#lights

Looking around, I wonder what is it that makes my fellows able to bear such a life. How can they face the day, when I can't? Is there some secret to living that makes its conditions irrelevant? A neutering of expectation, a mastery of the mundane? Or have they just grown accustomed to rape? ↗

— D.B.C. Pierre

#life

You come in off the street, through the doors of the theater. You sit down. The lights go down and the curtain goes up. And you're in another world. ↗

— Robert Caro

#come #curtain #doors #down #go

The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone. ↗

— William Butler Yeats

#always #deed #light #lights #looks

I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us. We are to a large extent an imitative society. If one or two or three corporations would undertake to devote just a small fraction of their advertising appropriation along the lines that I have suggested, the procedure would grow by contagion; the economic burden would be bearable, and there might ensue a most exciting adventure--exposure to ideas and the bringing of reality into the homes of the nation. To those who say people wouldn't look; they wouldn't be interested; they're too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply: There is, in one reporter's opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost. This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. ↗

— Edward R. Murrow

#wires-and-lights-in-a-box #inspirational

But there were too many points at which the other self could invade the self he wanted to preserve, and there were too many forms of invasion: certain words, sounds, lights, actions his hands or feet performed, and if he did nothing at all, heard and saw nothing, the shouting of some triumphant inner voice that shocked him and cowed him. ↗

— Patricia Highsmith

#inner-voice #inner-voicery #invasion #life #lights

Our days and nights have sorrows woven with delights. ↗

— Francois de Malherbe

#delights #nights #our #sorrows #woven

I'll have to have a room of my own. Nobody could sleep with Dick. He wakes up during the night, switches on the lights, speaks into his tape recorder. ↗

— Pat Nixon

#during #his #i #into #lights

Love is so confusing - you tell a girl she looks great and what's the first thing you do? Turn out the lights! ↗

— Robert Orben

#first #first thing #girl #great #lights

I was stranded in Disco. I went to dozens of darkened places with enough flashing lights to drive the average person mad. I felt lost in the pulse of sheer panic. ↗

— Martha Reeves

#average person #darkened #disco #dozens #drive

But, when you have to resort to turntables, trick lights, flashing lights, fire and all that, you're actually saying, I need this because what I do is not all that together. ↗

— Buddy Rich

#because #fire #flashing #flashing lights #i