#lan

No man, proclaimed Donne , is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island ) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes-forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#insulation #islands #isolation #life #originality

My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next. ↗

— Grace Paley

#morality #uncertainty #change

Today I prayed for Boston, for America, my home away from home. Today, I realized how lucky we Sri Lankans are to have peace in our country. How I feel today, hearing of the bombs going off in the city brings back memories of how I used to feel four years ago in Sri Lanka when the LTTE was setting off bombs all around Colombo. That feeling I used to get when I hear about a bomb blast, the goosebumps, the school evacuation drills, the breaking news footage, and most of all, that fear we Sri Lankans used to feel, every second of everyday, it all came back to me today. Thank you God for bringing peace to my country, look after America the way you did Sri Lanka. ↗

— Thisuri Wanniarachchi

#change #god #life #marothon #sri-lanka

Iggy Pop looks right at me as he sings the line: 'America takes drugs in psychic defence'; only he changes 'America' to 'Scatlin', and defines us mair accurately in a single sentence than all the others have ever done. ↗

— Irvine Welsh

#change

A blanket could represent change, and a brick represents consistency. Do you embrace the blanket, or the brick?
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#brick-and-blanket-iq-test #brick-and-blanket-responses #brick-and-blanket-test #brick-and-blanket-uses #funny

Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law ↗

— de Saussure

#language #linguistics #time #change

After learning the foreign language Gibberish, I became a dream spokesman. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#foreign-language #gibberish #language #learning #spokesman

Would you rather be affluent, or influential? I’d rather be fluent in the language of love. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#influential #language #love #change

A brick could be lodged inside a home to provide comfort, stability, hope, change, and audacity. Oh gosh! Sorry about the last three—I was in my political bullshit mode again.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#brick-and-blanket-responses #brick-and-blanket-test #brick-and-blanket-uses #change

Alan:I asked him what cat we should get, and he said it was my choice, so I got this little black one called Minnie. I think the cat place must not have known Minnie’s a mouse’s name. I thought maybe we should change it, but then I thought, if Minnie doesn’t know, either, then it’s probably okay. ↗

— J.L. Merrow

#sweetheart #change