Book Quotes

“You are to be in all things regulated and governed,’ said the gentleman, ‘by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don’t walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don’t find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use,’ said the gentleman, ‘for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.’”
Hard Times by Charles Dickens

“Liza once saw a game show where a man stood in a Plexiglass box, and dollar bills swirled around him in a miniature tornado, and thought, Life is Like That: you can keep whatever you catch, but it’s all whipping sideways past your head so f***ing fast, and how were you supposed to tell which were the big bills and which were the small? How could one train for such an infuriatingly stupid challenge? How could anybody catch all the beauty in the Present Moment, when, after years of misery, there was suddenly a day when all the wonderfulness of life unexpectedly blew down from all directions all at once? And how were you supposed to store joy, for the ugly days when the bleakness returned?”
Colors Insulting to Nature by Cintra Wilson

"Buffaloes have cowbirds
that follow the herds.
The buffaloes help the birds,
and the birds help the buffaloes.
Crocodiles have those birds that
clean their teeth.
Pilot fish follow ships and sharks,
eating up scraps.
And comets have metal eaters."
B-9, the Hungry Metal Eater by Ester Hauser Laurence