“Night came and fell hard.
Not like God drawing a blanket over our land
But like someone snuffing a candle.
Sudden and total.
Out—just like that.
Now we are waiting.
Waiting in the dark
To see if someone
Will switch on the light.
We can cower,
We can fear,
We can get lost together or
Get lost alone.
But the truth is:
I am the light. You are the light.
We are lit up together.
We are silhouettes of sunlight
cast against the night.
Shining now, let us
Shining, hold the light,
Shining, so that our families
Can find us.
Shining.”
― Emmy Laybourne, quote from Monument 14
“Your mother hollers that you're going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don't stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don't thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not- you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner.
Only, if it's the last you'll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you'd stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.
But the bus was barreling down our street so i ran.”
― Emmy Laybourne, quote from Monument 14
“Sometimes, when you'd least expect it, the grief would chop your legs out from under you.”
― Emmy Laybourne, quote from Monument 14
“Nuestro padre le había enseñado a analizar las cosas que temía.
Así que ir de trato o truco con él, cuando era pequeño, era como escuchar una reunión de información técnica: —Eso no es una bruja de verdad, es una figura de plástico con luces LED para los ojos y una pista pregrabada de chirridos.
Esas no son tumbas reales, sino que son de PVC moldeadas en forma de lápidas, con frases espeluznantes escritas por un escritor de bromas. Esos no son verdaderos demonios que vienen por la calle, esos son los chicos de laescuela secundaria vestidos con trajes que consiguieron en Walgreens o tal vez por medio de un pedido en línea...
Y todo el tiempo Alex había apretado mi mano, como si le ofreciera el último vínculo con la cordura. Me había gustado ser su protector, el que le hiciera sentirse seguro.
Razón por la cual me sentía aún peor por haberlo atacado.”
― Emmy Laybourne, quote from Monument 14
“I tell you, just when you think you know someone, she shows up looking pretty and carrying a guitar.”
― Emmy Laybourne, quote from Monument 14
“We ate it like it was medicine. Like it was magic candy that could somehow restore us to a normal life again. We ate ourselves numb and got in our bags and went to sleep.
There was a lot of crying from the little kids and occasionally one of us would yell, "Shut up!"
That's how we got by, that first night.”
― Emmy Laybourne, quote from Monument 14
“Now, anyway, we knew who was which blood type.
In addition to the beating he'd received from Chloe, Max was also starting to blister up (type A). The McKinley twins were hiding from us - they clearly had the paranoia (type AB). Ulysses was chattering to himself in Spanish, a rapid-fire monologue that made me pretty sure he had the paranoia type - type AB - as well as the twins.
Batiste had type B, the blood type that exhibited no symptoms, as did Alex, Jake, and Sahalia (sterility and reproductive failure - hooray!).
"We have to get them clean," Brayden said.
"You think?" I sort of shouted at him (type O).”
― Emmy Laybourne, quote from Monument 14
“All right," Jake said, clapping his hands. "Which one of you little punks is gonna teach me how to play Chutes and Ladders?”
― Emmy Laybourne, quote from Monument 14
“I started to sing.
Yes, sing.
"I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy. Yankee Doodle Do or die."
I let go of Henry and Caroline and started marching, like I was the leader of a parade.
"An old old something something la la la, born on the Fourth of July." So maybe I didn't know the words, exactly.
Alex joined in. Astrid, too. All three of us marching like idiots.
"You're my Yankee Doodle sweetheart, Yankee Doodle do or die."
I led the three of us, making up the words somewhat and we walked in front of the gate, getting between the eyes of the little kids and the plywood, just trying to break the terror spell of the monster outside.
Who now stared to yell, "YOU SINKING 'YANKEE DOODLE'? 'YANKEE DOODLE DANDY'? I'LL F--- KILL YOU!"
Niko joined in and that guy, I am here to tell you, is entirely tone deaf.
But the little kids kind of snapped to. We caught their attention.
"Yankee Doodle went to town a riding on a pony. I am a Yankee Doodle guy."
And the kids started marching and I led the parade, the saddest parade in the history of the world, away from the front of the store, away from the monster outside, and right to the stupid cookie and cracker aisle. We ate fudge-covered graham crackers for a good long while.”
