“Tell people the hammered truth, and it will ring like steel against an anvil.”
“We each have our belssings and our curses. In the end it makes us equals.”
“So now you know that, as dark as the depths of the sea may be, as dark as the night gets without a moon, it is not really true darkness. It's just waiting for light to return. There are places that are truly dark in this world, Ven, but this place here, this open stretch of sea where you are floating, is not one of them. It's not really dark here - it's just night. If you hang on and stay awake, in a short while the edges of the sky will start to turn gray, then pink, and the sun will rise, and there will be blue above and all around you again.”
“...as dark as the night gets without a moon, it is really not true darkness. It's just waiting for light to return.”
“Ven' is the Nain word for 'and.' It was my first word, and so was added to my name at the age of three, when I first spoke it. That is the Nain tradition; each child's first word becomes an official part of his or her name. As a result, three of my brothers are Petar Da-da Polypheme, Osgod No! Polypheme, and Linus Poo-poo Polypheme.
Personally, I think the Nain should rethink this tradition.
As for my name, I think perhaps there should be a question mark after it - 'and?' - as if life is always posing the question of what I am to do next. I was born with more than my share of curiosity, and it gets me into a frightful amount of trouble. I want to know what comes next from the time I wake up in the morning, wondering what the day will hold, till the moment I fall asleep, imagining where my dreams will take me at night. It's like an itch; my skin or scalp hums with excitement whenever my curiosity starts to take over. And? And? And? Scratching it does nothing to help; the itch doesn't go away, and I just look like I have dandruff or fleas.”
“When you're of a different race people distrust you because they are afraid. If you don't give them reason to dislike you, it becomes their problem, not yours.”
“I had always thought of home not as a house, or even a place, but a feeling of safety and acceptance, a warm light when the rest of the world was a dark, forbidding place.
Whenever my family was around, wherever we were, I felt like I was home.”
“i am the most even-tempered man i know,' clark protested.
'right, no one's ever lived long enough for you to get really mad. they're dead by the time you're mildly annoyed.”
“It was a truism to people active in the gay movement that the greatest impediments to homosexuals’ progress often were not heterosexual bigots but closeted homosexuals.”
“I came here for the same reason doctors wear uniforms of long white coats...They don't do it for their benefit, but for yours.”
“El sueño tiene su propia cadencia, su propia melodía, como la muerte. A veces es silenciosa, a veces se eleva en una hermosa armonía, que no se recuerda muy bien cuando uno está huyendo de ella.
-de Lengua de Oro: Los Poemas de Steven Slaughter.”
“I’ve had boyfriends before, and frankly, each one was a disappointment.
There was nothing horribly wrong with these boys. It was my fault. I’m kind of a snob when it comes to guys.
So far, the biggest problem with the boys I’ve dated is that they weren’t too smart. And eventually I ended up hating myself for being with them. It scared me, trying to pretend I was something I wasn’t. I could see how easily it could be done, and it made me realize that was what most of the other girls were doing as well—pretending. If you were a girl, you could start pretending in high school and go on pretending your whole life, until, I suppose, you imploded and had a nervous breakdown, which is something that’s happened to a few of the mothers around here. All of a sudden, one day something snaps and they don’t get out of bed for three years.”
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