I think if human beings had genuine courage,
they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween.
Wouldn't life be more interesting that way?
And now that I think about it, why the heck don't they?
Who made the rule that everybody has to dress like sheep 364 days of the year?
Think of all the people you'd meet if they were in costume every day.
People would be so much easier to talk to - like talking to dogs.
Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief
Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay,
An’ wash the cups an’ saucers up, an’ brush the crumbs away,
An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the hearth, an’ sweep,
An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn her board-an’-keep;
An’ all us other childern, when the supper things is done,
We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun
A-list’nin’ to the witch-tales ‘at Annie tells about,
An’ the Gobble-uns ‘at gits you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!
Onc’t they was a little boy wouldn’t say his prayers,—
So when he went to bed at night, away up stairs,
His Mammy heerd him holler, an’ his Daddy heerd him bawl,
An’ when they turn’t the kivvers down, he wasn’t there at all!
An’ they seeked him in the rafter-room, an’ cubby-hole, an’ press,
An’ seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an’ ever’wheres, I guess;
But all they ever found was thist his pants an' roundabout--
An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!
An’ one time a little girl ‘ud allus laugh an’ grin,
An’ make fun of ever’one, an’ all her blood an’ kin;
An’ onc’t, when they was “company,” an’ ole folks was there,
She mocked ‘em an’ shocked ‘em, an’ said she didn’t care!
An’ thist as she kicked her heels, an’ turn’t to run an’ hide,
They was two great big Black Things a-standin’ by her side,
An’ they snatched her through the ceilin’ ‘fore she knowed what she’s about!
An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!
An’ little Orphant Annie says when the blaze is blue,
An’ the lamp-wick sputters, an’ the wind goes woo-oo!
An’ you hear the crickets quit, an’ the moon is gray,
An’ the lightnin’-bugs in dew is all squenched away,--
You better mind yer parents, an’ yer teachers fond an’ dear,
An’ churish them ‘at loves you, an’ dry the orphant’s tear,
An’ he’p the pore an’ needy ones ‘at clusters all about,
Er the Gobble-uns’ll git you
Ef you
Don’t
Watch
Out!
James Whitcomb Riley
Tolerance, good temper and sympathy
are no longer enough in a world where ignorance rules,
and Science, which ought to have ruled, plays the pimp.
Tolerance, good temper and sympathy —
they are what matter really,
and if the human race is not to collapse
they must come to the front before long.
E.M. Forster, What I Believe
If Marx were functioning today,
he would have been hard put to avoid saying
that imaginary sex is the opiate of the people.
John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's Bastards
I can’t keep my eyes off the poet’s
wife’s legs—they’re so much more
beautiful than anything he might
be saying, though I’m no longer
in a position really to judge,
having stopped listening some time ago.
He’s from the Iowa Writers Workshop
and can therefore get along fine
without my attention. He started in
reading poems about his childhood—
barns, cornsnakes, gradeschool, flowers,
that sort of stuff—the loss of
innocence he keeps talking about
between poems, which I can relate to,
especially under these circumstances.
Now he’s on to science, a poem
about hydrogen, I think, he’s trying
to imagine himself turning into hydrogen.
Maybe he’ll succeed. I’m imagining
myself sliding up his wife’s fluid,
rhythmic, lusciously curved, black-
stockinged legs, imagining them arched
around my shoulders, wrapped around my back.
My God, why doesn’t he write poems about her!
He will, no doubt, once she leaves him,
leaves him for another poet, perhaps,
the observant, uninnocent one, who knows
a poem when it sits down in a room with him.
John Brehm
If God had wanted to put everything into the universe from the beginning,
He would have created a universe without change,
without organisms and evolution,
and without man and man's experience of change.
But he seems to have thought that a live universe
with events unexpected even by Himself
would be more interesting than a dead one.
Karl Popper, in Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, by Charles Hartshorne
The only thing in life is language.
Not love.
Not anything else.
Richard Burton, in Richard Burton: A Life, Melvyn Bragg