#mel

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#criminal-justice-system #cycle-of-violence #desperation #greed #homelessness

A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. ↗

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

#poets

When I want to be lectured on strategy, I'll consult someone who's actually won battles," Amelie said. "Not one who ran away from them." "Snap," Eve said. "You know what they're talking about?" Shane asked. "Don't need to know to get that one. She smacked him so hard his momma felt it. ↗

— Rachel Caine

#eve-rosser #morganville-vampires #shane-collins #snap #battle

And I realize how useless wails are and how gratuitous melancholy is. ↗

— Mircea Eliade

#wails #roman

I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. ↗

— Edgar Allan Poe

#sorrow

I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That's when I was born. ↗

— Charlie Parker

#chords #could #harmonic #heard #high

Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies. ↗

— Emil Cioran

#melancholy #misery #syllogism #misery

Neither heaven nor hell can keep me apart from you, Melanie. ↗

— Stephenie Meyer

#melanie #heaven

If New Orleans is not fully in the mainstream of culture, neither is it fully in the mainstream of time. Lacking a well-defined present, it lives somewhere between its past and its future, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. Perhaps it is its perpetual ambivalence that is its secret charm. Somewhere between Preservation Hall and the Superdome, between voodoo and cybernetics, New Orleans listens eagerly to the seductive promises of the future but keeps at least one foot firmly planted in its history, and in the end, conforms, like an artist, not to the world but to its own inner being--ever mindful of its personal style. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#conformity #future #history #mainstream #new-orleans

Cary rocked back on his heels and twirled one index finger around another in a sign meaning, wrapped around your finger. Only fair, I thought, since he was wrapped around my heart. ↗

— Sylvia Day

#contemporary-romance #eva-tramell #contemporary