― Emmy Laybourne, quote from Monument 14
“Our Father, who art in Heaven, Halloween Thy Name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive the breast passers, and forgive the breast passes against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.”
― Emmy Laybourne, quote from Monument 14
“There I saw Chloe, freshly bathed, wrapped in a towel, eating fun-size butterfingers one after another like a chain smoker and watching me like I was her soap opera.”
― Emmy Laybourne, quote from Monument 14
Emmy Laybourne
Born place: in Somerville, NJ, The United States
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“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
― quote from While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age During the Civil Rights Movement
“So the question arose now, as it had in the wake of the Mongol holocaust: if the triumphant expansion of the Muslim project proved the truth of the revelation, what did the impotence of Muslims in the face of these new foreigners signify about the faith?
With this question looming over the Muslim world, movements to revive Islam could not be extricated from the need to resurrect Muslim power. Reformers could not merely offer proposals for achieving more authentic religions experiences. They had to expound on how the authenticity they proposed would get history back on course, how their proposals would restore the dignity and splendor of the Umma, how they would get Muslims moving again toward the proper endpoint of history: perfecting the community of justice and compassion that flourished in Medina in the original golden moment and enlarging it until it included all the world.
Many reformers emerged and many movements bubbled up, but all of them can sorted into three general sorts of responses to the troubling question.
One response was to say that what needed changing was not Islam, but Muslims. Innovation, alterations, and accretions had corrupted the faith, so that no one was practicing the true Islam anymore. What Muslims needed to do was to shut out Western influence and restore Islam to its pristine, original form.
Another response was to say that the West was right. Muslims had gotten mired in obsolete religious ideas; they had ceded control of Islam to ignorant clerics who were out of touch with changing times; they needed to modernize their faith along Western lines by clearing out superstition, renouncing magical thinking, and rethinking Islam as an ethical system compatible with science and secular activities.
A third response was to declare Islam the true religion but concede that Muslims had certain things to learn from the West. In this view, Muslims needed to rediscover and strengthen the essence of their own faith, history and traditions, but absorb Western learning in the fields of science and technology. According to this river of reform, Muslims needed to modernize but could do so in a distinctively Muslim way: science was compatible with the Muslim faith and modernization did not have to mean Westernization.”
― Tamim Ansary, quote from Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
“The dilemma facing Bush and the Republicans was clear. If Marshall left, they could not leave the Supreme Court an all-white institution; at the same time, they had to choose a nominee who would stay true to the conservative cause. The list of plausible candidates who fit both qualifications pretty much began and ended with Clarence Thomas.
… There was awkwardness about the selection from the start. "The fact that he is black and a minority has nothing to do with this," Bush said. "He is the best qualified at this time." The statement was self-evidently preposterous; Thomas had served as a judge for only a year and, before that, displayed few of the customary signs of professional distinction that are the rule for future justices. For example, he had never argued a single case in any federal appeals court, much less in the Supreme Court; he had never written a book, an article, or even a legal brief of any consequence. Worse, Bush's endorsement raised themes that would haunt not only Thomas's confirmation hearings but also his tenure as a justice. Like the contemporary Republican Party as a whole, Bush and Thomas opposed preferential treatment on account of race—and Bush had chosen Thomas in large part because of his race. The contradiction rankled.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“So how do you know when the boy's perfect for you?' Dulcie asked
Betty gave her a tender look. 'You'll just know. That sounds vague, I know, but it's true.”
― Lesley Pearse, quote from Trust Me
“Yet, although he could not quite work this out in simple terms in his own mind, the very savour of life, he thought, was itself enhanced if it were not totally taken for granted. Perhaps it was something to do with the whole philosophy of the world into which we were born. If we lived for ever, who would look forward eagerly to tomorrow? If there were no darkness, should we appreciate the sun? Warmth after cold, food after hunger, drink after thirst, sexual love after the absence of sexual love, the fatherly greeting after being away, the comfort and dryness of home after a ride in the rain, the warmth and peace and security of one’s fireside after being among enemies. Unless there was contrast there might be satiety.”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
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