillsJoyHalfHistoryGreaterSadnessEventsThousandDegreesDistanceFortuneThousand YearsGood And BadOutlinesBad FortuneJoy And Sadness Author:Johan Huizinga
“If I look at my own recordings, I think generally there is a focal point within the song and often it's the instrumental bridge or a guitar solo where we try to do something unexpected, something beautiful or weird, or beautiful because it is weird. And of course I fail half the time, but yes that is the goal, to create even a few seconds of bliss, or sadness. The electric guitar is a great instrument for doing this because it is capable of surprising you. There are so many different sounds available.” IfsThinkingTryingLooksDifferentBeautifulSongCoursesSoundGoalMy OwnHalfFailingSadnessCapableInstrumentsGuitarAvailableBridgesBlissUnexpectedSecondsSurprisingElectricSoloSomething BeautifulElectric GuitarFocal PointGuitar SolosSomething Unexpected Author:Dean Wareham
“I know that my job is to perform, it wouldn't be a very interesting show if I just came out one day and said, "I'm going to sit here in a ball and rock back and forth. And won't you join me for a half hour of sadness."” IfsKnowsSaidShowsJobsHoursInterestingHalfSadnessRocksOne DayBallsVery InterestingBack And ForthHalf Hours Author:Jon Stewart
“Looking at the elementary schoolers in their colorful T-shirts from various day camps, Percy felt a twinge of sadness. He should be at Camp Half-Blood right now, settling into his cabin for the summer, teaching sword-fighting lessons in the arena, playing pranks on the other counselors. These kids had no idea just how crazy a summer camp could be.” ShouldIdeasKidsFightingFeltHalfBloodSadnessCrazyTeachingLessonsRight NowSummerVariousNostalgiaNo IdeaSettlingShirtsCampsArenaT ShirtColorfulCounselorCabinsPranksSummer Camp Author:Rick Riordan
“You think you need me, little firecracker?” The gruff question travels all the way through me, and I have to press my thighs together to stop the tremor in me. “Baby, the way you need me can only barely cover half of the way I need you.” The unexpected sadness in his voice yanks my gaze back to his.” ThinkingWayNeedsLittlesTogetherVoiceHalfSadnessBabyPressesUnexpectedNeed YouThighsI Need YouFirecracker Author:Katy Evans
“No one is as real to me as people in the novel. It grows like a living thing. When I realize they do not exist except in my mind I have a feeling of sadness, looking around for them, as if the half-empty cafe were a place I had once come to with friends who had all moved away.” PeopleIfsMindRealFeelingsGrowsRealizingHalfNovelSadnessEmptyMovedLiving ThingsCafesHalf Empty Author:Mavis Gallant
“Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when Joy is the fundamental thing in him, and Grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive state of mind; Praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; Joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live? Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this, that by its creed Joy becomes something gigantic, and Sadness something special and small.” MenWayShouldMindSoulStatesChristianJoyGriefHalfChristianitySadnessSpecialEmotionalLaborAll ThingsPraiseFundamentalsInstinctInnocentPermanentHolidayOrthodoxMelancholyPessimismState Of MindCreedsSuperficialRight WayOrthodox ChristianSomething SpecialFugitive Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton